WHEN TRYING to come to a decision--whether it is a trade union meeting or a group of student activists organizing against sweatshops--participants naturally are happiest when everyone ends up on the same page.
In other words, consensus is always a preferable outcome to a group trying to make a real decision about something than being divided. And often consensus is the result after a thorough discussion, because the group already has some level of basic agreement over goals.
But *hoping* for general agreement after a thorough discussion is very different from *requiring* it to move forward.
http://socialistworker.org/print/2011/10/10/the-limits-of-consensus
On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 10:22 PM, SA <s11131978 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yeah, the debate over "consensus" gets misrepresented as one side being
> ideologically pro-consensus and the other side being ideologically
> anti-consensus. In reality, one side is ideologically pro-consensus, in the
> sense that they insist on consensus as a matter of principle. (See Graeber's
> views on this topic.) While the other side says consensus versus voting is a
> practical question whose answer depends on the situation -- see anarchist
> Wayne Price. Note: again, this is a topic where anarchists split.