shag carpet bomb wrote:
The way this works is that, when people just 'stand aside' everyone knows that, although they might have 'consensus', you aren't really going to accomplish anything if the people standing aside constitute a significant faction.
e.g., if in our local group, I want to put together a float for the christmas parade, others in the group will say "yay, me too." If a minority of others say, "meh. not my cuppa, but go ahead." here's what I heard: I don't really have enough resources to do anything. the minority of people who said "meh" have indicated they won't provide resources to the effort.
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In other words, regardless of the formal method of reaching decisions, in mass action (at least on the left, where we are our only resource), _acutal_ as opposed to nominal decisions are made by consensus.
Repeat: We are our only resource. Any decision we make is only real if all or most of us participate _actively_ in the implementation of that decision. It is that participation, not the formal decision, which is the real decision.
This is where left politics begin and end. If you can't grasp this, not just abstractly but in your very pulse, taken for granted, governing all your thought, then you don't understand left political action.
Carrol