Consensus decision making is shit, discuss

Concensus may be something that should be aimed for in certain circumstances but it shouldn't be a principle. Cos like its 'nice' when we all agree.

Its one of the most debilitating concepts and practices I've ever encountered. One person is able to hold entire meetings and groups up because they don't agree with the rest - fuck give me the 'tyranny' of the majority over that every time.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist but I sometimes wonder if some intelligence agency or other didn't introduce this just to fuck us up - but really i don't think they'd have done as good a job as the 'radical' wingnuts who like to wave and make bunny ears at meetings and then discuss a proposal over and over until its ditched because one fucker is opposed or until it becomes watered down in order to achieve 'concensus'.

That and when I'm right (cos like I always am *) I'd rather be out voted (and mutter into myself that they're all dicks) than convince next to everyone that my proposals a good one only to have it scuppered by the one eejit who can't follow discussion and has been making funny hand signals throughout.

I fucking hate 'concensus'. Bet you couldn't tell.

* thats sarcasm btw

so what time did you meet at?

consensus is a waste of time except in small groups where people know each other reasonably well - it should never be a principle

however if 75% of people vote for one thing then the minority should be able to seek to continue to argue their ideas and the majority should try and incorporate them, if practicable

I reckon if it wasn't for the lousy meeting structure at stirling convergence space we could have blockaded the entire summit, we had enough people and enough experience between us to do it. Admittedly part of the problem was that the facillitators didn't really get the system, ie they were letting people squabble for hours about what was going to be on the agenda for the meeting, in cases where that should have been self-evident. People were reluctant to tell others to shut up, even if they were ranting or going off on obscure tangents.

Eventually we formed an affinity group of 16-odd people and decided to work out for ourselves what to do. Without bothering too much with stopping every 25 seconds to see who was waving their hands we hammered out a plan, told a couple of other groups about it and then went off and did it. And it worked. This pattern seemed to turn up a lot, the most effective actions i heard about were done by relatively small groups who knew each other well and were happy to take responsibility for each other and trust each other. Working with people you know not only removes the artificiality inherent in large scale democratic 'cooperation', it allows a much more natural and unforced decision making process to arise. If you are in a group of friends, you don't need a specific structure to ensure everyone gets to make their point, because everyone would be confident enough to do so anyway.

I consider it reasonable to bend one's democratic principles slightly provided you actually get something done, the key factor IMO is to be ever watchful for anybody who persistently takes charge of things, and to preserve the spirit of dissent in absolutely every situation. After all, you can never get absolutely everybody to agree on anything worthwhile, just look at the g8 summit.

Yeah I think it sucks.

Good essay on organisation and consensus here:

http://www.workersolidarity.org/organization.htm

Use Consensus when you have the time or energy for it.

Consensus must be the highest grade of unefectivity while faschism being most effective(that is in doing a job fast not doing it well) and we are fighting a faschist system.

an example of how consensus decision making can really inhibit fluid decision making was experienced by all those poor people who happened to be at Stirling on the tuesday night. We mustve spent around 4 hours standing around deciding whether to go and do one action or prepare for another, there were times when a consensus had been agreed but no action was taken, then as time wore on people changed their minds, new information came about and people (me included) dithered, in the end the group split in two and did their own things.

However it seemed to work pretty well on the thursday at Stirling where perhaps the facilitators were a little more robust with getting on with the agenda and not getting sidetracked too much and where the majority of people agreed to go along with the idea of non violent, non party atmosphere type actions and the idea of doing prisoner solidarity work in stirling.

I think it just needs to be used with a pinch of sense, if theres only one or two people against the consensus then really the action should go ahead regardless and the others encouraged to get involved unless they really dont want to. I dont think its necessary to get all hand waving over every single issue or every technical issue since it can get tiresome and a bit tedious, obviously if theres any real disagreements then they can be voiced.

Since when were you an anarchist?

In my own experience consensus works fine if it wasn't for thosse few bastards that always have to nit-pick and drag the meetings on. They're the same people that keeping asking you if you have a mobile phone when you're travelling hundreds of miles in a mini-bus with them, or turn up at meetings late and have to disturb your positive energy. It's bastards, bastards are the problem.

I dont think consensus works in all situations. For small groups and/or important decisions it would seem like a wise move, but not for everything which would then make it shit and possibly undemocratic. Somtimes things have to be done and at the expense of a few bastards. Tho, I dont honestly like the idea that a majority is always right and can do anything regardless of the stance of others. That would be undemocratic too.

I've split you to general Jack and Oisleep, enjoy yourselves.