File spoon-archives/postanarchism.archive/postanarchism_2003/postanarchism.0311, message 49


From: JessEcoh-AT-cs.com
Date: Wed, 5 Nov 2003 20:50:06 EST
Subject: Re: [postanarchism] Re: disassociation and postanarchism


hmm . . .

   i have many thoughts on this discussion about consensus, 
association/dissociation, etc. -- mostly a fine discussion so far, though some of us have taken 
to repeating some old choruses.  i'll try to touch on some of the more 
important points.

   while i tend to agree with bookchin's arguments for the superiority of 
democratic vs. consensus process in larger and more formal groups (as opposed to 
the small, informal conviviality of friendship, love, and "affinity"), 
including his argument from the need to preserve heterogeneity ("dissensus," as he 
calls it), i think jason's critique of consensus is poorly phrased at best 
(though he rephrased it more accurately in his last post) and perhaps simply 
mistaken.

   first of all, it is hard to argue that consensus decision-making processes 
are a product of the enlightenment.  the enlightenment spurred the 
development of democratic processes, not consensus-based ones. indeed, consensus 
processes don't have a very old pedigree in anarchist history either, as "M. Treloar" 
points out in a recent issue of _Clamor_.  historically speaking, they come 
from religious movements like quakerism, not from 17th-18th century 
rationalism.  at least, it seems to me that the quakers' development of consensus 
processes has more to do with the protestant reformation than the enlightenment per 
se.  (i would love to ask steve robinson to chime in on this -- he's an 
anarchist scholar of poststructuralism who was at one time working on a PhD thesis on 
quaker texts . . .) anyway, i'd have to hear a real historical argument in 
support of an enlightenment genealogy for consensus practices.

   jason's rephrasing of his argument clarifies things somewhat: it's not 
that the practice of consensus process is a product of the enlightenment, it's 
more that people who are now engaged in such practices understand the phenomenon 
of consensus itself (that is, of unanimous agreement or withdrawal of 
opposition in a group) in terms of some concept of "natural" unity which dates from 
the enlightenment.  this still invites some historical objections: 
enlightenment thinkers like rousseau are often highly pessimistic about the possibility of 
spontaneous, uncoerced agreement between people, and tend to regard 
democratic processes as an inferior but pragmatic alternative to waiting for such a 
providential harmony to arrive.  in any case, it's not clear to me that everyone 
(or even most people) engaged in consensus practice must (or does) believe 
that the consensus which emerges from their practice is "natural" or inevitable; 
it is quite possible to think of this agreement as constructed, as something 
highly artificial, particularly since it is often the product of long, 
laborious discussion and negotiation.  what may be helpful, if not necessary, to the 
pursuit of consensus is the rather modest belief that some people have many 
important interests in common, and that understanding this commonality will 
eventually facilitate some agreement.  one hardly needs to resort, ala george fox, 
to some hypothesis of "the holy spirit."

   sasha makes some very good points about the poststructuralist tendency to 
privilege "heterogeneity" over "homogeneity." we are quick to identify 
homogeneity, sameness, universality, and unity as oppressive or dominatory (and, 
conversely, to see heterogeneity, difference, particularity, and diversity as 
identical with the values and interests of the "little" cultures squashed 
underfoot by "big" western civilization), but it is equally true that "divide and 
conquer" is a strategy of domination.  power, as hannah arendt says, resides in 
functional agreement, the ability to cooperate and act together; dominant groups 
often maintain dominance by preventing the unification, hence the 
empowerment, of subordinate people.  isolated individuals are the weakest, the most open 
to manipulation.  given the importance of overcoming isolation, of creating 
functional unities (unities that _don't_ erase and destroy all difference!), the 
worst thing for us to do, as anarchists, would be to label any and all 
attempts to reach such agreements as "totalitarian" -- which is exactly what koch 
does in the essay that jason cites so approvingly.  such one-sided theorizing, 
even when it is done in the name of "the left," certainly seems to serve the 
practical interests of "the right," and perhaps this is why sasha identifies 
lyotard as "right-wing."

   one last thought: proudhon's "principle of federation," the decentralism 
that is so essential to all subsequent anarchist thought and practice, is an 
attempt to preclude (or at least avoid) the formation of those oppressive, 
difference-negating unities (what emma goldman called "compact majorities") by 
deciding _in advance_ that as much decision-making as possible will be reserved 
for the smallest demographic units.  it is based on the assumption that 
agreement among all is most difficult, agreement among many less so, agreement among a 
few the least so -- not on any optimistic supposition that free people all 
automatically, naturally agree.  in short, it builds a kind of "dissociation" 
right into the very form of "association," and vice versa.


   --jesse.


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