Consensus-based decision-making is already practiced around the globe, from indigenous communities in Latin America and direct action groups in Europe to organic farming cooperatives in Australia.
In contrast to representative democracy, the participants take part in the decision-making process on an ongoing basis and exercise real control over their daily lives.
Unlike majority-rule democracy, consensus process values the needs and concerns of each individual equally; if one person is unhappy with a resolution, it is everyone’s responsibility to find a new solution that is acceptable to all.
Consensus-based decision-making does not demand that any person accept others’ power over her, though it does require that everybody consider everyone else’s needs; what it loses in efficiency it makes up tenfold in freedom and accountability.
Instead of asking that people accept leaders or find common cause by homogenizing themselves, proper consensus process integrates everyone into a working whole while allowing each to retain his or her own autonomy.
Autonomy
To be free, you must have control over your immediate surroundings and the basic matters of your life. No one is more qualified than you are to decide how you live; no one should be able to vote on what you do with your time and your potential unless you invite them to. To claim these privileges for yourself and respect them in others is to cultivate autonomy.
Autonomy is not to be confused with so-called independence: in actuality, no one is independent, since our lives all depend on each other.
“Western man fills his closet with groceries and calls himself self-sufficient.” -Mohandas Gandhi
The glamorization of self-sufficiency in competitive society is an underhanded way to accuse those who will not exploit others of being responsible for their own poverty; as such, it is one of the most significant obstacles to building community.
The politicians’ myth of “welfare mothers” snatching hardworking citizens’ rightful earnings, for example, divides individuals who might otherwise form cooperative groups with no use for politicians.
In contrast to this Western mirage, autonomy offers a free interdependence between people who share consensus.
Autonomy is the antithesis of bureaucracy. There is nothing more efficient than people acting on their own initiative as they see fit, and nothing more inefficient than attempting to dictate everyone’s actions from above—that is, unless your fundamental goal is to control other people.
Top-down coordination is only necessary when people must be made to do something they would never do of their own accord; likewise, obligatory uniformity, however horizontally it is imposed, can only empower a group by disempowering the individuals who comprise it. Consensus can be as repressive as democracy unless the participants retain their autonomy.
Autonomous individuals can cooperate without agreeing on a shared agenda, so long as everyone benefits from everyone else’s participation.
Groups that cooperate thus can contain conflicts and contradictions, just as each of us does individually, and still empower the participants. Let’s leave marching under a single flag to the military.
Finally, autonomy entails self-defense. Autonomous groups have a stake in defending themselves against the encroachments of those who do not recognize their right to self-determination, and in expanding the territory of autonomy and consensus by doing everything in their power to destroy coercive structures.
Independent autonomous groups can work together in federations without any of them wielding authority. Such a structure sounds utopian, but it can actually be quite practical and efficient.
International mail delivery and railway travel both work on this system, to name two examples: while individual postal and transportation systems are internally hierarchical, they all cooperate together to get mail or rail passengers from one nation to another without an ultimate authority being necessary at any point in the process.
Similarly, individuals who cannot agree enough to work together within one collective can still coexist in separate groups. For this to work in the long run, of course, we need to instill values of cooperation, consideration, and tolerance in the coming generations—but that’s exactly what we are proposing, and we can hardly do worse at this task than the partisans of capitalism and hierarchy have.
Autonomy necessitates that you act for yourself: that rather than waiting for requests to pass through the established channels only to bog down in paperwork and endless negotiations, establish your own channels instead. This is called direct action.
If you want hungry people to have food to eat, don’t just give money to a bureaucratic charity organization—find out where food is going to waste, collect it, and share. If you want affordable housing, don’t try to get the town council to pass a bill—that will take years, while people sleep outside every night; take over abandoned buildings, open them up to the public, and organize groups to defend them when the thugs of the absentee landlords show up.
If you want corporations to have less power, don’t petition the politicians they bought to put limits on their own masters—take that power from them yourself.
Don’t buy their products, don’t work for them, sabotage their billboards and offices, prevent their meetings from taking place and their merchandise from being delivered.
They use similar tactics to exert their power over you, too—it only looks valid because they bought up the laws and values of your society long before you were born.
Don’t wait for permission or leadership from some outside authority, don’t beg some higher power to organize your life for you. Take the initiative!