can be genuinely controlled by their mem-bers. This ignores the methods that liber-tarians have developed for avoiding top-down control in mass organisations (such asthe guidelines I mentioned earlier), and theexamples of libertarian mass unions thatfunctioned through assemblies, without anentrenched bureaucracy; organisations likethe Industrial Workers of the World back inthe ‘10s or the Spanish NationalConfederation of Labour (CNT) in the ‘30s.

If the “bigness means bureaucracy”dogma were true, a libertarian societywould be impossible. To have a societyorganised along anarchist lines means thatthere must be a means by which the wholepopulace can participate in making crucialdecisions affecting society as a whole. Forthis to happen it must be possible to havelarge organisations, organisations span-ning vast areas, such as the NorthAmerican continent, that are able to func-tion in a non-hierarchical way, directly con-trolled by their rank and file participants.

If the whole society could be organised tomake decisions through direct democracyand mass participation, as anarchistsadvocate, then surely it must be possiblefor people to build mass organisations thatare run this way today. If not, then howcould a libertarian society be brought intoexistence? Only a mass movement that is

itself organised non-hierarchically couldcreate a society free of top-down, bureau-cratic, exploitative social relations.

This brings us to the clearest problemwith the “small groups” doctrine: Smallgroups have no power. The power to changesociety requires a mass movement, and thedevelopment of solidarity among workingpeople on a large scale. To unite peoplefrom a variety of backgrounds and cul-tures, to coalesce the various groups into areal movement, to pool resources, massorganisations are needed. In the absence ofa larger movement, small groups can bediscouraged by their own lack of resourcesand sense of isolation.

Unless working people can organise theirsolidarity into mass organisations, theywill not be able to develop the power tochallenge our very powerful adversaries —the corporations and their government.Without a mass movement, most peoplewill not develop a sense that they have thepower to change society. Our ideal of socialchange in the direction of democratic par-ticipation and workers control will appearto most people as merely a “nice idea, butimpractical.” Only the strength of a massmovement can convince the majority thatour vision of a society run by workingpeople is feasible.

Footnotes:1. Howard Ryan, Blocking Progress: Consensus Decision Making in the Anti-Nuclear Movement,

1983, published by the Overthrow Cluster of the Livermore Action Group. Ryan’s pamphletmakes a number of the same arguments against consensus that I am making here.

2. Rudy Perkins, “Breaking with Libertarian Dogma: Lessons from the Anti-Nuclear Struggle,”Black Rose, Fall 1979, p. 15.

3. If we were to allow a decision to be made when half vote for a proposal, then it might happen thathalf vote for proposal A and half vote for proposal B. And what if A and B are conflictingproposals? Requiring one vote more than half guarantees that a single solution is decided upon.

Zabalaza Books’ AgitProp Series #2

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Anarchist DecisionMaking &

OrganisationalForm

“Consensus” has had a cer-tain popularity

as a decision-making method among socialchange groups since the ‘60s, especiallywithin the anti-nuclear movement but alsoin anarchist and radical feminist circles. Ithink we can understand why if we consid-er what sorts of organisations exist in thiscountry. Mass organisations in which themembership directly shape the decisionsare hard to find. How often have membersbeen ruled “out of order” at union meetingsby an entrenched official? Most leftistpolitical groups also have a top-down con-cept of organisation, as befits their preoc-cupation with “leadership.”

On the other hand, this sort of alien-ation and lack of control appears absentin activities organised through small cir-cles of acquaintances. Those who engagein an action together typically reached acommon agreement after talking it overinformally. This leads to the model of thesmall, informal group — no written con-stitution, no chair of meetings, no elec-tions for delegated tasks, no careful defi-nition of jobs, no written minutes of meet-ings. Decisions are made by having anunstructured discussion until consensusis reached.

But informality does not eliminate hier-archy in organisations; it merely masks it.To the insiders, everything appears friend-ly and egalitarian. But newcomers do nothave the same longstanding ties to thegroup. And having no clear definition ofresponsibilities, and no elections of indi-viduals who carry out important tasks,makes it more difficult for the membershipto control what goes on.

Fortunately, the “small, informal group”is not the only alternative to the dominanthierarchical model of organisation. It ispossible to build a formal organisation thatis directly controlled by its membership.Being “formal” merely means that theorganisation has a written set of rulesabout how decisions are made, and dutiesof officers and conditions of membershipare clearly defined. An organisation doesnot have to be top-down in order to be “for-

mal” in this sense. A libertarian organ-isation would have a constitution that

explicitly lays out a non-hierarchical way ofmaking decisions.

Delegating Responsibilities

Sometimes people have the idea that set-ting up elected positions with definedresponsibilities is a “hierarchy,” as if anydelegation of responsibility creates a boss.Yet, informality does not avoid delegationsince some people will inevitably do taskson behalf of the group, such as answeringcorrespondence or handling a bank account.

It is possible to elect people to perform del-egated tasks without creating a top-downorganisation. Here are a few guidelines:

The scope of authority of an elected posi-tion, such as correspondence secretary ortreasurer, should be explicitly defined anddelimited, so that everyone knows whatthis person should be doing, and with therequirement of regular reports to keep themembership informed. The person should be elected for a limit-ed term, such as one year, and should besubject to recall at any time by majorityvote of the membership (but with arequirement of adequate notice to ensurethat this is not “sprung” all of a sudden bythose members least favourable to the per-son currently doing the job). If at all feasible, there should be arequirement of mandatory rotation fromoffice. This is especially important for anyposition of acting as spokesperson or repre-sentative of an organisation or body of peo-ple. If an organisation is very small, howev-er, it is sometimes difficult to rotate respon-sibilities. Even so, the person carrying outresponsibilities can report regularly tomembership meetings and can be thusdirected by decisions of the membership. Nobody is to be elected to set policy forthe organisation, but only to carry outthose responsibilities that have beenassigned by the membership. The generalmembership meeting of the organisationmust remain the supreme decision-makingbody and can over-rule any decisions ofelected officers.

because those who voted “no” may not havereally strong feelings one way or the other.If it is an important issue, though, it isclearly a problem if an organisation isclosely split.

Sometimes, in organisations that arebased on membership participation anddemocratic voting, close votes will lead thegroup to stop and reconsider the issue inorder to find a proposal that accommodatesobjections.

More often, this process happens beforeit reaches a vote. When it becomes clear inthe course of the discussion on a proposalthat the membership are closely dividedand have strong feelings on the issue, thereis likely to be an effort to find a proposalthat mitigates objections. For one thing, itis to the advantage of the proposal’s parti-sans to have as much support as possiblewithin the organisation. The work of theorganisation is bound to suffer if it is badlysplit — dissatisfied members may dragtheir feet or drop out.

When a union conducts a strike vote, forexample, the partisans of a strike will wantto get the largest possible majority for astrike. If the vote for a strike isn’t over-whelming, if there is only a narrow major-ity for striking, the union will be less like-ly to actually go out because the divisionamong the workforce undermines thechances of winning a strike.

Such considerations have at times ledpeople to propose decision-making basedon larger majorities, such as two-thirds orthree-fourths. But the problem with this isthat most of the decisions that organisa-tions make are not so crucial that largemajorities are needed.

Moreover, stipulating a majority largerthan 50% plus one means that decisionscan be blocked by minorities. Though theminorities required to “block” a majorityare larger than under consensus, this stillpermits minority control. A cohesive minor-ity could exercise undue influence on agroup due to its potential for blocking whatthe majority wants. Thus the argumentsagainst consensus also apply to someextent against a formal requirement of two-thirds or three-fourths majority. Theadvantage to “simple majority” as a deci-

sion-making method is that it is the onlyway to formally preclude minority rule.

There may be circumstances when itwould be desirable to have a larger majori-ty than 50% plus one — as in those caseswhere the organisation is closely split onimportant issues. But instead of trying tomake a formal rule for this, I think thisshould be dealt with by the membershipusing good sense in such situations. Noteverything that is desirable for an organi-sation can be created by formal rules.

The conditions required for the healthyand democratic functioning of an organisa-tion go beyond the formal rules. Whetherthe rights of members are respected alsodepends on the climate in the organisation.How people treat each other is an informalfactor but it is just as important as clausesin constitutions.

There is usually some sort of underlying,informal consensus in almost any organi-sation. To take an obvious example, thereneeds to be a consensus that disagree-ments are not settled by punching someoneout. So, there does need to be a consensuson some things, on certain basic assump-tions that underlie the unity of the organi-sation. The advocates of “consensus deci-sion-making” are correct in perceiving this,but where they go wrong is in trying to ele-vate this into a general principle of deci-sion-making so that everything requires aconsensus. The consensus system putsday-to-day decisions, on the one hand, andthe most important decisions, fundamentalpurposes and ways of treating each other,on the other hand, all on the same level.

Small Groups, No PowerHowever, consensus does often work rea-

sonably well in small groups, especiallywhere the participants have a commonbackground and shared assumptions.Some people might maintain that small,independent groups are all that is needed.

Indeed, some partisans of the smallgroup have argued that “bigness” inevitablybrings bureaucracy in movements andthat only small, independent groups

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and must — protect the rights of individu-als and minorities. If one studies the situ-ation in the AFL-CIO-type unions, andmajor political organisations, it is true thatthe rights of individuals and politicalminorities are often in a sorry state. Butthese are hierarchical organisations. It isthe hierarchy, not “majority voting,” that isthe problem.

Anarchists of the more individualisticpersuasion argue that consensus is neces-sary to avoid “tyranny of the majority.” Butwhere in the real world does the majorityhave real power? The real tyrannies thatpeople are fighting around the world aretyrannies of entrenched minorities, of gov-ernments and bosses. I don’t want to claimthat “majorities are always right” but I dobelieve that people have the right to maketheir own mistakes. The issue here iswhether people have the right to controltheir own movements and organisations.To give a single individual or small minor-ity the right of veto on decisions is to havea system of minority rule.

Even when individuals or minorities donot actually threaten or use a block to keepthe majority from doing what it wants,everyone is aware that they could, if theorganisation is run by consensus. Thestructural requirement of unanimity putspressure on the majority to placate smallminorities in order to accomplish some-thing. Often this leads to decisions thatpaper over disagreements and leave every-one dissatisfied.

Rudy Perkins has described this prob-lem, based on his experience in theClamshell Alliance in New England in thelate ‘70s:

Majority rule is disliked because amongstthe two, three or many courses of action pro-posed, only one is chosen; the rest are“defeated.” Consensus theoretically accom-modates everyone’s ideas. In practice thisoften led to:

- a watered down, lowest-common-denomi-nator solution, or - the victory of one proposal through intim-

idation or acquiescence, or - the creation of a vague proposal to

placate everyone, while the plan of one sideor another was actually implementedthrough committees or office staff.

In other words, within the anti-nuclearmovement ideas are in competition andsome do win, but under consensus the act ofchoosing between alternatives is usuallydisguised. Because the process is often oneof mystification and subterfuge, it takespower of conscious decision away from theorganisation’s membership.2

Consensus puts pressure on minoritiesnot to express misgivings or disagreementsbecause their dissent would prevent theorganisation from making a decision. Thusit actually becomes harder for minorities tostate dissenting opinions because dissentis always a disruptive act. When decisionsare made by majority vote, on the otherhand, there is not this heavy “cost” to dis-sent and minorities can freely state theirdisagreement without thereby disruptingor blocking the organisation from reachinga decision.

Consensus also means that it becomesvery difficult, if not impossible, to changean organisation’s orientation even when itis clear to most members that the currentdirection is failing. That’s because therewill almost always be a minority who willbe against change, because the currentdirection of the organisation may have beenwhat attracted them to it, or because theymay simply prefer what they are used to.

Simple Majority

“Simple majority” is the requirement ofone vote more than half the votes cast inorder to make a decision. A simple majori-ty is the smallest number of votes neededto guarantee that a decision is made.3

Advocates of simple majority sometimeshear the retort: “But do we want to have amajor decision made with 51% for 49%against?” Decisions that organisationsmake in the course of conducting theiraffairs vary a lot in their relative impor-tance to the participants. For some deci-sions, a narrow majority won’t matter

The idea is that the main decision-mak-ing responsibility of the organisation is notto be delegated to some “steering commit-tee” or executive but is conducted directlyby the membership through their own dis-cussions and votes; this is the heart of thelibertarian concept of organisation.

Since many authoritarian leftists definesocial change in terms of putting a partic-ular leadership into power — such as theLeninist concept of “the revolutionaryparty taking state power” — it is no sur-prise that even organisations formed, orinfluenced, by authoritarian leftists mayhave a hierarchical set-up where the powerto make decisions is concentrated in someexecutive board or steering committee.While libertarians oppose this practice,and pose the alternative of direct decision-making by the members or rank-and-fileparticipants, it is, nonetheless, not neces-sary to oppose all delegation of tasks orresponsibilities.

The real question should be, “What isthe relationship between those vested withresponsibilities and the rest of the mem-bership?” If the centre of decision-makinglies in the general meetings, and thosewith responsibilities must report to thesemeetings, and are instructed by them, and(where possible) jobs are rotated, then wedo not have a top-down structure, but anorganisation where decision-making isfrom the bottom up.

A Chair is not a Boss

Often people who favour the “small,informal group” model of organisation alsooppose the practice of electing someone tochair a meeting, even if the meeting is alarger gathering. It is easy to understandwhat they are afraid of. Consider unionmeetings where the chair is a paid official.He has certain entrenched interests todefend. To serve his ends, he may rule “outof order” motions from the floor on mattersof concern to the rank and file, or manipu-late the meeting in other ways.

But here the problem is that there is anentrenched bureaucracy; chairing meet-ings is only one of the ways they control the

organisation. The situation is different ifthe chair is elected at the beginning of themeeting by those present, and if the chaircan be removed by majority vote at anytime. Being chair of a meeting does notconvert someone into a bureaucrat.

I’ve sat through chairless meetingswhere people interrupt each other, voicesget louder as people try to express them-selves, discussions get side-tracked intonumerous tangents, and important deci-sions are put off or hurriedly decided at thelast minute. This experience has made merather frustrated with the prejudiceagainst having a chair of meetings.

If a meeting only consists of a few people,then obviously it does not need to have achair. But once meetings achieve a certainsize, a chair becomes necessary in order toensure that the meeting stays on track andmoves through the agenda in a reasonableamount of time, while making sure thatpeople have an opportunity to speak.

I’ve heard opponents of chairmanshipargue, “It’s the responsibility of each indi-vidual to make sure that the meeting stayson track and individuals don’t get out ofhand.” But even with the best of inten-tions, this is difficult to achieve in practice.When you’re thinking about what you wantto say next, it’s hard to also be keepingtrack of whose turn it is to speak and ofwhat the agenda is.

The rationale behind having a chair isthat we delegate to one person the respon-sibility to concentrate on such things asthe agenda and the order of speakers whilethe rest of us are free to concentrate onwhat is being said. Of course, it can hap-pen that a chair is manipulative, favouringone particular “side” in a matter under dis-pute. But in such a situation, a motion toreplace the chair would be in order.

The Right to Disassociate

In working out a libertarian concept oforganisation, we need to remember that theindividual members not only have rightsthat must be respected by the organisation,they also have obligations to the rest ofthe membership. Since the majority

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have the right to control their own organisa-tion, individuals must conduct themselvesso as to respect this right of the majority.

For example, if an individual makes pub-lic statements that claim to speak for theorganisation, but state only the viewpointof the individual, not a viewpoint actuallydiscussed and agreed to by the majority,then that individual is acting irresponsiblyand anti-democratically.

There is, however, no reason why an indi-vidual should be required to stay mum pub-licly about disagreements within the organ-isation. As long as the individual makesclear that the stated viewpoint is his or herown, public disagreement with the positionof the organisation is not irresponsible.

A libertarian concept of organisation mustallow for diversity of opinions. This meansthat members must try to maintain a cli-mate of respecting the opinions of others inthe organisation. But what happens whenmembers do not respect the rights of others?What happens when members are threaten-ing to others, or conduct themselves in waysthat are very disruptive to the life of anorganisation? In such a case the majoritymay have to consider disassociating them-selves from that individual. In other words,the rights of the majority include the right toexpel individual members.

To some anarchists, expulsions arealways a “purge.” The authoritarian conno-tation of the latter term is meant to sug-gest that any expulsion is a violation offreedom, an illegitimate act. But the posi-tion of these anarchists is actually self-con-tradictory. For, it is a very basic libertarianprinciple that the membership of an organ-isation has the right to directly control it.And this means that no individual has the“right” to act in ways that prevent themajority from accomplishing the purposesfor which they got together. If the majorityin an organisation did not have the right toexpel disruptive individuals, this wouldmean that they couldn’t control the condi-tions of membership and direction of thatorganisation. Freedom of associationimplies the freedom to disassociate.

On the other hand, the power to expelmembers should never be delegated toofficials. For, if elected officers can

expel members on their own, they canexpel critics of how they are conductingtheir responsibilities. Expulsion certainlyis used by officials in hierarchical organi-sations as a means of maintaining theirtop-down control. What is illegitimate insuch cases is not the act of expulsion initself, but the top-down way it is carriedout.

The point here is that individuals haveobligations to the other members of anorganisation. And the majority have theright to ensure that the responsibilities ofmembership are observed. But expulsion isa last resort, and should not be used light-ly. Expulsion is something that the mem-bership should decide on directly, in a gen-eral membership meeting or convention.And it should always be required thataccused individuals be given advancenotice and have the right to defend them-selves before the general membership priorto a vote to expel.

Talking until Agreement isReached

The partisans of informality also tend tobe averse to voting as a way of making deci-sions. They prefer the process of talkinguntil agreement is reached (or notreached). In my experience, this processtends to encourage informal hierarchy.That’s because this process tends toheighten the influence of the more articu-late and self-confident individuals, andtends to disenfranchise the shy newcomer,and the less articulate. Voting has theadvantage that it is an equaliser. The shyand the aggressive, the articulate and thenot-so-articulate, all can raise their hands,and each has only one vote.

Advocates of consensus sometimes saythat hierarchical organisation is the onlyalternative to consensus. But there is alsothe alternative of direct democracy wheredecisions are made by majority vote. Directvoting by the members puts the majority ofmembers in control, and control by themajority of members is the opposite of hier-archy. In a hierarchical organisation, it isnot the majority of members who are in

charge but a few leaders at the top — thatis what “hierarchy” means.

The libertarian idea of direct, democrat-ic voting is quite different than the officialconcept of “democracy” in this society.“Democratic voting” typically means elect-ing officials who then have all the power ofmaking decisions. But that is really elec-tive autocracy, not genuine democracy,which requires direct decision-making bythe rank and file.

Formal Consensus

Though “talking until agreement isreached” is the natural method of decision-making for “small, informal groups,” not alladvocates of consensus decision-making areaverse to formal organisation. However,making the organisation formal — a writ-ten constitution, definition of membershipand so on — does not eliminate the basicproblems of the consensus process.

The requirement of unanimity meansthat disagreements have to be talked outuntil verbal consensus emerges. Thismeans that even a formal consensus sys-tem tends to heighten the influence of themore talkative, self-confident participants.Also, the requirement of consensus oftenleads to prolonged, marathon sessions, ormeetings where nothing is decided.

This aspect of consensus tends to makethe movement less conducive to participa-tion by working people, and tends toreduce participation to the hard-coreactivists. When people have other demandson their time (job, children, spouse), theywill tend to be frustrated by meetings thatare unnecessarily long, indecisive, orchaotic. Most people will want to havesome sense that something will be accom-plished, a clear decision made, and in areasonable amount of time.

In his pamphlet Blocking Progress,Howard Ryan describes a nightmarishexample of what can happen with consen-sus.1 Many people in the Livermore ActionGroup — an anti-nuclear action group herein the Bay Area — were uncomfortablewith the first point of LAG’s action guide-lines which stated: “Our attitude will be

one of openness, friendliness and respecttoward all people we encounter.” “A com-mon sentiment”, Ryan points out, “wasthat oppressed people often do not feelthese things towards police or authoritiesand should not be required to feel them inorder to join the [Lawrence-LivermoreLaboratory] blockade.” In 1982 there was amonth-long discussion of this issue, fol-lowed by two full days of informal opendebate. At the second of these assemblies itwas proposed to replace the “friendly andrespectful” language with “non-violent.”

Coming towards the end of this longprocess of discussion, there was a sugges-tion by one of the participants in the sec-ond meeting that a straw poll be taken todetermine the general opinion in the room.This was itself considered so controversialthat two hours were consumed in debatingwhether it was even okay to take a strawpoll. Finally a poll was taken and the votewas 74 to 2 in favour of changing the non-violence code to remove the “respectful andfriendly” language. One of the participantshas described what then took place:

One of the two people [a doctrinaire paci-fist] blocked it. He was asked repeatedly tostand aside, to leave, to die. People werejust so upset. He wouldn’t budge and it wasblocked.

This is a good example of the elitistcoercion that consensus permits.

Consensus is Anti-Democratic

The requirement of unanimity is anti-democratic. A small minority does not havethe right to prevent the majority of mem-bers from doing what they want to do.Organisations are not of value in them-selves but only as a vehicle for cooperationand collective activity. Insofar as consen-sus thwarts the majority from doing whatit wants, it makes the organisation an inef-fective vehicle for them. This can lead tosplits and fragmentation — exactly theresult that the advocates of consensus saythey want to avoid.

The rules of an organisation can —54