Making decisions within your orgs.

[Pawn Power]

What decision making process does your organizations, unions, groups, parties, collectives, etc. use? Please mention how many people/members are usually involved.

[Pawn Power]

I’ll go first.

We have anywhere from 8 to 25 people present. We use consensus. One block warrants further discussion and then consensus is attempted again. If consensuses cannot then be made it falls back on a 4/5ths super majority.

[An archist]

We use consensus, if a decision really can't be made, we split up in different groups.

[Forward Union]

The Anarchist federation basically operates on Majority, when it comes to national issues.

Major decisions are made in National assemblies, and proposals are printed, and distributed to every member one month before the meeting. Miniutes are also distributed to all members.

Local branches operate in the same way (though meet far more often) and have pretty much complete autonomy, so long as they work within the aims and principals of the Federation and don't issue statements in it's name (unless agreed upon by the fed) They can however claim that the statement comes from their branch.

Branches normally send delegates to the NDMs, rather than the enitre membership participating, though it is welcome to.

[Rawthentic]

Democratic centralism is a sense. All tendencies, factions, and opinions are encouraged to be heard and discussed, until common ground for action has been reached. Minorities have the right to become majorities. This is opposed to bureaucratic centralism.

From the CL's Basic Principles:


The structure of the proletarian party, the political party of the working class, will inevitably vary from country to country, from region to region. While the specific structures and forms of a proletarian party must as a rule be flexible and responsive to the demands of the situation, communists believe that such structures must be based on clearly defined principles that best serve to further the work of the party and the cause of the proletariat itself. Democracy, specifically the freedom to criticize, is essential to the development of the proletarian party. Without democracy, the party inevitably degenerates into a narrow, confessional sect, where its members are little more than automatons carrying out the wishes of a leadership elite.

Once a full democratic discussion has taken place and a vote has been taken, it is time for the party to act. Unity, specifically the power of a united party in action, is the necessary compliment to democratic discussion. Unity in action allows for the party membership as a whole to test the validity of the decisions it has made. This works to the advantage of both sides in a dispute. It allows both the majority and the minority in any dispute to be proven correct, without any equivocation that can be raised due to partial or inadequate participation. Minorities seek to become majorities, and have the unalienable right to do so. Unity in action allows those minorities the opportunity to say, based on the experience of actually carrying out the above stated decision, that they were correct or incorrect.

[Pawn Power]

None of you mentioned how many people are involved in the process.

[BOZG]

Originally posted by Pawn [email protected] 26, 2007 03:20 pm
None of you mentioned how many people are involved in the process.
Democratic centralism.

As for numbers, it's hard to tie down. Branch, local, regional and national level all differ as to the numbers at meetings.