On the internet I don’t see too many Anarchists give arguments past “communism doesn’t work because communists are doomed to repeat the same exploitative power structures of the capitalist state” and “we dont know what an anarchist society will look like we gotta wait til we get there!” Which like…is not convincing to me at all. I’ve engaged in what was supposed to be consensus based decision making systems and there were a ton of flaws, though that’s purely anecdotal.
So, I’d really like to have some suggestions on what to read that you think might really challenge where I stand/take anarchism more seriously. It might take me 5 years to get to them bc executive dysfunction but I really want to see if my mind can be changed on if it would be a better system from the get go than communism.
I think it would be super interesting to hear from anyone who shifted into anarchism from Marxism on why it made more sense to you
Consensus-based decision making is not anarchy because it creates a hierarchy of group > individual.
What do you mean by this? If you mean that the majority of the group decides something and others follow, then that is not consensus, it’s majority-rule.
Consensus is about people raising their concerns about some decision and then, after discussion, either accepting it, leaving the group, or (if allowed) vetoing the decision. In this example there is no hierarchy being created.
Here is a section of a video about it that re-examines consensus that you might find interesting: https://youtu.be/lrTzjaXskUU?si=z9S8zb4Kz4rpWxob&t=1648