What does the author mean by democracy? He has an obvious antipathy for the idea but isn’t direct democracy a central tenet of most anarchist organizations? Is he holding to some fringe idea where democracy is not needed or is he using democracy in a different way than I am?
I also am completely baffled by the statement that the climate movement is the world’s greatest threat to life on earth? This idea raises so many questions I don’t know where to begin to understand it but I guess I’ll first ask: is this some kind of accelerationist idea?
There is a rich body of anarchist critique of democracy, or the dictatorship of the 51% as some like to call it. Direct democracy, while better, is not without problems either, but personally I think it’s sometimes necessary to do when no consensus can be reached.
I am not sure where you got that part about the climate movement. He seems to be specifically referring to the liberal idea that renewable energy investments or so allow to preserve the status quo, but I am not totally clear on what he means exactly by that part either.
It’s towards the bottom of his lessons learned from recent events at the top of the article. Seems to come out of left field and requires further explanation in my opinion.
Criticisms of democracy are definitely valid but I don’t really see any other alternative for making decisions in large groups. As you point out, consensus can’t always be reached and it is often very slow—which is fine for some situations but not for others.
There is definitely a need for social structures to prevent the majority from terrorizing the minority but there are lots of ideas I’ve on how to address this, so I’m not ready to write off the idea entirely as the author does. At the very least I would like to know what would be used instead.
What does the author mean by democracy? He has an obvious antipathy for the idea but isn’t direct democracy a central tenet of most anarchist organizations? Is he holding to some fringe idea where democracy is not needed or is he using democracy in a different way than I am?
I also am completely baffled by the statement that the climate movement is the world’s greatest threat to life on earth? This idea raises so many questions I don’t know where to begin to understand it but I guess I’ll first ask: is this some kind of accelerationist idea?
There is a rich body of anarchist critique of democracy, or the dictatorship of the 51% as some like to call it. Direct democracy, while better, is not without problems either, but personally I think it’s sometimes necessary to do when no consensus can be reached.
I am not sure where you got that part about the climate movement. He seems to be specifically referring to the liberal idea that renewable energy investments or so allow to preserve the status quo, but I am not totally clear on what he means exactly by that part either.
It’s towards the bottom of his lessons learned from recent events at the top of the article. Seems to come out of left field and requires further explanation in my opinion.
Criticisms of democracy are definitely valid but I don’t really see any other alternative for making decisions in large groups. As you point out, consensus can’t always be reached and it is often very slow—which is fine for some situations but not for others.
There is definitely a need for social structures to prevent the majority from terrorizing the minority but there are lots of ideas I’ve on how to address this, so I’m not ready to write off the idea entirely as the author does. At the very least I would like to know what would be used instead.