@AvengingFemme @mu @hakan_geijer
I am often very interested in diving into the historical and etymological roots of specific institutions and terms; it feels like a process of discovering what we really mean by these terms that we throw around. I read too much Derrida in my 20s.
But there’s absolutely nothing a priori wrong with majoritarian decisions or building consensus. These are merely social processes for making decisions among multiple people, the perfect solution for which doesn’t exist.
If five wolves voted to do X while one lamb voted to do Y, this has no real bearing on the “anarchist” nature of the decision unless those five wolves are voting to *impose* their decision on the lamb. Five wolves voting against one lamb to eat the lamb isn’t meaningfully democratic among the participants; it constitutes one segment of society agreeing among itself to violently impose its will on another segment of society.
Of course, this sort of thing might happen in the absence of the state—but a key difference is that the actors under anarchism bear the costs of acting on their decision themselves, including the lamb’s decision to engage in self-defense.