Creating an alternative economy and organization of production implies a transformation of the relations and ways of inter-personal functioning that have been inculcated into hierarchy culture and the capitalist system. The following analysis will give some insights into intentional ways of creating a new culture that can serve as an inspiration for the organizations that want to create an alternative to the mainstream. We can learn from these advanced forms of cooperation for other co-operative projects.

I interviewed dozens of members of two egalitarian communities (also called communes), rural Acorn community in Virginia, US (consisting of 30 adults and one child at the time of research in 2014) and suburban Kummune Niederkaufungen near to Kassel in Germany (consisting of 60 adults and 20 teens and children in 2016). Egalitarian communities constitute a more advanced version of experimenting with alternative economy than ecovillages. They share labor, land, and resources according to one’s needs and everyone contributes in a chosen way to reproductive and income-producing endeavors. They apply the principle of consensus to their decision-making.

How the communes maintain good vibes?

In both communities, there are weekly meetings to discuss and make decisions. They are also an occasion to get updates on the lives of individual members and communal affairs. In Niederkaufungen, there is a general meeting once a week and working groups that discuss specific topics meet according to their own schedules. In Acorn, another weekly meeting is scheduled to discuss a proposed topic with a moderator. This may serve as a preparation for decision-making during weekly General Assembly.

In both communes, all kinds of conflicts, all kinds, including romantic breaks-ups are seen as a communal affair. There are several people who volunteer to be mediators in such cases and help the conflicted to communicate. One of Niederkaufungen’s enterprises is a training center for non-violent communication (it is a method and theory developed by Marshall B. Rosenberg1). Therefore, the community has experienced trainers and many of the members are familiar with the method. This, however, does not mean that there are no conflicts. Some people have not talked to each other for years as a consequence of a conflict. Some resentments are held for a long time, which is often caused by not knowing and understanding the other. They may avoid the resented person and gossip. Some people feel frustrated because decisions and changes in the life of the commune take such a long time. Discussions in groups to understand different standpoints on an issue causing a conflict also may take time.

Living in a commune is not easier than in the mainstream society – it is challenging in a different way. It involves a lot of talking: in assembly, in smaller groups, informal exchanges. Gossiping is a form of dealing with frustration. Talking seems to be a crucial factor in maintaining togetherness and self-insight.

Both communities recognize that being closer and more inter-dependent than it is usually the case in the relationships outside one’s family is a challenge. The communes have developed their own ways of
maintaining community spirit and good relations among communards.

Acorn:

• regular personal updates, so called “clearness process” : “This measure consists of weekly check-ins – short sharing of how one feels during a weekly meeting, presenting one’s wellbeing and plans towards the community once a year, and obligation to talk with each community member in a one-on-one conversation at least once a year. The latter one is reported during the weekly community meeting. For example, someone shared that the obligatory conversation made her realize that she had a lot in common with someone she hardly talked to all the year.” (Gajewska 11 October 2016)
• principle of no “withholds”: “The principle of “no withholds” bases on the premise that long-term frustration may result in explosion or bad atmosphere. Members schedule an appointment to share their frustration. The addressee of this revealing is supposed to abstain from responding during certain time and integrate the feedback.” (Gajewska 11 October 2016).

Niederkaufungen:

• therapy groups: Some members choose to meet regularly in meetings, for example, men’s group, to provide each other support and more insight. There is no leader or expert. Meeting and exchanging in the group aims at therapeutic effect.
• individual therapy: Some of my interviewees participated in individual psychotherapy sessions during their stay in the community. One of them reduced working hours to allow time for processing the insights from the therapy. They considered it to be helpful to change their functioning in the group. One of my interviewees observed that thanks to individual intense therapy, which was made possible by lowering work load for this period, this person started to perceive other members differently, with less projections and blaming others.
• practicing non-violent communication: the members that I interviewed seemed to have internalized the principles of Rosenberg’s method. They process their emotions and ask what is behind a conflict. Also other members may step in to talk about a disagreement and help conflicted parties understand their needs better.
• rules regarding the use of mobile phones and similar devices: they are allowed only in private spaces and they shall not be used in the common area such as communal dining room.

Cultivating communal skills in the mainstream world

Creating an alternative reality to the one imposed by neoliberal agenda requires capacity to organize, be part of a group, commitment to collective efforts. These skills are a base for cooperative enterprises, consumer self-organizing, and other forms of collective autonomy. Many of my interviewees mentioned that work is different in their communes because they can show up the way they are. There is less pretending. I am convinced that culture can be shaped despite our conditionings. It is an interesting human adventure to look into the mystery of inter-personal relations. Many of the communards that I interviewed revealed intentional personal and group work on this very aspect. They undertook practical steps to make it work. So can we.

Short description of Acorn and Niederkaufungen

Acorn community is a farm based, anarchist, secular, egalitarian community of around 32 folks, based in Mineral, Virginia. It was founded in 1993 by former members of neighboring Twin Oaks community. To make their living, they operate an heirloom and organic seed business, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange (“SESE”), which tests seeds in the local climate and provides customers with advice on growing their own plants and reproducing seeds. They work with about 60 farms that produce seed for them, which they test for good germination, weigh out, and sell or freeze for future use. The seeds are chosen according to their reproduction potential so that gardeners can reproduce seeds from the harvest instead of buying them every season. The enterprise conducts and publishes research on the varieties so that customers take less risks when planting them. Acorn is affiliated to the Federation of Egalitarian Communities, a US network of intentional communities that commit to holding in common their land, labor, resources, and income among community members.

Kommune Niederkaufungen consists of about 60 adults and 20 teenagers and children. It was founded in the late 1986, after three years of preparing and campaigning. Meanwhile other income-sharing communities have been established in the region of Kassel. They are a left wing group, with positions that range from radical and social feminist, through green/ecologist standpoints, over Marxism and communism, to syndicalist and anarchist positions. Many communards are active in political groups and campaigns in Kaufungen and Kassel. Nowadays, they are economically autonomous. Their enterprises include elderly daycare, child daycare, training in non-violent communication, a seminar center, catering and food production, carpentry. Some members are salaried outside of the commune. To become a member, one needs to give all the property and savings to the commune. However, it is possible to negotiate a sum of money in case of exit from the commune to start a new life. The commune is a member of German network Kommuja. To read more about the commune, see: https://www.kommune-niederkaufungen.de/english-informations/

Authors’s articles on both communities (you can find references included in this article)

1. Gajewska, Katarzyna (Autumn 2018): Practices and skills for self-governed communal life and work: examples of one US and one German egalitarian community. Journal of Co-operative Studies 51(2): 67-72.
2. Gajewska, Katarzyna (25 June 2018). How to Start and Maintain a Micro-Revolutionary Project. Grassroots Economic Organizing (GEO). http://geo.coop/story/how-start-and-maintain-micro-revolutionary-project
3. Gajewska, Katarzyna (2017): Kommune Niederkaufungen – jak się żyje w 60-osobowej wspólnocie. [Kommune Niederkaufungen – on living in a 60-person commune], quarterly Nowy Obywatel [New Citizen].
4. Gajewska, Katarzyna (9 October 2017): Raising children in egalitarian communities: An inspiration. Post-Growth Institute Blog http://postgrowth.org/raising-children-in-egalitarian-communities-an-inspiration/
5. Gajewska, Katarzyna (11 October 2016): Egalitarian alternative to the US mainstream: study of Acorn community in Virginia, US. PostGrowth.org http://postgrowth.org/egalitarian-alternative-acorn-community/ , first published in Bronislaw Magazine
6. Gajewska, Katarzyna (21 July 2016): An intentional egalitarian community as a small-scale implementation of Post-Capitalism. P2P Foundation Blog https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/an-intentional-egalitarian-community-as-a-small-scale-implementation-of-postcapitalist-peer-production-model-of-economy-part-i-work-as-a-spontanous-voluntary-contribution/2014/12/27
7. Gajewska, Katarzyna (10 January 2016): Case study: Creating use value while making a living in egalitarian communities. P2P Foundation Blog, http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/an-intentional-egalitarian-community-as-a-small-scale-implementation-of-postcapitalist-peer-production-model-of-economy-part-ii-creating-use-value-while-making-a-living/2016/01/10
8. Gajewska, Katarzyna (27 December 2014): An intentional egalitarian community as a small-scale implementation of postcapitalist, peer production model of economy. Part I : Work as a spontanous, voluntary contribution. P2P Foundation Blog, http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/an-intentional-egalitarian-community-as-a-small-scale-implementation-of-postcapitalist-peer-production-model-of-economy-part-i-work-as-a-spontanous-voluntary-contribution/2014/12/27
   This is a shortened and modified version of the article : Katarzyna Gajewska (Autumn 2018): Practices and skills for self-governed communal life and work: examples of one US and one German egalitarian community. Journal of Co-operative Studies 51(2): 67-72.
   This article contains excerpts of already published texts in Creative Commons and is under Creative Commons licence.

Katarzyna Gajewska, PhD, is an independent scholar, workshop leader, and transformational guide. She has published on alternative economy, universal basic income, non-digital peer production, collective autonomy, food and health. You can contact her at: k.gajewska_comm(AT)zoho.com.
List of publications here
Facebook: Katarzyna Gajewska – Independent Scholar

1 Marshall B. Rosenberg was the founder and director of educational services for The Center for Nonviolent Communication.

Header image: “The Poop Deck is a humanure toilet with two seats. The sign adjusts that way in case you want company while you do your business.” – The picture was taken in Twin Oaks egalitarian community. Picture and picture description by Raven Cotyledon from Commune Life (creative commons)

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Hashgraph has been getting some press and many are excited about the speeds they promise and some of the videos and demonstrations they’ve shared. It is one of the closest innovations to Holochain that I’ve seen come out by people starting from a blockchain mindset. However, from my completely biased perspective, there are still a few gaps.

Hybrid of Data & Agent Centrism

Notice that all Hashgraph’s examples show the agents (labeled as A B C D E) and who is committing, sending, and receiving what transactions. Normally in blockchain explanations, they only focus on the chain of blocks, and maybe some info about the nonces needed from miners or stakers, but the data is never presented showing how every node actually receives transactions in a different order. This might cast doubt on the use of the word “consensus” when really blockchain just takes one node’s sequence as reality and drops all the others.

However, in Hashgraph, you can see how different agents are each building a different “reality.” Then they use some metadata about each agent’s state to enable them to build consensus based on gossip about gossip. Their algorithm looks at things from the perspective of EACH AGENT and then they somewhat arbitrarily say: “the median timestamp for a data element across agents shall be its official time.”

In the shift from data-centric blockchain toward agent-centric holochain, they are hybridizing.

The creators of Hashgraph made a partial mindshift from data-centric to agent-centric. And you can see how on Holochain, an app could also use exposed data about gossip and DHT timestamps to do its own variant of hashgraph consensus (except beware their patent).

A Fixation on Consensus

If you hear blockchain people talk about distributed computing, it is all about consensus. In fact the Hashgraph folks even claim Byzantine Fault Tolerance is about consensus (and not the ability to tolerate a Byzantine Fault — actions from corrupt or malicious nodes). Why such a fixation on consensus?

Why should you have just one algorithm for manufacturing that consensus for ALL dApps on a platform? Aren’t there many contexts where no consensus is needed? Or where it would be valuable to engage in different social processes around disagreement? In fact, why limit yourself to only one reality when in some cases information about differences of timing could be valuable data?

In Holochain, you have implicit or soft consensus when a data element saturates a majority of the DHT neighborhood where that data element resides. A later attempt to PUT that data to the DHT will produce a collision. But what if it is okay to have the collision, and just say “Okay, two people have now invented the Calculus.” or whatever. So now you have two authors, with different timestamps, and histories, and so what?

Well the “so what” comes into play when the data is a rival resource — like a Twitter handle, a domain name, or a cryptocoin. In this case, you want to handle a collision differently and block the later addition telling them the name is taken or the coin is spent. For general computing on distributed apps, this covers 99.9% of use cases. And on Holochain, the way we recommend implementing currencies using agent-centric crypto-accounting instead of data-centric coins means you don’t use rival coins at all.

So the only remaining case not handled by the soft consensus of the DHT, is when the collision happens before the DHT neighborhood can get saturated by an entry from one author. So if two people try to register the same name at the same time, how do you resolve it?

Paths to Many Consensi

We could pretend there’s just one absolute answer like what the Hashgraph algorithm produces using median time of gossip signatures. Or we could recognize the importance of choice and let the app builder decide.

• Maybe you start an auction and it goes to the highest bidder.
• Maybe you look at their reputation for community contribution and let the greatest contributor have it.
• Maybe you send them each a message to resolve the conflict with each other.
• Maybe you vote on it.

The point is, that for the very small percentage of times you could even have this kind of collision for most distributed computing apps, why would you want to swallow that computational overhead for ALL OTHER non-colliding bits of data? Why rule out the possibility of context-appropriate consensus solutions by hard-coding in only one arbitrary approach?

If 99.9% of data in distributed apps is non-rival, or non-conflicting, shouldn’t we just trigger special consensus resolution on that .1% of the cases and bear the (computational or social) cost of that overhead only on those cases?

However, since Blockchain grew up with its ONE APP being about managing rival coins, everyone thinks consensus is at the heart of the matter of distributed computing. Maybe this is also why blockchains don’t scale for doing generalized computation for dApps. If blockchains can’t even scale coin transactions, which are kind of a ridiculously simple app (Basically: Do you have the key? Okay, then you can write new coins up to the total value of the old coin. Repeat.), how do they ever expect to run things at true Internet scales like Facebook with 520k likes per second?

My answer: Holochain — for lightweight, scalable, P2P dApps which actually get more efficient as more users join.

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If you’ve read any of my writing, you will have guessed I have some opinions about how we could do large scale governance differently. But the tool we’re building is designed only for small scale: If you’ve ever used Loomio, you’ll see that it’s designed for groups of up to a few hundred people, max. There’s a big gap between the decision-making context of a grocery co-op and an entire country.

So I was really pleased to be invited to make a presentation at The Direct Parliament conference in Florence last week, where I could connect the dots between the large scale and the small.

The conference was coordinated by Marco Deseriis, who studies networked society with a cultural/political examination of Internet-based activism. The Direct Parliament came at the conclusion of his 2-year research project Scalable Democracy. I was first introduced to Marco when he interviewed me back in 2016, looking especially at the mass adoption of Loomio in the early phase of Spain’s Podemos movement-slash-party. I have really appreciated following along with his research blog, which is full of excellent interviews like this one with Miguel Arana Catania from the Participation Team of Podemos, revealing the tensions between the social movement’s manifestations in the streets and in the institutions.

The day-long conference was all live-streamed, so you can watch videos of the presentations and discussions here. My talk starts 13 minutes in, there’s a direct link here. If you prefer reading to watching, I’ve included an approximate transcript below.

I usually avoid speculation about the large scale because I often see it distracting us from more immediate local concerns, where we can actually have tangible impact. But people keep asking me what I think we should do about governments, so I’m starting to develop some thoughts on the topic. I’d love to hear what you think. Feedback welcome

Transcript: Everyday Governance with Loomio

Thanks for the invitation to join this conference. I’m grateful to be here, and looking forward to learning with you all. I come from New Zealand, so sorry about my poor English. I co-founded a technology company called Loomio. I think technology is quite boring though so I won’t talk too much about it.

software is an artefact of values and beliefs

I think software is an artefact, a by-product of our values and beliefs. So I don’t want to spend much time telling you about the software we built; I think it will be more interesting to share some of my values and beliefs, rather than telling you all about our software platform. Bear in mind I’m one of many co-creators of Loomio, so my subjectivity is only a limited slice of the pie.

First I want to share some of my personal experience so you know where I’m coming from.

In 2011, I joined the Occupy Movement. I had no experience with activism or social movements before then. I had just been watching Occupy Wall Street online and I thought it was interesting. I saw all these people saying that society is in crisis, that we face enormous environmental and economic challenges, and that our institutions are not capable of coming up with good solutions. In retrospect, I think Occupy was an opportunity to get firsthand experience of the challenges of democracy, and to start prototyping alternative institutions.

When the Occupy Movement made it all the way to Aotearoa New Zealand, I went down to our Civic Square in Wellington to observe: who are these people, what are they going to do? Very quickly, I changed roles, from observer to participant. I found there was no way to stand outside, I had to be involved.

For the first time in my life, I met with citizens in the city square. We talked together about our hopes and fears, sharing, learning, debating, connecting. It was tremendously inspiring, and shocking, like, why have I never met other citizens like this before?

On the first day, somebody decided he was going to stay the night in the square. Two weeks later there were 100 tents, a whole village had appeared.

The amazing thing about this village was that nobody was in charge. We made decisions together: everyone needs to eat, so how are we going to organise food? We made a kind of free university, so what kind of education programs shall we run? All these people want to stay in the square: how can we make shelter for everyone? TV cameras keep visiting us, what should we tell them? Nobody was the boss, we had to negotiate and improvise.

Now nothing in my education had prepared me for this. I’m trained as an engineer. As an engineer I was taught an approach to problem-solving that was all about being right. I did research, I made simulations, I built electronic circuits and tested them with careful measurements. I was trained to be objective, detached, outside of the system, an expert observer with a brilliant intelligence.

In the assembly at Occupy, I discovered these skills are not very useful in deliberating with others. In the assembly I learned that my empathy is much more useful than my intelligence. 

Negotiating with other people, trying to find agreement about how we should organise our little village, I learned the most important thing I could do was to listen. Not just listening to rebut — listening to understand, where are you coming from? what do you believe? what do you value? why do you think like that?

When I truly understand somebody’s position, then I can make a proposal that they can agree with. It’s not about being very clever, having the best ideas, or the best ethics, it’s just about listening, being flexible, and looking for solutions that satisfy as many people as possible.

So, there we are in the city square sitting in circles and making consensus decisions, it’s very picturesque and inspirational.

It was also kind of a disaster, right? In my opinion, the Occupy camps all over the world ended for basically two reasons.

Some camps were destroyed by the state. Violent, brutal, armed thugs paid by the government to vandalise and dismantle these flourishing communities. The other camps collapsed under the weight of consensus. We learned how difficult it is to govern a public space, especially when you’re making decisions with random people, some of whom are drunk, or they are just passing through and sharing an opinion without any commitment to the community.

Actually maybe these two reasons demonstrate the same thing: governance is very difficult. The state does stupid things like pepper spraying students at a peaceful protest. And we activists do stupid things like spending 6 hours in a consensus meeting that brings us no closer to our aims.

So, as our camp disintegrated, my friends and I were left with an enormous question: what next!? It felt like we had come so close to a dramatic evolution of how we govern society, and then it collapsed. So what do you do after the revolution fails?

Being the kind of people we are, we decided to make some software about it. We thought we could help activists organise more efficiently with software to support inclusive decision-making.

So Loomio is a discussion forum like many others online, but the unique piece is the facilitation tools which are designed for productive and efficient deliberation. It’s not an endless conversation, the process is guided towards an outcome. E.g. you can poll people so see which options they like, then test for agreement with a proposal.

When we started we were just thinking of activists. But immediately we were swamped with interest from all parts of society, in many different countries. Now we have tens of thousands of groups using Loomio. In Wellington, the city government used Loomio to involve citizens, experts, and officials in policy making. Co-ops use Loomio for governance: approving new members, approving funding applications, debating about constitutional bylaws.

My favourite example right now is social.coop: it’s a social network very similar to Twitter. But instead of selling advertising, the platform is funded by users paying a small subscription fee. In return, users are invited to participate in governance, in a Loomio group: what kind of censorship should we have on the platform? where should we host the data? what code of conduct should users adhere to? It’s wonderful to see a digital platform being governed like a public utility.

Loomio is very simple software: you have discussions, suggest proposals, and people can say what they think about the idea. There’s no magical automation, machine learning, artificial intelligence, or decision-making robots, it is a very human process. I think it contributes at least two very useful innovations to the problem of deliberation, which can be generalised to other tools and processes.

1. asynchronous deliberation

First, Loomio breaks the tyranny of time. Usually, when you want to include people in a decision-making process, you do it in a meeting. These days we have video-conferencing so our meetings can extend into multiple spaces, but still, we need everyone paying attention at the same time. This is a fundamental constraint of deliberation: you need to organise a meeting, get everyone to pay attention simultaneously, and there’s a pressure to make all your decisions before the meeting ends.

With Loomio you can involve people in decisions, without coordinating a meeting. People participate in their own time.

I’m travelling through Europe with my partner. Back home, we’re negotiating about a new investment round for Loomio, and potentially restructuring the cooperative. We’re on the road, in a different timezone from the rest of the team, but we can participate in these very important decisions in our own time. We call it asynchronous decision-making, I think it is a very profound breakthrough, even though it is quite mundane!

2. visualise positions

The second innovation: visualising people’s positions. It’s very common for deliberation to get stuck in a very frustrated state. Essentially, everyone is simply arguing for their preferred option. I think we should do this. Well I think we should do that. No we should do this. Often what is happening here is that people are advocating for their preferred option, simply because their preference hasn’t been acknowledged. I get louder and louder describing the benefits of my proposal, because nobody has demonstrated that they understand my idea. So it really accelerates the deliberation process when you can visualise everybody’s position. First, everybody needs to be heard. Then they are much more willing to negotiate and make concessions.

So with a Loomio decision, somebody makes a proposal, and then you can visually see where everyone stands. People agree or disagree, and they share a short summary explaining why they feel that way. so you can quickly focus in on the concerns, and evolve the proposal to respond to them.

Again, it is quite simple, but also a profound breakthrough. We use the same technique in face-to-face workshops and meetings to deal with difficult decisions. In this case, the graphic is used to visually distinguish preference (I love it) from tolerance (I can live with it):

I want to share a bit more about my beliefs, some of the thinking behind the software.

This shows you how I understand social change. The chart keeps going up to the right, with bigger and bigger scales: cities, states, the planet, all of life, etc. Many of us are motivated by large-scale change, I expect that’s why we’re at this conference: we want to rebuild the economy for equality, or reimagine politics, or repair the division between humans and the rest of nature. Big big change. But social change is very complex, and non-deterministic, it’s not a straightforward system. I don’t know how we re-wire society, but this picture shows my intuition. I believe we need to consider many different scales at once.

For example: I want to change the system called patriarchy. It seems to me a very urgent challenge. But if I just focus on the large scale, trying to dismantle the system, I may miss a lot of insights that are down at the lower end, much closer to me and my immediate experience. Down here there are some questions just for me: how do I support patriarchy, how do I benefit from it? or, how do I reproduce patriarchal dynamics in myself, how do I dominate myself? and then one step up, looking to my relationships: am I in equal partnership, or in domination relationships? Then I can examine my teams: are we treating each other with respect and equity, or does one person dominate the rest? To me it is very important to have integrity and alignment at all scales. So yes, I will join a social movement against patriarchy, demanding a change in how we distribute power in society and how we run institutions. And also I need to work at the very small scale.

This is what is in my mind when I am using Loomio. I believe it is very important to practice deliberation at the small scale. Learn how to share power, to negotiate, to listen, to make concessions, to empathise, to let go of demands, to find creative solutions. Simply, I believe the practice of small scale democracy makes me a much more capable citizen.

I’m not sure about the large scale. I think we will have much better ideas once people have more opportunity to practice at the small scale.

Right now, the best large scale example I know of the is in Taiwan. My example is 4 years old, but still most people don’t know about it, so I guess I will be the Asia-Pacific representative for this conference and share the story again.

In 2014, the Sunflower Movement occupied government buildings in Taiwan. They stayed there for 23 days, demonstrating how to run a transparent deliberative democracy process to renegotiate a trade deal with China. After the movement, many independent politicians won seats in government, including the premier of Taiwan and the mayor of Taipei. That is, they are there to represent citizens directly, without the mediation of a political party. Since then, there have been many experiments in citizen participation in law making.

The vTaiwan project uses a tool called pol.is to involve thousands of people in opinion gathering, which like Loomio, creates a visualisation of people’s position on an issue. Once the opinion groups are clear, then representatives of each group come together for an in-person deliberation. This is broadcast publicly for anyone to watch. Then, having understood the perspectives of the different stakeholder groups, citizens are invited to suggest statements that they believe everyone can agree with. In the end, the government agrees to implement every consensus point generated by the process, or to provide detailed rationale for why it is not feasible.

This is incredibly inspiring to me, and I hope more people in the Western world will pay attention to the developments in East Asia. And I will say, the technology is useful, but more important is the political strategy and the facilitation skill of the activists driving this change.

I’m not sure if the government of the future is going to use pol.is, or Loomio, or LiquidFeedback, or whatever technology. But I hope as more people have access to a kind of everyday democracy, we’ll be much more able to work together creatively, efficiently making great decisions that work for everyone.

So if the question of this conference is “how do we reclaim our vision of democracy?” I think the answer is very straightforward, and very difficult. How do you get better at anything? With practice. I propose we should practice democracy more-or-less everyday. In our schools, in our homes and workplaces. Learn what democracy is composed of, in our own intimate experience, and then we will be more equipped citizens, less naïve, less easy to manipulate by demagogues and propagandists. I imagine children and teachers collaborating to govern their schools. Workers coming together to self-manage their workplaces. Citizens working together with city officials and experts to develop good policy.

Most of all, I imagine what extraordinary breakthroughs we might discover if more of us learned to listen to the people on the opposite side of the political fence. What if we could hear the values and beliefs beneath their position, rather than just dismissing them as stupid or evil?

p.s. this story is licensed with no rights reserved, available for reproduction on my website

p.p.s. you can support me to keep writing with claps, shares, and dollars

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I’ve been wondering about what the spectrum of violence looks like further to the left, before assault, before harassment, before intimidation. What are some small acts of violence that we can detect well before there is physical contact between bodies? Maybe by noticing and changing these small injustices, I’ll be better-positioned to address the big ones.

In many radical communities, “consent” is a focal point for governing the interaction of bodies, especially sexual interactions. Before you touch my body, check what I’m up for and respect my answer. Consent is the antidote to assault.

What happens if we pay attention to consent in situations that have nothing to do with people touching? Could you seek consent before your sound system fills my airspace?

Can we push consent beyond the bounds of human interactions? What would a cow say if I asked for consent to barbecue her?

There are many cases where even the request for consent is harassment. An unwanted sexual advance can severely limit my freedom to participate in a group, especially if the advancing party has more physical or social power than me.

If consent governs physical interactions, what mechanisms can regulate other less intense interactions? When I speak: how can I express myself in a way that respects your subjectivity? What is my posture saying? How can I listen? What can I read from your body language?

How can I own my subjectivity and celebrate yours?

Are there little micro-behaviours, expressions we can practice?

“You should.” → “You could.”

“You’re attractive.” → “I’m attracted to you.”

“Life is like…” → “My experience is like…”

What happens if we extend consent to include many people simultaneously? What can we all agree on? How might we grow that island of agreement to fit more people? Can we make a map of the islands? Can we build bridges between them?

When I was a good patriarchal young man, I always tried to inflict my subjectivity on others. You might have seen the feminist placard, “Objectivity Is Male Subjectivity”.

The collective decision-making process I participated in during the Occupy Movement was a training ground where I learned how to be much more careful about owning my experience without invalidating others. Rather than saying, “People are like…” I learned to say, “My experience is like…”

In many political spaces, we attempt to argue on objective terms: here are the facts, these are the definitions, let me persuade you of their rightness. This is an excellent method for wasting hours of talk with no tangible outcome. But what happens when we stop trying to float above our messy subjectivity and embrace it?

What gets me so excited about collective decision-making is when the process shifts the participants from a purely objective/analytic mode into an affective/relational mode. Instead of competing with facts, we inquire with feelings. Of course facts are important, but it’s much easier for me to hear them when you pay attention to my feelings. When each of us owns our subjectivity without trying to collapse others’, then I can see my place in the spectrum of perspectives. My understanding has grown, without you having had to persuade me of anything.

p.s. if this little article has whet your appetite, I highly recommend this essay by Emmi Bevensee which examines consent and power in much greater detail.

p.p.s. if you want to support my writing, you can throw me a few bucks on Patreon

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Photo by criggchef

The post What comes before consent? appeared first on P2P Foundation.

I had a phone call last night with a friend in Houston. They’re doing emergency relief work in the wake of Hurricane Harvey. In their words, West Street Recovery is:

“a grassroots organization of people from diverse backgrounds, collaborating to leverage our skills and personal networks toward immediate disaster relief. We’re now transitioning to long term building of inter-community solidarity, information sharing, and inter-organizational collaboration with the goal of carrying the lessons learned from this disaster forward to make the communities in this city more prepared and more resilient to face the next inevitable catastrophic event.”

We talked about the excitement and challenges of this transition moment. The organization needs a little structure to get out of emergency mode, and into a form that can support them for the long road ahead.

There’s a lot of goodwill in the group, but right now they’re feeling the pain of doing consensus decision-making using chat + long meetings + a little bit of email. Meetings are overloaded with huge agenda topics. It takes a long time to get people up to speed and make a decision. It’s hard to keep the flow of conversation going between meetings. Important information is lost in the flow of group chat. Where was that insurance form again? Oh yeah, just after the funny picture of a cat…

After the call, I sent through my notes. On reflection, I decided to turn them into a blogpost, as this advice applies equally well to any consensus-oriented organization that is trying to step up from the sprint into a marathon, whether they’re activists, NGOs or startups.

1. Prioritise the vibe!

That means relationships, wellness, care, fun, kindness, peace, healing, trust, solidarity, shared purpose, belonging, harmony. If you are looking after each other, and you’re working on something that feels meaningful, that’s the endgame. Congratulations you win! There’s nowhere better than that.

A foundation of mutual care and trust is the best resource for all your upcoming challenges.

2. Make explicit agreements about how you’re working together.

Make agreements and update them regularly. E.g. at Loomio we have a Retrospective meeting every 2 weeks (what was good, what was bad, what will we do differently next time). Every 2 weeks there is some new process change: we are continuously improving and learning, turning tensions into positive changes. (The Retrospective Wiki has ideas for how to host these meetings.) If you’re systematic about this, you’ll hear frustrations early, while they’re easy to deal with

If you’re looking after #1 and #2, everything else will flow from that. At a guess, these are some of the next issues you’re going to want to address:

3. Distinguish synchronous and asynchronous communication.

By the way, this advice applies to any team feeling the pain of using Slack. 

Synchronous is like “what do you think of this right now”. Usually it happens in a chatroom or around the watercooler. It only makes sense now (not later) to the people who are there (no one else).

Asynchronous is like emails or Loomio threads: organised around a topic instead of a time. They’re slightly more formal, with context-setting (this is what we know), invitation (what do you think?) and explicit conclusions (we decided to do X).

Think about the difference between a meeting transcript (sync), and meeting minutes (async). Your organisational memory is built from minutes, not from transcripts. We need summaries to make sense of the past.

Your group will step up a notch if they can distinguish between these two forms of communication. Use whatever language makes sense in your context (“sync”/“async” is geek-speak), e.g. maybe you could say “chat is for responsiveand email is for reflective communication”.

First get the two concepts clear in the group, then it might make sense to use 2 different tools to sort them out, e.g. let’s do our realtime communication in Slack and our deliberative conversations in Loomio.

4. How to introduce a new communication tool without making things worse.

If you’re going to introduce a new tech tool, be warned: this goes wrong more often than it goes right. Here’s a recipe that can help.

1. Get clear on what problem you’re trying to solve (may help to describe the desired future you’d like to achieve).
2. Give 2-3 people the mandate to research options, gather requirements, and come back with a recommendation.
3. Agree to a time limited trial of the new tool, say 1 or 2 months to give it a fair evaluation.
4. Support people up the learning curve (a stitch in time saves nine).
5. Expect to spend some time reminding the group to build the new habit (‘hey we agreed we’d take these kind of conversations to Loomio…’).
6. At the end of the trial, evaluate: is this better or worse?

5. Agree to a working rhythm and stick to it.

If you’re used to being in ‘always on’ mode, settling into a reliable working rhythm makes the world of difference. E.g. we meet every Thursday. We expect radio silence on Sundays and Mondays. Strategy meetings happen monthly. There’s a daily status report at 10am.

With reliable rhythms, you can get much more efficient about your decision making, with reliable paths for delegation, and clarity about what issues to discuss when.

6. Distinguish tactics from strategy.

It’s hugely inefficient to mix tactics (what are we doing this week) with strategy (what are we doing this year). Both are important. You can settle a lot of unease and complexity by splitting the two categories of conversation into two meetings. This is a lot easier if you have a reliable working rhythm.

7. Practice delegation.

Sooner or later you’re going to want to split up into working groups, sub-teams, committees… some way of dividing the whole group in to subgroups, so not everyone has to be involved in everything. I like Enspiral’s working group template.

People are much more comfortable with delegating decisions, if you have a regular working rhythm. E.g., everyone has their say at the monthly meeting, then the working groups split out, making whatever decisions they need to. You can trust them to report back at the next monthly meeting, and get input before then if necessary.

8. Use advice when you don’t need consensus.

If your relationships are good, you’re in a great spot to try Advice instead of Consensus for some decisions. My understanding of the Advice Process: anyone can make any decision, so long as they are willing to take responsibility for the outcome, and they have first listened to input from anyone who will be affected, or who has relevant expertise.

Notice it says listened to, not agreed with. If your relationships are good, this gives you most of the benefits of consensus, at a fraction of the cost.

This decision-making approach is greatly aided by having some agreed process for dealing with tensions, e.g. regular Retrospective meetings, or Conflict Resolution Process (see Enspiral again for resources).

So that’s it: 8 lightweight structural interventions that I can recommend, based on my work with hundreds of decentralised groups this year. For the most part, I think of this as “organisational scaffolding”: once the building is solid, you can get rid of it. It’s an art and a science to find the minimum structure you need to support your group as it grows out of emergency mode, into the long haul.

Please let me know if it helps!

You can support West Street Recovery’s fundraising here.

If you want to encourage me to keep supporting groups like these and writing about it, you can give me ’s on Medium, or  on Patreon.

This work is in the public domain, so you’re free to use it however you like. You’ll find different formats on my website.

Photo by Jeff Scism

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