I originally wrote this in October 2021, but I never posted it for some reason. I think it still generally holds up, so I’m posting it now.

Here’s a relatively common pitfall in contemporary left organizing that I wish more leftists were fluent at discussing. This is a description of what can happen + an analysis for how to avoid the pitfall.

1) It takes a lot of initial effort in left orgs to set up effective & robustly democratic decision-making structures.

2a) So either we have an unstructured org, or

2b) To muster that initial effort, we concentrate decision-making power to a relatively small coordinating cadre.

3) That group/cadre from (2b) might decide that it's best for them to continue having some significant influence over decision-making, for as long as the whole org/group is still in the process of learning how to engage in good democratic procedures.

4) If someone disagrees with this influential cadre, the cadre may decide to use their political power in the org to shut down the dissent, or to expel the member. It's justified by saying that they are a bad example of how to participate within the group's democratic process.

For example, the cadre may believe the person's proposals are existential threats to the project, 'So stop trying to argue in favor of it.' Or, the person might not phrase their criticism with the perfect wording, and be criticized for 'rehashing bourgeois narratives.' If the dissenter thinks they have been misunderstood and tries to explain further, the conversation may be tabled for 'threatening group unity.' Pushing for the issue via non-institutional means is seen as undermining the democratic procedure, and grounds for expulsion.

It's almost always technically a procedural criticism of the person's behaviors, but the cadre are the ones who define/enforce the procedures (as is evident from the previous paragraph). The cadre may also view a potential threat to their influence as an existential threat to the group—b/c of their stated goal in 2b).

5a) Often, the cadre is right that the person is proposing something bad. Sometimes, they will be right that the person should be expelled from the org. But other times, the person might be proposing something good, but which just-so-happens to challenge the cadre's influence.

5b) Sometimes a proposal can be a good criticism of the cadre. The problem is, because of their outsized coordinating power in the group—in practice—the cadre ends up deciding which criticisms of them are valid. Sometimes they will accept the criticism, sometimes they won't.

6) The cadre often thinks that their decisions are correct, so they protect their political/coordinating power within the group—at the expense of decision making effectiveness. The organizing project now lives/dies on the effectiveness of the decisions by the cadre's technocrats.

—

Properly inclusive and deliberative democratic structures (with majority-rule tiebreaks when there isn't consensus) are effective for decision making. Something like it was our aim in (1).

Where did we go wrong?

I think our problem is early on, in (3). The cadre does not trust democracy enough. In democracies, sometimes we get our way, and sometimes we don't. This is normal and good! Sometimes we are wrong, and others see how we are wrong—democracy corrects for those things.

A properly inclusive and deliberative structure is an effective way of making decisions. People fill in each other's blindspots. As time goes on, the group will eventually come to a situation where the cadre are wrong because all the cadre members just so happen to share the same blindspot.

But if the cadre is also unwilling to admit that they are wrong, then they have the political power within the org to subvert the democratic procedures and get their way. And they have a ready-made justification for their actions: "We were given power in this group to create a good democracy, free of capitalist bullshit! No true democracy would disagree with us on this issue, in this way. This is the exact sort of case where we are supposed to use our power!"

It’s unfortunate stuff! We can't merely depend on demands on the cadre to be active listeners and more willing to entertain criticism—we need a structural fix. There needs to be a real institutional way to resolve disagreements between the cadre and the people, not a process that merely relies on the goodwill and diligence of the revolutionary cadre of vanguards.

Here's a potential fix:

To learn how to be good democratic participants, people need experience in inclusive, deliberative decision-making.

As individuals, people can hold shitty views. But as a group in inclusive deliberation, we fill in each other's blindspots, and the shitty views get filtered out.

The cadre can help set up inclusive deliberative contexts. They can fill in any additional blindspots, including by providing an anti-capitalist narrative, or by suggesting strategies/tactics that people might not know. But they should be equals in the deliberation.

Even if the deliberative process ends up making a bad decision which the cadre is against, it can help people to develop as revolutionary subjects. Early on, the cadre can say what problems they anticipate to occur out of a decision that they disagree with. If those problems arise in practice, then people should be more ready to listen to the cadre’s analysis. If the problems don’t end up occurring, then, hey, that’s probably a good thing! And the cadre should probably use the chance to update their analysis.

(Note that the cadre would themselves also make occasional mistakes. In general, the fact that deliberative democracies can make mistakes is not a damning fact about deliberative democracy.)

Anyways, check out Helene Landemore's 'Democratic Reason' for a rigorous analysis of how 'inclusive deliberation with a tiebreak of majority rule' is effective for decision-making. That's been a sort-of guiding star for me while thinking through issues of democracy / leadership.