M ILDRED GORDON AND KAT KINKADE have each given a good deal of thought to systems of community government and, though agreeing on many issues, differ sharply on the question of strong central decision making. Kat, co-founder of Twin Oaks, East Wind, and Acorn communities, with 23 years of cooperative government in her background and a strong commitment to egalitarian systems, admits to a wistful longing for some aspects of central decision making. Mildred originated Feedback Learning and founded Ganas community. Herself a strong leader, Mildred finds much fault with egalitarianism, but holds that strong central leadership is ineffective in a cooperative community and potentially quite damaging.
Although their debate, or perhaps "Socratic dialogue," took place in various forms, oral and written, over an eight-week period at Ganas, it is presented as one conversation. Part II will follow in the Winter '95/'96 issue.
Kat:I have participated in various kinds of government. At East Wind we had voting democracy; at Twin Oaks the planner system. Acorn uses consensus. I've served on committees, councils, boards, and teams. Throughout the countless meetings I have attended, I notice over and over again that most decisions are made by a very few people, and quite frequently by only one. By this I mean that most of the essential functions in the process either were handled by one person, or could have been. We might have a meeting of six people, four of whom are vocally active and three quite able, but the final decision is frequently the one proposed by a single individual. It will probably be more or less in the form proposed by that person in the first place, and the whole committee will agree that it makes sense. The result is a good decision coming out of a sensible proposal, a discussion, and group agreement. Who could find fault with that?
I can, and I do. I object to the time and energy of the other five people being spent on this meeting. I think they have more useful things to do. I would prefer this: one capable, trusted, sensitive person takes the issue on, researches any technical information needed, publicizes all the relevant information for the whole community, talks to anyone who has input or opinion, makes intelligent guesses at the probable long- and short-run consequences of various decisions that could be made, and then decides. Of course the group would retain the power to overrule.
Mildred:I object to the waste as much as you do. The quality of participation in community dialogues and committee work in general doesn't tend to be great. Yet everybody involved could be uniquely valuable if they knew how. Group interaction is the only way for everyone to assess everyone else's ideas, affect each other's thinking, and arrive at workable compromises in some reasonable time span. Overruling decisions after the work is all done is the real time waster, and it can be disastrous to the process itself and to the whole situation.
Kat: I'm afraid you are right about the overrule; it's a flaw in my suggested system, but let me set it aside for a minute to discuss the core issue.
You are comparing my wise, effective, and good-intentioned one-person committee to a pie-in-the-sky committee of thinking participants that in 26 years of community experience I have never seen an example of. What I see are committees of people who mean well but have little to contribute except pre-formed opinions, if that. Solutions of committee-level decisions are usually pretty obvious, once the facts are in, and we don't need six people to figure that out. I acknowledge that in your dream committee of thinkers, you will get even better decisions than my hypothetical wise person can come up with. Nevertheless, I think my rather drastic, undemocratic approach comes closer to fitting the actual situations in our scattered, poorly-populated, over-extended communities than your exciting dream does. I say, appoint good decision-makers and then get out of their way and let them work.
My theory goes on to say that, given one or two seriously capable people who could handle it, the whole of community government could be efficiently handled by one person or a small committee, using these same guidelines. In my fantasy, I have always thought of this person as a "benevolent dictator."
Mildred:I don't think the word "dictator," benevolent or not, is what we're talking about. Dictators have coercive powers. They not only make decisions but force them on other people, willing or unwilling. Franco was a dictator; he had an army. For our community situations, I think the term "strong central leader" is more appropriate.
Kat: I don't know why people will never let me use those powerful, attention-getting, provocative terms, just because they're not accurate. How are you going to wake up the sleepy reader with a phrase like "strong central leader?" (Sigh.) Well, all right. Have it your way.
Anyway, the essence of my argument is that decision making is a specialty, like auto mechanics, house building, or accounting. Good decisions are important. They affect people who live in the community now and those who will be here in the future; they affect who will be attracted or repelled; they can make or break a community economically. Communities cannot afford very many bad decisions. When groups of people try to decide things together, they settle for any decision that can be agreed upon, and agreement, influenced by undeclared agendas, poorly thought-out ideologies and "isms," and the popularity or unpopularity of the proposers, opposers, or facilitators, is as likely to generate a bad decision as a good one.
Mildred: Much more likely a bad one, I think.
Kat: Good decision making, though it includes agreement seeking, must go beyond it. It requires wisdom. If a group is lucky enough to have a member who has this wisdom and this skill, plus the trust of the community members, it is downright wasteful not to use it.
Mostly, communities don't have anybody who is quite that good and that wholly trusted, so the strong central leader system of government isn't an option for most of us. What is an option is to use the less sweeping wisdom and skill of the people we do have, get out of their way, and let them decide matters within their capabilities and their areas of knowledge. If they decide badly, teach them; if they won't learn, replace them.
Mildred:Who will teach them? How? Replace them with whom? How?
Kat: By the crude methods already in our repertoire. By approval and disapproval, encouragement, adding an "as sis tant" who will tactfully take over, by ouster if necessary. None of this is ideal, but it is no worse than committee decision making and a whole lot less wasteful.
Now I know perfectly well that this "recommendation" of mine will not be accepted by anybody, no matter how persuasively I might present it. I have tried (with no noticeable success) to convince people of much milder, watered down versions of the notion, and I have pretty well memorized the standard replies. I'll briefly summarize them, along with my equally brief counter-arguments:
(1) The central leader might leave or die, and then there would be nobody trained to take on the important leadership functions. I reply: The longevity of groups that follow a charismatic leader is not noticeably shorter than more democratic groups.
(2) Power necessarily and always corrupts. The temptations to the leader to abuse the group's trust are overwhelming. I reply: Power does not always corrupt, only frequently. There are exceptions, and it is the exceptions I am talking about.
(3) The other communitarians would like to have a turn at the interesting business of decision making. I reply: There is only one appropriate motive for the desire to govern, and that is the desire and ability to produce good decisions that are good for the community. The desire to be a governor is early evidence of the tendency to corruption.
(4) If people don't own a decision, they will never be satisfied with it. I reply: Good information-gathering and persuasive political swaps on the part of the leader will leave the people feeling that they "own" the decisions (or at least made a pretty good deal) as much as any other method.
(5) The time invested in group government is not wasted. It pays off in the education and general maturity of the people doing it. I reply: It may, but I wonder about the proportion of education to time spent. Vast amounts of good time are wasted by people who do not use the meeting time to increase their skills but to show off, defeat other people, enjoy the government show, and hang out with "important" people. Some learning does take place, but the cost is too high.
(6) No one person can think of all the options, and someone in the group could have a good idea the leader has not thought of. I reply: This is true, but the idea can easily be communicated to the leader, personally or in writing, during the information gathering stage. I see no necessity to meet in groups for discussion and debate. I am not suggesting that a central leader can be permitted to govern without consulting the community as a whole, but merely that the group does not have to sit around in meetings in order to contribute.
Mildred:You leave out the importance of interaction between the members. We need to know each other's agendas, personal as well as community. Just as important, we need the chance to respond right then, when ideas are in formation.
Kat: Yes, my argument grows weak at this point. I suppose it is because I am so personally irritated by the many people who don't listen to each other anyway that I have come to believe we needn't bother with giving them the opportunity.
But alas! The more I write in defense of the central leader idea, the weaker it seems to me. I can see all kinds of holes in the arguments I just summarized, and as I read them over, I grow uncomfortable at their transparent flaws. Part of my discomfort lies in the fact that the wise, charismatic central leader of my fantasy is largely a creature of my imagination. With the possible (ironic) exception of yourself, Mildred, I have not seen such people in action and cannot personally vouch for their efficacy. I also notice that no community thinker I respect seems to agree with my position. My strong feelings on the subject may be merely my reaction to the bad decision-making I have seen take place in a democratic framework. All that aside, what do you say to my arguments?
Mildred:Of course, my experience of most democratic committee work is similar to yours. Isn't everybody's? I also agree with most of the arguments you cited earlier against rule by centralized leadership, but these are not my most compelling reasons for rejecting it as a method of choice. I am convinced that there is no acceptable replacement for powerful individuals cooperating to share power intelligently and with good will. What's more, I think that it can be done, so of course I believe that we have to learn how to do it.
Probably the most basic disagreement between us is expressed in my conviction that nobody can wisely determine another person's objectives. I think that's a practical consideration, not a moral issue. You simply must consult with the people you're trying to serve often enough to take changes into account. Alone, or in one-to-one encounters, leaders can only guess at what is dynamically going on. Insecurity distorts perceptions too easily. Without information sources that are updated and interactively processed regularly, conclusions are too faulty to become the good decisions that take care of individual desires without sacrificing the long-term good of the group.
Kat: Many community people feel a concern about "power"--who has it, and how much, how it is distributed, and the like. My notions of frank, up-front centralized government seem very dangerous to them. How does your idea of interactive decision-making deal with those concerns?
Mildred:I consider the physics definition of power--the use of energy to move in a determined direction. If we cooperate on what we agree is a desirable direction and on a good way to get there, we create a power gain that increases possibilities for accomplishing anything we decide to do--more power not just for the whole group but also for every individual in it. This option seems at least worth exploring.
When leaders (or followers) manipulate, misinform, or too easily persuade non-thinking members, the short-term effect can often look pretty good. But, long term, the open or hidden coercive influence of either leaders or followers creates a net power loss for everybody. Dictatorial rule is tough, but I find voluntary submission harder to resist, more difficult to overcome, and more controlling than active domination. I consider passivity, rebellious negativity, and indifference born of overcautious security seeking to be the most common destroyers of good governing. The truth is that minority or arbitrary rule, imposed by the strong or the weak, just doesn't work well enough. It clogs the wheels of reason, and nothing moves easily. What's worse, it also hampers possibilities for caring about each other.
Everyone agrees that self-empowerment is the way to go. But can we agree that protective catering to weakness rewards self-disempowerment? Increased personal strength is a do-it-yourself job. Leaders just can't do it for us. Neither can non-coercive disempowerment be imposed for long without the consent and cooperation of the disempowered. Armed subjugation certainly does happen, but Gandhi demonstrated that without the compliance of the oppressed, even guns can't maintain control.
Kat: Wait a minute. Let's make sure we don't fall into the error of basing this discussion on the conventional picture of a dictatorial "leader" who overpowers, manipulates, or perhaps just goes mad. That's too feeble a straw man, easily blown away, and it's not my scenario. My central leader is a good guy.
Mildred:So is mine. But "good guys" can't replace good group interaction as a basic ingredient of good government. The fact is, we don't know how to interact well, and we'll just have to try to learn. There are lots of good reasons for the failures so far.
For example, since we haven't yet learned to dialogue, "good leaders" are usually deprived of intelligent, well-intentioned dissent. In the absence of thoughtful opposition, it is very easy to fall in love with illusions of personal infallibility, invincibility, or even immortality. One's own perception of reality can seem to be all there is. Lack of mental exercise creates a flabbiness that allows such absurdities to seem believable. Flabbiness easily leads to corruption, or just to well-meaning megalomania.
Unchecked authority breeds passive-aggression in devoted followers with alarming consistency. How many adoring, obedient, willing puppets does it take to weaken a leader? How many turn-arounds and backstabbing betrayals (when the leader stumbles a little) before even the best leaders learn to watch their backs, expect the worst, and know that such things go with the territory? How long before reality-based paranoia sets in? These things are just what happens without the safeguard of strong people and good group dialogue. There are simply too many people willing (even eager) to submit without reason or oppose without understanding what they're against. For me it is just too hard to live with the awareness of people surrendering their own adulthood to another--any other--without trying to do something about it. I believe that it is simply not possible to surrender autonomy without creating too much dependence, too much destructive, competitive drive for the leader's approval, together with corresponding terror of disapproval or criticism. Perhaps these perverse things happen because relationships with leaders tend to hark back to the love/hate feelings for parents with whom we all have so much unfinished business. In any event, all this craziness easily frustrates the best-intentioned attempts to exchange the current information on which good problem solving rests.
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