The discussion with Mirko Canevaro and Greg Yudin about David Graeber’s essay took place on the 5th of December 2024. We would like to share the recording and our thoughts in this post.

Consensus is possible when people can just walk away from the assembly, if they do not like the decisions, that were made.

Majority decision-making becomes necessary when people have to agree on something that requires the use of violence, such as war, tax collection, imprisonment. In such cases, the majority can force the minority to do as they told.

The Greek polis was a patriarchal, slave-owning society which was constantly at war with its neighbours. As Sergey Averentsev wrote in his book Fascinating Greece, the poleis were constantly at war with each other, seizing slaves and land, and would only pause from such conflicts for the harvests.

In such a society, majority voting is a necessity. But do we really want to live in such a society?

We plan to hold a follow-up session of this meeting due to the large number of responses and positive feedback to the first one. The questions of what democracy actually is and how to build a real democratic model are topic that are very relevant to many of us.

If you would like to join the Zoom meeting, you can register at this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/k3eowtklTGmyzTrxOYt0PA