"The only conceivable way to bring about "consensus" is to purge, through force, those that refuse to toe the line"
actually its through debate until a conclusion is reached. If a conclusion can not be reached the people simply stop interacting. If you look at examples from tribes in africa there was far less violence than we have today under capitalism
And much smaller societies, but I agree that consensus is more easily reached in smaller groups. I believe the magic number is around 200.
society itself can easily be built of smaller groups