Misuse Case
“Hierarchies are bad and we shouldn’t have them” or “we don’t have a hierarchy/pecking order in our group/organization” makes me uncomfortable TBH because humans are social animals and when you get a certain number of social animals together a hierarchy *always* emerges.
So the idea of, say, a totally non-hierarchical system of governance or project team or something like that feels very “lies neurotypical people tell me.”
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Misuse Case
Look the way I see it, in a system of governance there is either going to be an explicitly defined hierarchy with clear roles, chains of command, and (hopefully) mechanisms of accountability, or there’s going to ne something that everyone *says* is a flat structure where everyone’s equal but is really a hidden hierarchy with unspoken rules and not only does my ADHD ass hate that kind of thing, it’s a recipe for abuse and dysfunction.
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Joseph Riparian 🏳️⚧️
@MisuseCase I agree with you, and you said it so well.
I am the head of the pack (in my polycule/family). If we're buying a house I choose it. If we're getting dinner I get first pick. We didn't sit down and agree to it, the hierarchy emerged. We're disgustingly happy in it, so idk what to tell people who believe otherwise. Acknowledging where we actually stand, and how we actually use our relational power, made things Just Work in a way that trying to let my Gen X husband have seniority and be "head of household" never did.
HeavenlyPossum
This misconstrues the anarchist critique of authority. Voluntarily adopted roles and unenforceable decisions do not constitute hierarchy in the sense of *rule.* People taking on specified roles is more of an issue of taxonomy than of hierarchy, although we tend to colloquially use the latter term for both.
Misuse Case
Hierarchy is not necessarily bad, a clear hierarchy is in fact good, and in situations where the group needs a quick decision it’s vital to have a designated person “in charge.”
POWER IMBALANCES and lack of accountability are bad.
/end
Adrian Riskin 🇵🇸🍉
@HeavenlyPossum @holyramenempire @MisuseCase Exactly. This whole conversation is based on the blurring of the difference between voluntarily adopted hierarchical social forms, e.g. the pirate ship, and hierarchical social forms that require the massive application of violence and the threat of violence to maintain their day-to-day survival. If people aren't naturally anarchists why does the ruling class require so many cops and soldiers to prevent anarchy from thriving?
Misuse Case
@RD4Anarchy That’s just one example of a hierarchical structure where someone in a leadership position could be elected by popular vote and easily deposed. A lot of Native American societies also did this for band leadership.
Some Greek city-states also did it on an emergency basis.
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RD
Arrr, but I'm not sure what pirate ships are a model of other than pirate ships. I'm not aspiring to be aboard a pirate ship myself, nor do I personally see a reason that we should be modelling anything on pirate ships, notwithstanding whatever valid lessons they might nevertheless have to offer.
RD
Hierarchy (if we're talking about actual power structures, not just forms of organizing that might assign roles or something like that) inherently *is* power imbalance, isn't it?
I don't think hierarchical power structures can be redeemed by slapping accountability on them, at least that's been my experience. Besides, to implement accountability you either negate the "quick decision" argument for needing hierarchy in the first place, or you actually show that quick decisions can be made without hierarchy anyway.
Misuse Case
@RD4Anarchy No.
You had for example the model of pirate ships, which were definitely hierarchical in that they had captains…but the captains were elected by the crew. If the crew didn’t like the job the captain was doing, they’d depose him and elect a different captain.
Contrast with for example British naval vessels, which also had captains, but the crew had no say over the captain or how he managed the ship and crew.
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RD
Your experience can be valid, but at the same time not an argument for accepting hierarchy, right?
Misuse Case
@RD4Anarchy I mean, as with many Things, there are right ways and wrong ways to do The Thing, and they may vary by situation.
I’m thinking back to THE DISPOSSESSED and how even the anarcho-syndicalist society in it had hierarchies in fact even though it wasn’t supposed to in principle, and was developing some problems because nobody would acknowledge that such a thing was going on.
Misuse Case
@RD4Anarchy Anarchist groups have a hierarchy too it’s just not formal/official/acknowledged and this, again, is why I am not comfortable with “we don’t have a hierarchy” and it feels like “lies neurotypical people tell me.”
RD
>>We don’t really have any concept in our popular awareness of hierarchical structures of government which were either situational or where recall was really easy and power was only concentrated as long as everyone else wanted it to be...<<
That's because our popular awareness has been overwhelmingly influenced by the hierarchical power structures that wrote history.
>>...which is why a lot of people think it’s a binary between “hierarchy” or “no hierarchy” as opposed to a continuum or something with a lot of different options.<<
By "a lot of people" I think you mean most anarchists, not people in general (who mostly have no clue). As a student of anarchism I do think there is a pretty clear line between “hierarchy” or “no hierarchy”, it is not a spectrum.
Misuse Case
@RD4Anarchy We don’t really have any concept in our popular awareness of hierarchical structures of government which were either situational or where recall was really easy and power was only concentrated as long as everyone else wanted it to be, which is why a lot of people think it’s a binary between “hierarchy” or “no hierarchy” as opposed to a continuum or something with a lot of different options.
/end
Misuse Case
@RD4Anarchy At the conclusion of the six-month term, the demos (the voting body of city) might re-elect the Tyrant or elect a different one if the emergency was ongoing.
If it was over, they might let his term expire.
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Misuse Case
@RD4Anarchy They aren’t perfect examples because only a subset of the city’s population (free, property-owning males) was enfranchised, but they didn’t have a representative democracy, they had a direct democracy.
When there was a war or something, Athens would elect a Tyrant who served for a six-month term and had certain extraordinary powers.
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RD
I know who wrote it, I've seen it referenced by many people of anarchist inclination and it's been on my list to read for a long time.
So what? I don't have to have read it to know that I can't take it as some sort of evidence or authority about the supposed inevitable hierarchical nature of human beings.
Misuse Case
@RD4Anarchy One of the things it’s about is how even in the material conditions of an anarchist society, very few people are by nature anarchists, and there’s no such thing as a utopia.
Misuse Case
@RD4Anarchy It’s one of Ursula K. Leguin’s most famous books and that’s definitely not what it’s about.
RD
I haven't read that book yet but perhaps the point was that we need to be ever vigilant to prevent the seeds of hierarchy from sprouting 🤷♂️
HeavenlyPossum
Anarchism does not object to voluntary and consensual relationships that lack mechanisms of enforcement.
Misuse Case
@rad @HeavenlyPossum @RD4Anarchy And it’s not necessarily bad that they will pay attention to particular people or that particular people may give directions, maybe there’s a good reason for that.
But they should be honest about it. “When we have x kind of situation, we appoint someone to fill y role” or “we let Sharon be in charge because she knows the most about X.”
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Misuse Case
@rad @HeavenlyPossum @RD4Anarchy Sure. But even that society is going to have particular people they pay more attention to/take more direction from when they have a particular problem from or need to do something…*whatever they say their decision making processes are in situations like those.*
That’s where the invisible hierarchy thing comes out.
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schtschur 🍉 2 by 2 and back again
@MisuseCase @HeavenlyPossum @RD4Anarchy
Okay. She's just a human, though. No system is perfect and that's correct, but I'd take the one based on mutual aid rather than coercion any day.
Misuse Case
@rad @HeavenlyPossum @RD4Anarchy LeGuin clearly thought the anarchist society she wrote about was the best of the societies featured in her book, but was also clear that it had flaws and problems. She didn’t mean “anarchism is utopian” but “there is no society without problems” and said that even the anarchist society isn’t a utopia, she doesn’t believe in them.
HeavenlyPossum
There is, of course, an enormous world of difference between the sort of management or leadership role someone might adopt voluntarily, with the revocable consent of their peers, with no enforcement mechanism—like a sports team captain—and the hierarchy (literally: “rule by the sacred priests”) to which anarchists object.
Most critiques of anarchism as utopian assume that anarchists believe anarchism is “self-sustaining” or operates out of some intrinsic sense of altruism. In reality, egalitarianism, just like hierarchy, is a social choice that requires constant work to sustain.
schtschur 🍉 2 by 2 and back again
@HeavenlyPossum @RD4Anarchy @MisuseCase
Precisely that.
schtschur 🍉 2 by 2 and back again
I'd say it's exactly the opposite. People generally like doing things on their own and be accountable to themselves. Nobody likes being bossed around. People accept hierarchies out of necessity.
And what @HeavenlyPossum has said, I agree. No such thing as Utopia but anarchism is not utopian.
Especially since there's a whole lot of variety to it.
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