Why is Hierarchy Wrong?

[berlitz23]

Interested in your two cents on Hierarchy

[NecroCommie]

From pure philosophical point of view, hierarchy encourages authority arguments, which are the cesspool of all arguments. Or as I like to say "the argument of a man with no arguments"

[Muzk]

It promotes social darwinism based on ones hierarchical standing... and, starting from this, unless you have a perfect educational system, comes racism, sexism, all the wrongs of society, simply because people are not equal, but divided into classes.

We are all part of a society, everyone does his part. Some right liberals comparing us to a pack of wolves, lions or whatever and this way excusing hierarchy, racism and the like, is something we'll have to fight too. Till there are no more supporters of unequality and injustice left, our struggle will go on, without mercy, for we are the ones to abolish all the class relationships that divide us people into different groups;)

[Guerrilla22]

Why is inequality wrong? That is your answer.

[revolution inaction]

Interested in your two cents on Hierarchy

Hierarchy is not always bad, i'm glad my computer has a hierarchical file system for example, but social hierarchy is harmful because people having power over others and inequality.

[Tyrlop]

A functional organ needs a good hierachy. A strong party with many members to lift up one person who can speak for them, not allways everyone has to contribute, one man can not win the war with his rifle. but "the paper and pen is the strongest weapon of the party" - Joe S.

[RedAnarchist]

There's nothing wrong with social hierarchy if you're at the top (or at least not at the bottom). Most social hierarchies are often based on certain facts that people can rarely or never change - for instance, in many countries, the whiter you are, the higher up the hierarchy you are (and in some of those countries, money can make you whiter in the eyes of society). The bourgeois/white/straight man is always above the proletarian/black/gay man, and the proletarian man is always above the proletarian woman.

A truly equal society would be horizontal with no social hierarchy in place, and this cannot happen without throwing out the capitalist system and abolishing the artificial nations that we are divided into.

[lines]

Hierarchy in capitalist societies are exploitative and people on the bottom are treated badly. Hierarchies in communist societies are not exploitative and they are not envisioned in a top-down sense. In communist societies the strong help the weak. There needs to be a sort of hierarchy where there is division of labor... different people are good at different things. But this division of labor does not necessarily mean some people are better than others. But it does mean that some people are better than others at doing certain jobs.

[Comrade Anarchist]

Hierarchy is wrong b/c it means those at the bottom have to listen and obey those at the top. The individual's right to think and act for himself is taken away which is oppression. The individual can never grow unless all hierarchies are done away with b/c those at the bottom obviously do not benefit and do not think for themselves.

[Drace]

It encourages class domination.
The higher classes pursue their own interests, which always conflicts with that of the lower classes who make up the majority of the population.

[Chambered Word]

Self-explanatory. If you think you have the right to control another human being's life, you shouldn't be here.

[rebelmouse]

hierarchy is against human dignity. therefore young people are in conflict with (grand)parents, pupils with teachers, worker with chef, people with authorities, women with men and sometimes men with women, and so on and so on...
so, as we see, 100 million problems in society because of hierarchy.

[Antiks72]

Interested in your two cents on Hierarchy

No. Bosses are just a fact of life. As much as we don't like them, you have to someone in charge. The problem comes in when those with authority get the perks that the rest of us don't.

[Technocrat]

Given any random task to perform and two randomly selected people to perform that task, what are the chances that they will have equal skill for the task? Slim to none. This is even more true of an Industrialized society. Natural priority relationships exist among any group of workers and are even observable in lower level animals (peck rights). These natural priority relationships must be allowed to establish themselves for society to function. This isn't exploitation, it's almost an unspoken agreement among the workers - it just happens naturally. We don't allow these priority relationships to exist in capitalism because people can buy their way to the top without having the skills necessary to be there. Then the use of authority backed up with the threat of force is used to defend their position. If you removed these external controls and allowed the natural priority relationships to establish themselves, you would find that such incompetents would be hastily removed from their ill-gotten position.

[syndicat]

What skills people are likely to have is not something one could predict without looking at the prevailing mode of production. The logic of capitalism leads to Taylorist practices of work re-organization to reduce required skill levels, and create de-skilled jobs. Doing so isn't some "law of nature" but happens for two reasons: (1) it reduces labor expenses, and (2) it emplowers the bureaucratic class who directly manage production under corporate capitalism.

If firms were to try to ensure that each person has some skill and expertise, this would require expensive training programs. And this education would be a public good. Employees could take their skills and move over to the competition. And thus the firm would have trained the workforce of its competitors.

Since there is no systematic social program to ensure that people all have skills and their potential is developed, skills needed by firms are often scarce. Hence expensive. So reducing the requirement for them reduces labor expenses.

Finally, when people have expertise they have a certain leverage and it can enable them to disrupt production if they have a struggle with management. On the other hand, reducing required skill levels makes people more dispensable and thus strengthens management's hand.

Within corporate capitalism there are two sources of class division, and thus of class hierarchy:

1. a relative monopoly over the ownership of productive property (land, buildings, equipment, software, etc)

2. a relative monopoly over decision-making authority and key forms of expertise critical to the planning and control of enterprises.

Liberation of the working class from their subordinate and exploited condition would presuppose doing away with both forms of hierarchy. The problem with the socalled Communist countries is that they did away with the first but not the second.