Arguments to refute hierarchy?

[JudasMaiden]

When I tell my history teacher or my mom about Anarchism, my mom says that without a leader that people will be violent savages and my history teacher says that someone will always rise to power in a non-hierarchical society.

Are there any arguments, writings, etc that can refute these arguments?

[Sinister Intents]

When I tell my history teacher or my mom about Anarchism, my mom says that without a leader that people will be violent savages and my history teacher says that someone will always rise to power in a non-hierarchical society.

Are there any arguments, writings, etc that can refute these arguments?

You could bring up that the state is a construction that has only existed for so long in recent history. I think Kropotkin's The State: It’s Historic Role (https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/kropotkin-peter/1896/state/index.htm) will help out with this, you could bring up 'primitive' communist societies, also bring up the problems that arise from the creation of hierarchies, like sexism and racism. There are many things and I may be a bit too drunk to be heplful at the moment

[helot]

When I tell my history teacher or my mom about Anarchism, my mom says that without a leader that people will be violent savagesIt's a shit argument that can easily be turned around. Id explore that by trying to get the person to either abandon the claim or state clearly that it's because of the existence of a president, bosses etc that she doesn't go around killing innocent people. I'd imagine she'd be insulted by it.

Also, capitalist society seems pretty fucking savage to me. People starve to death, are brutally murdered on a massive scale etc etc all for the benefit of 'our' political and economic leaders. I don't think this scale of savagery could exist without states.





and my history teacher says that someone will always rise to power in a non-hierarchical society.


The real issue here is how best to arrange social conditions so as to suppress would-be oppressors. However, i don't think this is what your history teacher cares to explore instead i think they just want to shut down debate.


What you should be asking when faced with this claim is "how?". There would be no economic basis as we're supposing a classless society. Every form of such political power presupposes a particular form of human slavery for the preservation of which it's called into being. Without a form of human slavery how can this political power exist? It would necessitate a recreation of exploitation, a recreation of class society. The vast bulk of the population would have to be dispossessed for this to occur and this could only occur through mass violence. It would be a massive undertaking far more difficult than abolishing capitalism as its structure would have no inherent class antagonisms to take advantage of.

[The Feral Underclass]

When I tell my history teacher or my mom about Anarchism, my mom says that without a leader that people will be violent savages and my history teacher says that someone will always rise to power in a non-hierarchical society.

Are there any arguments, writings, etc that can refute these arguments?

The problem with these arguments is that they very rarely come from a position of knowledge, but rather positions of instinct. The statement "someone will always rise to power" is predicated on what, exactly? It's a cop-out thing to say and is usually based on the fact that people are stuck within a bourgeois paradigm. What I mean by that is people can only think within the specific parameters of bourgeois ideology.

Since production is controlled by a minority, an ideology has arisen to justify and legitimate that reality. Greed, selfishness, hierarchy etc are all ideas that reaffirm that social relationship (capital) and in turn provide a 'reality' by which people understand the world. So, in a capitalist society where conformity, individual pursuit, ambition, wealth and power are lauded as moral and virtuous traits, backed up by prevailing ideology, it is difficult for people to see beyond that, since to see beyond it would be to see beyond reality, a serious and frightening prospect. Most people don't like to non-conform.

Ultimately there is no real argument against positions like this and to change people's minds and perceptions you usually need to show it action, so that people can see tangibly that these beliefs are just phantoms. Until they are confronted with it there is probably little you can do.

This is all frustrated by the fact that as teachers and parents they are in positions of hierarchy, which within this bourgeois paradigm confirms for them the position of arbiters of reality -- in fact they haven't got a clue what they're talking about.

[ckaihatsu]

[W]ithout a leader [...] people will be violent savages


I'd say that both savagery and leadership result from a scarcity of *politics* / political involvement, or the lack of access to personal empowerment through societal channels.

Both cases are simply *strategies* from the standpoint of the individual -- "I'll blindly follow the counsel of a leader because they know more and better than I do", or "I'll fuck over the person next to me because that's the best option I have at the moment."

Note that -- just on this one RevLeft discussion board -- people are continually *interacting* and putting-forth their own reasoning in relation to others and to larger world events -- and without even necessarily *knowing* that person in the conventional in-person, face-to-face way. This, itself, shows *exactly* how people / anyone can transcend the constraints of dependence on a leader and/or using physical one-upmanship, to get what they want.

Unfortunately *not enough* people are political-enough in their daily lives for the world to reach a 'critical mass' of societal-based self-empowerment. All sorts of bullshit mindsets and worldviews continue to be the norm and are distractions away from a true global cooperation and coordination.





[S]omeone will always rise to power in a non-hierarchical society


Again this begs the question of *empowerment* -- are people competitive (or cooperative) for *its own sake*, or are these simply means to a certain kind of 'ends' -- ?

If a non-hierarchical society emerges -- by whatever means -- and it happens to effect fulfillment and satisfaction for the billions on this planet, what *need* would exist for power or leadership -- ? In such a social context those who would go through the displays of 'providing leadership' or 'exercising power' would just look strange, as though they were under some misconception or were performing something artistic, perhaps.

Self-empowerment is our birthright, and we exercise it to greater or lesser extents on a daily basis, anyway, in the world as it is, and hopefully on a much higher level once the world is rid of exploitation and oppression once and for all.

[Comrade #138672]

You could also say that there are many different forms of "hierarchy". So, what kind of "hierarchy" are they talking about? Ask them this. Surely there will always be some kind of "hierarchy", but that is completely meaningless to say, since it can literally mean anything. They need to be more specific about what kind of hierarchy they are talking about, otherwise we are only dealing with meaningless abstractions, completely isolated from reality.

Ask them why there should be a "hierarchy" based on socio-economic class. Why should there be capitalists and workers, when this clearly only benefits a few capitalists at the expense of so many workers? Many people die of hunger alone every day, as a direct result of this "hierarchy". Millions and millions of people have died because of wars, which were never more than capitalists fighting over a piece of the pie, who desperately wanted to maintain their petty "hierarchies", at the cost of so many lives (but never their own). How did (and does) this "hierarchy" work out for the victims? Is this not the ultimate savagery?

By the way, people have not always lived in a class-based hierarchy, so it has nothing to do with "human nature", which is what many of these pro-"hierarchy" advocates do seem to suggest.

Our capitalist rulers have proved themselves to be incapable of running society any longer. Why do we not get rid of them and manage society ourselves? In the worst case, perhaps a different (softer) "hierarchy" could emerge, but it would be based on scientific knowledge and true democracy rather than exploitation and blind profit gains. Surely we can do better than this.

[Criminalize Heterosexuality]

State societies are a fairly recent phenomenon. So obviously the notion that state hierarchy is necessary for a functional society is simply not correct. Nonetheless, this argument is weak, since pre-state societies can not offer the sort of life we have grown accustomed to.

In any case, the serious explanation is that class hierarchies are simply not necessary at this point. Public and economic administration can be done by anyone who knows simple arithmetic, writing, and using certain very simple machines - the overwhelming majority of people. And the anarchic, market nature of the capitalist mode of production holds back the further development of the productive capacities worldwide.

For a "quick" rebuttal, not really grounded in Marxist theory, simply point out that their claims about hierarchies being necessary are positive claims they will have to prove if they want to be taken seriously, and that obviously the abolishment of slavery, guilds, feudal relations etc. did not cause a social breakdown, or result in the rise of new slaveowners, guild masters, landowning nobles etc. etc.

[Full Metal Bolshevik]

Aren't there studies on the issue?

Specially with kids, since they lack the knowledge, so it'd be more intuitive. I'd like to know if you put a bunch of them together with a few stuff to do, how would they get organized.

Also cool would be give randomly to 10% money and power (or something representing it) and the rest nothing and they'd have to work for the 10%, and then switch systems. In the end they'd say what system they liked the most. Though, it seems too obvious which one they'd pick.

I simply love this types of research, sometimes they lack deepness, but I'm always interested in reading studies.