Hierarchy Argument

[Diirez]

How do you respond to the argument that people naturally create heirarchies? Like almost every socoety, religion and community all have created some form of hierarchy so how do you respond to the argument that it's something humans naturally want and create?

[RedKobra]

I don't know if they ALL have. I think its fair bet the vast majority formed under Capitalism have had hierarchies because Capitalism entails and engenders the division of labour and corporate structure.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Communists oppose class society and political authority, not some abstract "hierarchy". Obviously there are situation in which a hierarchical division of labour arises out of necessity. If someone's apartment is burning down, it is useful to have someone to coordinate the attempts to put out the fire, save the valuables and, no, Geoff, leave those Lenin posters for now, saving Nan is more important.

And obviously, people have not always lived in class society, and they did not always live under some form of political authority. Even if they did, to deduce from that that classes and political authority are "natural" (I can think of very few uses of the word "natural") and inevitable and whatever is ridiculous. People always stayed on Earth... until the first manned spaceflight. And so on.

[tuwix]

How do you respond to the argument that people naturally create heirarchies? Like almost every socoety, religion and community all have created some form of hierarchy so how do you respond to the argument that it's something humans naturally want and create?

People don't naturally create a hierarchy. Hierarchy is always created by force and some violence. The primitive communism bands don't have hierarchy. There is a leader usually the oldest one but he is primus inter pares that is first between equals. The hierarchy begins when someone tries to impose his decisions on others. It starts in modern family where usually father (but sometimes mother too) impose on children his/her views and opinions. Learned in home a pattern of hierarchy in family is then reiterated in other social relations. But it's learned pattern that is not natural. It's not natural because the primitive people living in nature don't have hierarchy.

[ckaihatsu]

How do you respond to the argument that people naturally create heirarchies? Like almost every socoety, religion and community all have created some form of hierarchy so how do you respond to the argument that it's something humans naturally want and create?


Just don't do it.


-- Or --


"Hey, how about let's not do that."


See this post for a methodology:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2813618&postcount=40

[Redistribute the Rep]

For one, class society has only existed since about 8000 years ago. I suppose one could say that even though it's fairly recent it's still 'natural,' but these appeals to nature are just silly. Isn't it also 'natural' for us to run around naked and shit anywhere we want? We usually frown upon such behavior though...

[Ilstar]

What about a dialectical hierarchy not concerned with political classes? Can't it be natural?

[ckaihatsu]

What about a dialectical hierarchy not concerned with political classes? Can't it be natural?


As others have noted the *only* reasonable argument *for* hierarchy is *expediency*, and nothing else. And, our present-day communications technologies only means that there are no *logistical* impediments to a sheerly flat-form arrangement of participants for any given political matter, for collective decision-making.

If people can take the time to familiarize themselves with the issues of the day at-hand, to compare their own stances with the array of candidates to choose from for representation on those issues, then people can certainly *dispense* with the delegation step altogether and simply represent *their own* viewpoints in the collective political arena, thanks to the Internet.





4. Ends -- Flat, all-inclusive mode of participation at all levels without delegated representatives

[In] this day and age of fluid digital-based communications, we may want to dispense with formalized representative personages altogether and just conceptualize a productive entity within a supply chain network as having 'external business' or 'external matters' to include in its regular routine of entity-collective co-administration among its participants.

Given that people make *points* on any of a number of *issues*, which may comprise some larger *topics* -- and these fall into some general *themes*, or *categories* -- wouldn't this very discussion-board format of RevLeft be altogether suitable for a massively parallel (ground-level) political participation among all those concerned, particularly workers, for *all scales* of political implementation -- ?

I think there's conventionally been a kind of lingering anxiety over the political "workload" that would confront any regular person who would work *and* wish to have active, impacting participation in real-world policy, along the lines of the examples you've provided for this thread's discussion.

But I'll note that, for any given concrete issue, not everyone would *necessarily* find the material need to individually weigh in with a distinct proposal of their own -- as I think we've seen here from our own regular participation at RevLeft, it's often the case that a simple press of the 'Thanks' button is all that's needed in many cases where a comrade has *already* put forth the words that we would have said ourselves, thereby relieving us from the task of writing that sentiment ourselves.

Would concrete issues at higher, more-generalized levels be so different, so inaccessible to the regular, affected person on the ground? Wouldn't the information gathered within such an appropriate thread of discussion "clue everyone in" as the overall situation at that level -- say, from the participants of several different countries -- ?

I'll ask if delegated representatives *are* really required anymore when our current political vehicle, the Internet-based discussion board, can facilitate massively participatory, though orderly and topic-specific conversations, across all ranges of geography and scales of populations.




tinyurl.com/ckaihatsu-concise-communism