TL;DR: Is it possible to define hierarchy, as a useful term for communication and association between anarchists? If so, what are some of those definitions?
There are many different strains of anarchism, and specially since anarchists mostly believe in decentralization, I feel like many of our efforts go diluted for lack of collective organization. Sure, there are big anarchist collectives doing work out there, but I have the sensation that most youth or influential people who identify themselves with anarchist causes get lost in the plot simply for lack of a bigger movement. For most of the modes of anarchism there is one big bad evil guy, commonly named “hierarchy”; although writers and academics define those terms in their publications, I can’t help but notice, at least in the forums I’ve been around, your average anarchists could be talking about two completely different concepts of hierarchy or oppression. Maybe if we had agreed upon definitions to those hot topics it would be easier to associate. Is that even possible? That we all agree on the same meaning for a word? Do we call Chomsky to solve this linguistical issue?
Or am I completely wrong in my questionings?
You must log in or # to comment.
It is tricky to do this in a way that allows for complex coordination at scale while avoiding the oppressive properties of systems which we would all recognize as undesirable. The concept that is required in order to properly navigate this is ‘coercive control’.
Hierarchy happens when some people are ‘above’ others, or, in other words, can make decisions for other people and enforce them without their consent. This is coercive control. This is the situation that we want to avoid.
At the same time, the collective does have to be able to enforce rules, so some degree of coercion must be allowed in order to avoid a sort of paradox-of-tolerance situation. To resolve this apparent contradiction, we introduce the notion of a ‘social contract’. To be a part of an anarchist organization would require that a person agree to a social contract. As long as the person upholds the social contract, they cannot otherwise be coerced, as that would be a violation of anarchist principles, and could result in oppressive behavior. (Note: For this to be self-consistent, coercion has to be outlawed as part of said social contract.) If a person breaks the social contract, then they are also no longer protected by it, and can be coerced by the group to leave or such.
The social contract bit is sort of an aside to the original question, but I think people get confused by what is and isn’t hierarchy because they understand the first part in some way, even if they don’t have the words for it, but then they don’t know how to solve the obvious problem of enforcing rules so that people’s freedoms can actually be protected in practice.
Centralization doesn’t necessarily imply hierarchy, as, given an undirected acyclic graph, you can pick any node to be the ‘root’ and end up with a valid ‘tree’ - the structure that most people would visualize when they hear the word ‘hierarchy’. Of course, we would prefer to not pick any node as the root, as the hierarchical structure implied by such a distinction shouldn’t be necessary for the collective to reap the benefits of such centralization. There is a whole discussion that could be had about how to actually implement centralization without falling into various traps, but that isn’t really what the question in the OP is about. I simply bring it up because some people confuse centralization for hierarchy, and end up shooting themselves in the foot for doing so.
All you said is valid, none of it answers my question. Except for maybe “It is tricky […]”, but that’s not much help on it’s own. Yes, it is tricky, do you think it is possible? If so, why and how? What would be a good standard definition?
Hierarchy happens when some people are ‘above’ others, or, in other words, can make decisions for other people and enforce them without their consent.
I intended for this to basically be the definition, but I can try to rephrase to make it clearer.
‘Hierarchy’ is any social structure or relationship where someone has coercive power over another person, and where that coercive power is a normalized part of the structure or relationship. This normalization could be a social contract or the result of patterns of abusive behavior, it doesn’t really matter exactly how it happens. It’s just important to distinguish between coercion that happens because someone is breaking the rules and coercion that happens even when nobody is breaking any rules. It is the latter that forms a power dynamic between individuals or groups, and it is these power dynamics that hierarchies are made of.
I hope that clears things up.
So hierarchies as social structures that affect relationships, where there is a power imbalance between entities that allows for constant coercion? I’d say that’s a pretty solid definition for a casual conversation. Do you think it is possible to popularize such definitions, or do you think this is not the problem we’re facing as a community, but rather the other confusions you pointed out?
I think it would be a very good idea to make the link between the notion of ‘hierarchy’ as anarchists like to think of it and coercion a part of common knowledge, both inside and outside of the anarchist community. I think everybody being on the same page with terminology would help clear up a lot of miscommunication about anarchism.
I don’t think that this is the primary problem that we’re facing, though. I think that part of the reason that it is difficult to pin down a definition of ‘hierarchy’ that everybody agrees upon is because there are some ‘anarchists’ that don’t actually want anarchism, but instead want a lack of personal accountability - in other words, the freedom to do whatever they want to whomever they want without consequences. If you frame this in terms of ‘personal freedom for everybody’, it sort of sounds like anarchism, but because it emphasizes positive freedoms to the point of discarding negative freedoms almost entirely, it actually ends up being a self-contradictory position where bullies have power because they’re willing to penalize their victims into submission, and there are no collectively-enforced consequences for engaging in such oppressive behavior.
I think that the #1 problem that we need to solve is the issue of these individuals generally being an accepted part of our group (or society at large, even). Anarchism isn’t actually a magic bullet for oppression, because even an anarchist society would eventually be corrupted into an oppressive one if bullies like this are allowed to persist and manipulate people into following them and their disordered ideology. To actually create a truly ‘good’ society, we need to learn how to reliably recognize these bullies and keep them out of our spaces. Anarchism helps enormously, because collective power is much harder to subvert than hierarchical power, but it isn’t a complete solution on its own.
That said, being able to recognize coercion and manipulation in all of its various forms would help a lot with that goal, and so the goals of establishing such a common terminology and also teaching people how to recognize bullies in all of their various forms are synergistic.
I’m not sure if I agree with you about the bullies, but lets put that aside for now. I really like your reply. Can you further elaborate on linking hierarchy with the common notion of coercion?
I’m not sure what you are asking for. I’m just saying that it would be good for people to understand hierarchy in terms of coercion, generally, so trying to establish that definition as common knowledge would be a good idea.
I was hoping you could give an example on how to link those two ideas without going on a rabbit hole on anarchist theory. If you don’t have one that’s fine.
Please dont call Chomsky into a debate about the word hierarchy, he has such bad takes when it comes to that. “Justified hierarchy” und such things…
Besides that, in my eyes we don’t need unified definitions and theories. Its more important to make sure people unterstand each others words when going into a dicsussion/dialogue.
…unified definitions are the most reliable way to make sure everyone understands each other’s words going into dialogue. Unless everyone includes a glossary with their contribution to the dialogue, there’s no other way to ensure understanding.
I hate most of Chomsky’s views, but he is so prominent its hard not to mention him.
I agree, we don’t need unified definitions, but if we can at least have a couple standard ones we can refer to, I believe that would make communication and organization easier. An example of what I’m talking is the definition of property: There are a couple of standard ones that are of easy access, and when talking about property its always easy to explain if you mean “private property of the means of production” or “personal property” or “real property as the mainstream economics definition” and even if the person who you’re talking to has not read a lot of theory (or at all), they can probably grasp those concepts with a quick google search. Compare that to “hierarchy”, which is a term that is thrown around all the time, many times with quasi-conflicting meaning and understanding the definitions is a rabbit whole of research reading different authors. Could we not just summarize the most important aspects for the main (i.e. most relevant) definitions for easy digestion, just like what happened with the word property?
Never read that article. I’ll give it a study and come back.
However right out of the bat I see “anarchists” being used as a blanket term and mentions such as Bakunin, which makes me feel like although useful, this is not the best answer for the problem I am (or at least trying) to mention. Read My other commentary for more context.
No
Yes
For me personally it means Systems of Domination or institutions of subordination.
One example might be that young boys are raised up with the idea that is their birthright to subordinate women when they become “the man of the house”.
That dynamic does not exist in a vacuum. It is inextricably intertwined with capitalism, white supremacy, and more systems of domination, each which we should name and confront
I think this is a good start, but still too little rigid. This definition still requires one to define Systems of Domination or institutions of subordination. The examples are a big help, but it is still unclear what falls under those categories.
Do unions fall under those “institutions of subordination”? As an example of ambiguity under this definition.
I laud the curiousity. Unions are diverse and within even one union exists dozens or hundreds of 1:1 relationships as well as collective overlapping interests. My summary answer thus is: No, on their own, unions are not an institution of subordination, particularly given the alternative (subordination to the boss/baron/owner), but a complete picture requires an Anarcho-Relationship lense (see the honeycomb video)
And that’s a good answer, but I argue it is to the detriment of the definition that this needs to be answered. Maybe there is a better way to define hierarchy, or a simple definition for “systems of domination or institutions of subordination” that could be given along side that already answers that.
