Why Hierarchy Is Fragile and Anarchy Is Antifragile
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> "The committee is the paterfamilias. It owns everything; it directs everything. Every special desire has to be submitted to it for consideration; it alone has the final say."
> "With the abolition of money, the collective held the upper hand since anyone wishing to travel had to get 'republican' money from the committee."
Hierarchy is not the opposite of anarchy, but of self-organization. To reject hierarchy is to be able to act independently, not to replace the manager with a committee.
Anarchy's opposite is authoritarianism.
> Nothing is more dangerous for man's private morality than the habit of command. The best man, the most intelligent, disinterested, generous, pure, will infallibly and always be spoiled at this trade. Two sentiments inherent in power never fail to produce this demoralisation; they are: contempt for the masses and the overestimation of one's own merits.
From _Power corrupts the best_
I guess my point is that if you have beliefs like this, following up on them is the path of personal martyrdom. This is very much at odds with mundane things like having a family or a stable comfortable lifestyle. Few people (including those writing these texts and filming these videos) are ready to stick to that.
I do my best to live by my values, but there was an inflection point for me where things fell into place and allowed me to live a "normal" life in society without compromising my values.
I realized that the whole point of anarchism is that order is emergent. We already live under an anarchic system; it's just that the order that has emerged is one based on coercion.
If I could wave a magic wand and all of the governments in the world disappeared, I wouldn't. Nothing of substance would change. A power vacuum would exist, which would be filled extremely quickly. While in a few cases we'd probably see communities coming together in a non-coercive way, in most cases it would be filled by the people most willing and able to use violence. Historically, coercive systems have scaled more readily than non-coercive systems, so the only reasonable thing to expect would be for these new proto-states to annex the non-coercive communities. Through military force if cultural forces are too slow to satisfy the ruling class.
In other words, trying to change the system is a fool's errand. The system we have today is a consequence of our society's culture.
I still believe in the NAP (Non-Aggression Principle), and that humanity would be much better living in a non-coercive and morally consistent way - but I recognize that our culture as it is today will not only never lead to that, but would not tolerate it.
So I do my best to limit my interactions with the state, and instead of trying to tear it down I spend my energy on changing society. I believe that introducing the concept of mutual consent to a single person is more impactful in the long run than directly attacking the state - even if by some miracle that attack "succeeded".
Every example that I can recall of successful anarchist or "anarchy-adjacent" societies arose organically from a small communities of like-minded people. With that in mind, if I want my descendants to live without the shackles of a coercive state, I must help mold the direction of society down a path that will ultimately lead to the conditions necessary for non-coercive governance to emerge.
To put it another way: the majority of the dyed-in-the-wool anarchists in America today are too busy writing F/OSS software and homeschooling their children to bother with anything as pointless as revolution.
Power does not corrupt, it reveals.
Hmm.
It seems I have yet more reading to do. Thank you! :)
You'd think after a century that saw the same process of hiearchies being overthrown only to be replaced with "socialists" trying to use the same hierarchies that immediately restored the authoritarian domination of the previous hierarchy (or even extended it) people would have come to understand this.
Anark actually has a series of videos on this exact problem: The State is Counter-Revolutionary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTwxpTyGUOI&list=PLvwoHdNGq9...
"Study" in sociology is, as far as I can tell, synonymous with "bed time story".
I’m a communist when it comes to my family and an evidence-driven meritist when it comes to my scientific org, but democratic when it comes to my state. I think all these things are in philosophical harmony.
> Contrary to what we would like to believe, there is no such thing as a structureless group. Any group of people of whatever nature that comes together for any length of time for any purpose will inevitably structure itself in some fashion. The structure may be flexible; it may vary over time; it may evenly or unevenly distribute tasks, power and resources over the members of the group. But it will be formed regardless of the abilities, personalities, or intentions of the people involved. The very fact that we are individuals, with different talents, predispositions, and backgrounds makes this inevitable. Only if we refused to relate or interact on any basis whatsoever could we approximate structurelessness -- and that is not the nature of a human group. This means that to strive for a structureless group is as useful, and as deceptive, as to aim at an "objective" news story, "value-free" social science, or a "free" economy. A "laissez faire" group is about as realistic as a "laissez faire" society; the idea becomes a smokescreen for the strong or the lucky to establish unquestioned hegemony over others. This hegemony can be so easily established because the idea of "structurelessness" does not prevent the formation of informal structures, only formal ones. Similarly "laissez faire" philosophy did not prevent the economically powerful from establishing control over wages, prices, and distribution of goods; it only prevented the government from doing so. Thus structurelessness becomes a way of masking power, and within the women's movement is usually most strongly advocated by those who are the most powerful (whether they are conscious of their power or not). As long as the structure of the group is informal, the rules of how decisions are made are known only to a few and awareness of power is limited to those who know the rules. Those who do not know the rules and are not chosen for initiation must remain in confusion, or suffer from paranoid delusions that something is happening of which they are not quite aware.
What's the point of trying to write out an explanation of why a claim that has been debunked so many times is wrong when they don't know why you think it isn't or what arguments you may have heard before that you found unconvincing? What do you think justifies such an expense of energy?
Or do you think any video can be condensed into one or two sentences that are sufficient to convince anyone holding opposite views that they are wrong?
I disagree, and it seems to be because we're using the term "hierarchy" differently.
In my primary local friend group, the leader depends on the topic. If we're talking about the areas where I'm the (informally) recognized expert, I tend to lead the discussion. If it's someone else's area of "authority", they lead it.
Either way, while no one is designated at the person who decides what we all think or what to do, the person leading that conversation tends to have a heavy influence on the outcome and is responsible for building consensus.
That's a hierarchy. It's not a coercive hierarchy, but it's a hierarchy nonetheless.
This distinction is important especially when speaking to someone who is opposed to anarchy as a concept. Without it, they tend to see the (usually hypothetical) structures that we propose as evidence of anarchism's flaws. They're not - they're nothing more than thought exercises. While anarchists see those as a tool to help refine their view of how a system _could_ work, non-anarchists see them as evidence of internal inconsistency.
"Hierarchy" comes from "heira", which means "sacred rites". So it's "the rites which rule". In other words, "the process through which people are organized to do things"
To make it nice and confusing, "anarchism" has been applied to so many systems of beliefs over the years that it has no clear meaning on its own. To some people, it absolutely means "no structure whatsoever".
Etymology.com links:
hierarchy: https://www.etymonline.com/word/hierarchy anarchy: https://www.etymonline.com/word/anarchy
One is rejection of hierarchy, which is not accepting an order of society based on some sense of the sacredness (hier(o-) denotes holy/sacred). In this sense, you can reject hierarchy but still accept some social organigram. For example one where every individual holds a position based on continuously evaluated results compared to clearly defined expected outcomes and extremely fluid social mobility. It’s permitted to doubt that such a human society ever existed so far.
An other topic is uncentralized/distributed social organization. They are not necessarily incompatible with behavior of social apes. But it’s probably far harder to build, as it requires a stable equilibrium of ability for each party to use brutal force to disband any particular will to reign through threats from other nodes, and diffuse education means to spread the will to refrain from such a nefarious behavior in each node.
The distribution of power is rather independent of whether the society is using some hieratic characters, like brainwashing through worship of some divinity and its gospel, or stricly secular means, like fiduciary subjugation through money.
> Attempts to create hierarchy-free social settings only result in creating systems in which the dominant social hierarchy is implicit, unstated, officially unrecognized... and therefore impossible to regulate.
I'm completely comfortable with that.
A system where the hierarchy is "official" and rigid leads to all sorts of unfairness, and leaves little recourse to injured parties.
The model of hierarchy is too simplistic. If you zoom in on the nodes you will see a more complex structure. It's not just one person but a host of people, operating in a semi-formal somewhat also anarchic structure. At every level of the hierarchy there is ample backup that will keep the system from collapsing.
Then there is also the dimension of efficiency that is completely missing from the discussion. Hierarchical systems might be more fragile but also much more efficient.
Possibly.
I've changed some minds in the past. I don't have it handy right now, but one of my most cherished results of discussing this stuff online is a Reddit message I got from someone years ago. I was arguing against compulsory taxation. The person I was arguing with didn't agree with me in the least, but that's OK; I just continued to share my views and was clear that sharing was my only goal. I didn't expect them to "convert" and see things my way. Many months later they sent me a DM to let me know that they had in fact come to see things the way I'd described, and credited that conversation as the beginning of that transformation.
To be blunt: hostility and name-calling is no way to change someone's mind. It's counterproductive, and I wish people who call themselves anarchists would stop doing it. It makes my approach more difficult.
> Ironically, but not surprisingly, in describing his alternative to hierarchy, the video essentially re-invents hierarchy.
Anarchism isn't a single, unified ideology. Not all forms of anarchism is anti-hierarchy.
Anarcho-capitalism boils down to the abolition of violent coercion. Anarcho-Socialism and -Syndicalism boils down to the decentralization of authoritarian hierarchy to the level of a well-defined community that is small enough for an individual to have an effective voice yet large enough that that community has a voice in the affairs of the larger society within which it exists.
Bear in mind that the above are my syntheses, not some sort of "official" defition.
My point is that it's no more fair to lump all forms of anarchism - and all anarchists - into a single group than it would be to lump republicans together with monarchists.
Hierarchy is not necessarily antithetical to anarchism.
> Anarchy is so fragile that even in a thought experiment by an anarchist, it can't even last 20 minutes.
I think a lot of people - including a lot of self-described anarchists - confuse the political philosophy with practical application thereof.
In my own view, anarchism is a set of beliefs about how things should be. It's a way of viewing the world and a set of negative guidelines governing how people should interact with one another (e.g. "A person should not use of threaten force to get what they want")
The political and social institutions that would arise from a society founded on the precepts of anarchism needn't be stable, or even predictable.
If you change your mind, I'm happy to discuss. Otherwise, I hope your day is productive and fulfilling.
If you're not clear on this (Engels certainly wasn't, as his infamous essay "On Authority" demonstrates) here's a video from Anark specifically addressing that concept and how it is to be understood in most of Anarchist theory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFZZiRmZxoU
If you think the video "re-invents hierarchy" maybe you can spell out where you think it does that. It won't be a snappy one-liner that makes you sound witty but it might be conducive to an actual conversation.
But then there's the land owners who own enough land that they become the government. They have a security force. They have a sheriff. I think this is what people are dreaming about being when they want anarchy.
At best you can make a claim for land ownership through land use and even that is contingent on the consent of others. Humans are social animals. We may have created various fictions to justify hierarchies between us (e.g. divine right, private property, legal contracts) but at the end of the day the only thing enforcing them is the threat of physical violence at the hands of the state (i.e. police or military) or the ruler's private army (as in a monarchy). Without those, those fictions are only contingent on each individual's willingness to maintain them. Arguably the only function of the state is to manifest private property in the first place (whether to protect pre-existing claims or to allow the creation of new ones such as through intellectual property laws).
Excerpt from Nemik's manifesto from the excellent Andor https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/The_Trail_of_Political_Cons...
In other words, when anarchists say they want to "abolish the police" they don't mean just deleting the police and crossing their fingers because that's how you get organized crime taking over instead. What they mean is creating alternative systems at the same time as dismantling the police system (e.g. in the context of the state this could mean incrementally reinvesting police funds in social services, emergency health services, mental health crisis services, or even self-defense training programs; outside that context it could mean various forms of communal support networks and mutual aid).
CHAZ, to the extent it can be considered an anarchist project, was a hot mess from day zero. Instead of having pre-existing structures, it tried to build those structures on the spot. If you want to see successful anarchist projects the clue is generally that they don't try hard to label themselves as anarchist because the label provides no additional value. Instead you often find labels such as "radical democracy". Two major example are the Zapatistas and Rojava.
You'll also note that these examples always run into natural contradictions because of the environment they exist in. But ideologically, whether stated explicitly or not, the ideal they strive for is anarchist and their means to accomplish that ideal are measured by it rather than being allowed to contradict it as in vanguardist socialist projects (which historically always manifest as authoritarian hierarchical systems instead).
Be wary that many proponents of Anarchy may be the criminally inclined types, so they don't actually have any magical trick to make anarchy non-violent - it's just OK for them to live in violent society because they'll be on top. Think Makhno band.
I doubt that putting apart sincere pragmatic¹ pacifism, any system would be exempt of these traits in its proponents.
¹ That is using concrete non-violent methods to handle discord, like say Marshall Bertram Rosenberg proposals
Which enlighten the fact that probably anarchism is a far too large umbrella to say very specific things about it without giving more details about it. Which is also certainly about most political system that was ever proposed out there.
In addition to describing myself as an anarchist, I'm also a strident proponent of the individual's right to own and carry weapons.
I wonder just how much of my stance on that topic are a natural outgrowth of my belief in non-coercion.
I have some thinking to do :)
You will find pacifists, and you will find proponents of civil disobedience. You will even find some who think violence against the far right is motivated.
I'd say most are pacifists tho.
It is likely that non-violent anarchism will be actually so fragile that any disturbance will turn it to the regular, tried, violent kind.
No, anarchism can be "organized" (i.e. have structures). Delegation is compatible with anarchy, representation (i.e. "voting" on a representative for the group who then gets to speak on behalf of the entire group regardless of what the individual opinion of any member of the group may be on any given issue they speak on) is not. You can even have "leaders" (e.g. CEOs, captains at sea, etc) in anarchist organizations as long as their position is contingent on the support of those they "lead" (e.g. a captain may yell orders in order to steer the ship but the crew has to agree with the course they are setting).
There are antropological examples of non-hiearchical groups forming temporary command structures to tackle a crisis which would then be dissolved once the crisis had been averted or overcome. A well-known example are the Cherokee (pre-19th century) who had "red chiefs" (war chiefs) to plan and carry out hostilities and "white chiefs" to act as ambassadors and spokespeople towards other communities. But even those were contingent on communal support and were readily replaced if found to be inadequate or distrusted.
> pacifists
It's worth mentioning that pacifism as a philosophy is actually more complex than "not doing violence". There are pacifists who see self-defense as acceptable or would even make a case for defending others. "Pacifism" in political struggles is specifically a strategy based on voluntary self-sacrifice. It doesn't mean "no violence" it only means "no violence from me".
I'd wager that while most anarchists may be "pacifist" in the sense that they don't support the "propaganda of the deed" (i.e. political assassinations, bombings, etc to radicalise the oppressed against their oppressors - which has historically backfired) I sincerely doubt most anarchists believe in self-sacrifice by intentionally refusing any form of self-defense when targeted by physical violence (which has historically worked at times but been shown to be far less reliable in modern times).
I think you are talking about syndicalism.
I'd agree that real-world projects like Rojava while ideologically aligned with anarchism can be more accurately described as libertarian socialist or maybe mutualist (or in this case simply democratic confederalism, which it is explicitly is built on) as they're not "pure anarchism", but there's nothing in the basic ideas of anarchism that procludes organizing or the emergence of complex structures.
Saying anarchism can't be "organized" just reinforces the stereotype of black clad teenagers throwing rocks at storefront windows, which, while it certainly can be fun and exciting, usually barely qualifies even as "praxis" in any meaningful way and even more rarely is informed by a coherent anarchist philosophy beyond general sentiments.
'criminally inclined' I don't think so. I know dissing Ukrainian historical figures is now trendy, but still,have some respect. He fought for his land.
I agree. I stated this elsewhere as "historically, coercive systems scale more easily"
> You can have anarchy between tribes in the Amazon or Far North, but not in a metropolis.
There is some evidence for this, but I don't believe it's a law.
Consider that the republican form of government was seen in much the same way prior to the American Revolution. At the time, it had last been tried in Rome. It's actually fairly difficult to find demographics for the Roman Republic, but their census seems to show approximately 250k males eligible for military service at any given time.
From there, let's say that until the ratification of the US Constitution the most successful republican state was the Roman Republic, with fewer than one million people living under it and it lasting about 400 years (from the overthrow of the monarchy in ~509 BC to Sulla being named dictator in 82 BC.
Today, the US has a population of ~335m people and it is 235 years old.
It's not unreasonable to think that a future implementation of an "anarchic system" might has something like the same level of success relative to historic precedent.
Personally I think this is not only possible, but likely, given the changes to human social behavior as a consequence of technology.
> Be wary that many proponents of Anarchy may be the criminally inclined types, so they don't actually have any magical trick to make anarchy non-violent - it's just OK for them to live in violent society because they'll be on top. Think Makhno band.
I literally couldn't agree more.
I'm an anarchist who views other self-described "anarchists" with approximately the same level of caution and distrust as law enforcement.
People who wish to impose their will upon others are drawn to ideologies that they believe will make it easier for them to do so. That's just a fact.