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.
> 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.
> 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.
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
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?