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?
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.
Outside of spreading the definition that I’ve given, I don’t know what else you’d need or want to do. I’d like to think that this comment thread doesn’t really qualify as an ‘anarchist theory rabbithole’, so if the explanation I gave worked here then perhaps it can work elsewhere. I don’t think that this definition is likely to be controversial.
Oh, sorry. I was confusing this thread with another one. So those last answers of mine were a misunderstanding.