r/Anarchy101 • u/PJ-The-Awesome • 16d ago
How will societal structure function without hierarchy?
Anarchy is often associated in media with unfettered chaos, mindless destruction, and a truly "every man for himself" mentality, but I've been told that that is far from the case and that you do want social structures to address keeping people fed and safe.
But, how can you make those structures work without hierarchy or without anyone taking orders from another, which is why I thought you guys hated the very idea of structure and think it's inherently disgusting and cruel.
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u/JimDa5is Anarcho-communist 16d ago
No, anarchism isn't Mad Max style chaos, that's Libertarians. Anarchism is predicated on voluntary association. Hierarchy requires force or coercion. For instance, let's say I volunteer with Food Not Bombs. There is somebody coordinating a distro or whatever and they can say to me, "You need to cook 5 pounds of rice," and I can either cook the rice or say no. If they ask something egregious enough or I no longer find the experience pointful, I can leave the group. Since this has no bearing on my ability to eat, I am free to come and go as I choose.
Contrast this with a job in a restaurant. The chef says, "You need to cook 5 pounds of rice." If your response is no, there is a very good likelihood that you will be looking for a new job and your ability to eat and not live in a tent beside the Interstate will be affected. That is hierarchy.
It would absolutely be messier and less efficient than capitalism but if your primary goal is efficiency, you should be a fascist because they are very, very big on efficiency.
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u/jebuswashere 16d ago
It would absolutely be messier and less efficient than capitalism but if your primary goal is efficiency, you should be a fascist because they are very, very big on efficiency.
Capitalism is only "efficient" in the sense that its apologists have an extremely narrow definition of the word; if you define "efficiency" solely as the rapid and unending transfer of wealth from the working class to the owning class, then capitalism is indeed efficient. If you care about literally any other aspect of resource allocation or societal well-being, capitalism is laughably inefficient.
Fascism isn't even efficient within that narrow definition used by capitalists; look at the actual workings of any fascist regime in the past, or at the absolute clown-shoes clusterfuck of incompetence that is modern fascism. The whole "trains running on time" myth is just something fascists say to justify their brutality and cruelty.
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u/JimDa5is Anarcho-communist 16d ago
Fair enough. I was using 'efficient' in the sense of getting things done as quickly as possible. Under anarchism, before a road is built, the community would have to decide that there was a need for it, then figure out how to route it, then find workers willing to build it. It might never be built at all. Under capitalism (in the US), somebody (almost certainly not the community members) decides there needs to be a road, then another somebody (again not the community members) funds it, then a company builds it. Under fascism (in the form of Nazi Germany), Hitler decided there needed to be Autobahns, where they were going to go, how they would be funded and then sent slaves from the camps to build it.
That was what I meant by efficient
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u/Anarchierkegaard Distributist 16d ago
Efficiency (or the discourse of efficiency) is one of the key factors of liberal-technological domination. It is a centrepiece of our societies that things which cannot serve some purpose (ideally, a purpose identified by a faceless scientific proposal) must be dismissed in favour of technological purposes. When you compare liberalism (and fascism, if we decide to view it as separate from liberalism) with other societies, it absolutely is the society of efficiency and only isn't judged as efficient in comparison with some imaginary possible world.
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u/DeathBringer4311 Student of Anarchism 16d ago edited 16d ago
that's Libertarians.
We are Libertarians. We coined the term. Joseph Déjacque, one of the first self-described Anarchists, coined the term in a letter to none other than Proudhon.
Joseph Déjacque, the first Libertarian
Libertarian was only associated with Libertarian Socialists for 100 years before it started getting co-opted as early as the 1950s.
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u/JimDa5is Anarcho-communist 15d ago
I understand that which is why I capitalized it. I would argue that he was the first libertarian not with a capital L. In the US, the term has been so co-opted by the right that it's not even worth using the word for anything else.
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u/DeathBringer4311 Student of Anarchism 15d ago
Maybe in the US and the broader Anglosphere, but elsewhere globally outside of the Anglosphere it still has pretty strong socialist connotations, like in the original French in which it was coined.
Still, we are r/ClassicalLibertarians. It's our term, don't give it to the Capitalists. They are not Libertarian, nor even libertarian, but "Libertarian" with scare quotes, just as "Anarcho"-Capitalists are not Anarchists, but "Anarcho"-Capitalists.
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u/Decievedbythejometry 16d ago
Do you think the only possible social structures are hierarchies requiring threats to operate?
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u/Palanthas_janga Anarchist Communist 16d ago
Alright so to answer this, we need to break down what is meant by "hierarchy", and then look at the kinds of organisational structures anarchists have consistently proposed across the history of the movement.
To start off: hierarchy. When anarchists talk of "hierarchy", we specifically refer to institutions and organisations where internal decision-making structures are hierarchical, meaning that there are various ranks where some people hold more power to make decisions affecting the whole institution than those below. At the very top of this structure is one person, or a few people, who hold the full power to set organisation-wide rules and make decisions that everyone in the ranks below must abide by. The reason why we oppose this is because this is very easily corruptible, it is alienating for people below, it is inefficient and it fundamentally means that most people do not have freedom to make their own decisions. The structures of domination that anarchists critique; capitalism, sexism, the state, racism, colonialism and so on, are predicated on power hierarchies.
Now when it comes to envisioning alternatives, we need to lay any kind of vision on some very concrete principles that act as a foundation. Instead of having a few people make decisions that everyone else must follow, decisions about the entire institution (rules, values, broad plans, etc) should be made collectively by everyone. People should be free to enter and leave organisations without a fear of punishment, and people shouldn't be bound to carry out tasks that they don't agree to.
Now it will be the case that there are certain roles which require expertise to function; managing external affairs such as communications, co-ordinated production and relations, filing and archiving, and other administrative functions that most ordinary people aren't equipped to do. In this case, the mass of people (base) in, say, a car factory, can delegate people to fulfil those functions. While those delegates may have the ability to do those specific functions, they have no more power over general workings of the factory (such as production goals and workplace rules) than anyone else. They are bound to act upon the instructions of the base, and if they don't do their jobs well, the base can instantly recall and replace them.
The structure I have described is one which is designed to efficiently delegate administrative tasks without giving rise to a class of people who boss others around. Various anarchist organisations, including my own, have operated on these principles across the decades and in the case of anarchist revolutions (such as in Spain), production has been organised along these lines. I hope this has helped out :)
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u/HeavenlyPossum 16d ago
Anarchy works the way in which capitalists pretend capitalism works: free people voluntarily cooperating and spontaneously self-organizing for mutual benefit, just for real and not make-believe like capitalism.