audrbox comments on Authoritarian!

[–] audrbox@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 2 months ago (13 children)

I'd genuinely like to hear your answer on this, because it's something I think a lot about as an anarchist. Specifically, do you think the problem power hierarchies solve can only be solved by power hierarchies? Do you think that problem necessarily exists and needs solving in all contexts, perhaps because of some innate human nature? Who is it that has told you this is the case--that the fact that history is filled with hierarchies should be interpreted as "hierarchies are inevitable"--instead of, say, "power over others is an unhealthy coping mechanism humans have consistently turned to in the face of the unknown and maybe we should try to build a society that Doesn't Do That before we give up and resign ourselves to benevolent kings again"?

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[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 16 points 2 months ago

Not all vertical organization is equivalent. Participating in any worker organization can help explain the importance of administration, and this becomes more and more critical at scale. The question isn't "top-down" or "bottom-up," but how to make the two united.

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[–] 1Malayali@lemmy.ml 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (6 children)

What is meant by power hierarchy?

Anyway, asking about a scenario:

If a pandemic happens and you have to mandate masks or would like to ask people to maintain social distancing, how would you do it? If you mandate and enforce it, you'll form/expose the hierarchy, right?
Even if it is a majority vs minority decision, if you enforce it, it'll show a hierarchy by means of medical expertise or ability of enforcement, right? Or is it seen as natural or justified hierarchies?

Even if you elect a rep and even if you have options for recall, for your rep to take decisions, you would be giving them power, right?
Or is it whole organisation voting on each topic?

do you think the problem power hierarchies solve can only be solved by power hierarchies?

What are the other alternatives that are used, which do not have hierarchies to better solve the problems?

resign ourselves to benevolent kings again"

Not benevolent kings but recallable representatives would be the goal, right?

In case of socialist experiments, when they are under imperialist threat and fear of sabotage, they may not be able to fully do that, but not benevolent kings.

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[–] audrbox@lemmy.blahaj.zone -5 points 2 months ago (5 children)

If you mandate and enforce it, you'll form/expose the hierarchy, right?

Well, depends on who "you" is and how you "enforce" it. Do you, the person given the systemic authority to do so, throw people in jail/gulags/whatever if they refuse to mask? Then yeah, that's hierarchical. Do you, a community member, organize with other community members to exclude the non-masker from social events and community spaces until they decide to mask? OR do you, a doctor designated via the community as an expert and thus given narrow, organic, retractable social authority to do so, say "you need to wear a mask"? Then no.

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[–] gualudengren@lemmy.ml 10 points 2 months ago (3 children)

organize with other community members to exclude the non-masker from social events and community spaces

How do you plan to enforce this exclusion? Putting up a sign, physical removal (violence), non physical punitive measures?

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[–] audrbox@lemmy.blahaj.zone -2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

So are we assuming the non-masker is trying to be somewhere they've been told they're not welcome like, as a statement of rebellion? Do they not understand that they're not welcome or what they need to change to be welcome? Are they trying to be provocative, or are they trying to gain access to the community for some specific purpose?

"Enforcing this exclusion" is really broad. It has the underlying assumption that the situation is already violent, that there is a thing to enforce against someone who is "disobeying" the thing. Which I'd argue comes from the fact that we've really only lived in police states in modern history. Again, humans are social creatures--we want community and we want to feel included. And we don't consciously do things to each other for no reason. I urge you to think deeply about where the need for "enforcement" comes from, and what we mean by it.

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[–] gualudengren@lemmy.ml 8 points 2 months ago (1 child)

Really not engaging with what I said at all.

If someone is refusing to wear a mask and you and your neighbourhood watch or vigilantes or whatever you want to call yourselves come together and decide this person is not allowed to make use of community spaces anymore but they decide not to listen (as they already are about the masking rules) what is the course of action.

“Enforcing this exclusion” is really broad. It has the underlying assumption that the situation is already violent, that there is a thing to enforce against someone who is “disobeying” the thing.

Word salad entirely dancing around the point that you brought up exclusion as a response to someone violating health recommendations like masking during a pandemic but entirely refused to engage with the fact that exclusion (especially from spaces) requires there to be action taken should the exclusion be violated.

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[–] audrbox@lemmy.blahaj.zone -5 points 2 months ago

Yeah, sorry, my thoughts on the original question/scenario evolved as we were talking so this ended up being messy and unclear.

I want to retract my response about excluding the non-masker, not because I don't think it's possible to do that in a way that respects autonomy and doesn't leverage power structures, but because the specific way that would be done would be fluid and dependent on factors we can't really take into account in the abstract. My answer to your proposed scenario is, I don't have enough information to make a judgment of the situation.

Another way of putting what I'm getting at: when someone/some group is given power over others, the normal social dynamics of how people cooperate and be in conflict with each other are disrupted, because the power-holders can just wield the authority to enforce their will regardless. In your scenario, a non-masker choosing to go against the community's will is a conflict, and the action to be taken should be based around resolving that conflict under the conditions it's taking place in. If we just say "they'll be excluded from community spaces under threat of violence" or "they'll be locked up and forced to reintegrate into the community", we're wielding authority to bypass the actual conflict with all of its messiness and nuance. Nothing actually get resolved other than the person not physically being there anymore. Resentment grows, and we end up with more violence and wielding of authority down the line.

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[–] 1Malayali@lemmy.ml 9 points 2 months ago

Do you, a community member, organize with other community members to exclude the non-masker from social events and community spaces until they decide to mask?

Is that not hierarchical too?
And what do you do if they do not allow themselves to be excluded from community spaces?

Are you not bringing in hierarchy when you give yourself and your group the power to choose whether the person or group who disagrees should be excluded from community spaces?

And what do you do when they do not agree? Do you jail them? Do you harm them or threaten violence?

Are you not creating/exposing the hierarchy by choosing to exclude those parts of your community from community spaces for disagreeing with you?

a doctor designated via the community as an expert and thus given narrow, organic, retractable social authority to do so, say "you need to wear a mask"?

So, again a power hierarchy in the matter of medicine, where you a lay person has lesser power?

And the people opposing the masking, will not be agreeing with that doctor, right? So not designated by the all of the community as a expert in that specific topic then.
If the person acknowledged the expertise, then the issue would not persist, right?

Do you threaten or propagandise someone that they would not oppose that position and obey it then? Power hierarchy again, right?

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[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml [S] 9 points 2 months ago (4 children)

here is a detailed explanation for you https://dialecticaldispatches.substack.com/p/what-challenges-do-hierarchies-address

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[–] audrbox@lemmy.blahaj.zone -3 points 2 months ago (3 children)

This author seems to be confused about what hierarchies are. Hierarchies have nothing to do with division of labor or expertise--you can easily have/recognize both of those things in a horizontal power structure. A hierarchy is about who can coerce whom.

In the factory example the article gives, the presence of a central organizer/administrator/delegator does not necessarily mean the factory operates hierarchically. To determine if it does, you'd need to ask, "does the organizational structure allow the administrator to have their decisions enforced via actual or threatened violence against people who dissent?" In our capitalist reality, this would be things like firing the dissenter (depriving them of basic survival resources) or calling the cops. In authoritarian "communist" regimes, this might be forced labor or re-education camps.

You can organize at scale, abstract out certain parts of the organization, etc. without this coercive element. Humans are cooperative creatures; we want to build things together, and we are fully capable of respecting each other while we do so. Why limit the bounds of our liberation by assuming we need this systemic violence to do what we already want to do?

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[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml [S] 9 points 2 months ago (2 children)

It is you who is in fact confused about what hierarchies are because they have absolutely nothing to do with coercion, and have everything to do with division of labour and abstraction. You seem to have a personal definition of what a hierarchy is. Hierarchies do not require any violence whatsoever, and it's a concept that applies to large range of domains outside politics such as writing computer programs. Next, you'll be telling me that class hierarchies require threat of violence.

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[–] audrbox@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 point 2 months ago (1 child)

I'm confused by your last sentence. Can you say more?

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[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml [S] 9 points 2 months ago

Hierarchy is a general organizational concept. Hierarchies are how pretty much all non-trivial software is structured because you need to create layers of abstraction. And obviously the notion of violence is nonsensical in this context.

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