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it's not possible to dismantle dominance structures. They're evolutionarily defined in our biology and are primordial. If you ban explicitly stated dominance hi

it's not possible to dismantle dominance structures. They're evolutionarily defined in our biology and are primordial. If you ban explicitly stated dominance hierarchies, they merely become implicit. Think about "flat" organizations. On paper, there is no power hierarchy. In reality, you have to join the group and observe to discover who is actually in power, because it's implicit, but there is always someone in power. This is then lamented as "politics." There is no evidence that implicit power structures, especially ones where everyone maintains the lie that there is no power structure at all, are better than explicitly defined power structures. In fact, history presents lots of evidence to the contrary, especially if you read Russian!

laurex 2y ago
Dominance is a strategy among the ones we have evolved to employ, but it's not accurate to say it is "wired in" as the primary and inescapable strategy. At least as I understand it, anarchism does not deny our impulses to dominance exist, rather it seeks to put that tendency in check through processes of collaboration and checks to individual power. As soon as you begin introducing an argument that is about states or organziations, it becomes a little muddy, since at least in theory, anarchism is playing a different game, but there are examples even in our current era of rampantly dominant structures of this working at scale. For example, the 12-step programs are designed in such a way that their governance works by essentially anarchist, collectivist principles, and there are millions of people participating in them.
- pixl97 2y ago
  >but it's not accurate to say it is "wired in" as the primary and inescapable strategy. The issue is it is an effective strategy. You have to actively control it from taking over. The vast majority of the population must be inoculated against using dominance and to stamp it out, which again comes down to "who is going to teach them that and ensure these teachings don't get corrupted". Saying that unimportant things like 12-step programs use this is pretty useless. While some individuals may have high stakes in these programs, for most people there is no stake at all. If your local chapter fails under a brutal dictator you can just go to another one. The rate of failure like this won't even be documented. When someone says fuck your checks and balances in your government it's a different story you're in grave danger, and by watching the news now, I don't think many people are willing to do much about it at all.
  - panarky 2y ago
    > unimportant things like 12-step programs Hundreds of millions of people have participated in programs like this. That's a lot of people to experience first-hand how it's possible to accomplish good things through decentralization, voluntary association, lack of hierarchy, mutual aid and community-driven governance. That doesn't seem "unimportant" to me, but perhaps it would be easier to see the effectiveness of anarchist principles at work in a different domain, such as open-source software development.
AndyNemmity 2y ago
There is nothing biological about the modern corporation. It can be different, as it was in Spain. That's the point. Identifying unjustified authority, and replacing it.

laurex 2y ago

Dominance is a strategy among the ones we have evolved to employ, but it's not accurate to say it is "wired in" as the primary and inescapable strategy. At least as I understand it, anarchism does not deny our impulses to dominance exist, rather it seeks to put that tendency in check through processes of collaboration and checks to individual power. As soon as you begin introducing an argument that is about states or organziations, it becomes a little muddy, since at least in theory, anarchism is playing a different game, but there are examples even in our current era of rampantly dominant structures of this working at scale. For example, the 12-step programs are designed in such a way that their governance works by essentially anarchist, collectivist principles, and there are millions of people participating in them.

pixl97 2y ago
>but it's not accurate to say it is "wired in" as the primary and inescapable strategy. The issue is it is an effective strategy. You have to actively control it from taking over. The vast majority of the population must be inoculated against using dominance and to stamp it out, which again comes down to "who is going to teach them that and ensure these teachings don't get corrupted". Saying that unimportant things like 12-step programs use this is pretty useless. While some individuals may have high stakes in these programs, for most people there is no stake at all. If your local chapter fails under a brutal dictator you can just go to another one. The rate of failure like this won't even be documented. When someone says fuck your checks and balances in your government it's a different story you're in grave danger, and by watching the news now, I don't think many people are willing to do much about it at all.
- panarky 2y ago
  > unimportant things like 12-step programs Hundreds of millions of people have participated in programs like this. That's a lot of people to experience first-hand how it's possible to accomplish good things through decentralization, voluntary association, lack of hierarchy, mutual aid and community-driven governance. That doesn't seem "unimportant" to me, but perhaps it would be easier to see the effectiveness of anarchist principles at work in a different domain, such as open-source software development.

AndyNemmity 2y ago

There is nothing biological about the modern corporation. It can be different, as it was in Spain. That's the point. Identifying unjustified authority, and replacing it.