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[Delroy Booth]

Yes I concur, and noticed similar things in my local Occupy group. I think you have to acknowledge the fact that we are a social primate and like a lot of other social primates Humans are naturally hierarchical. So just having an ideology that demands non-hierarchy isn't enough it is just a fetish as you say.

Check out these dudes for example
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071024144314.htm

They have "revolutions" and show Machiavellian "intelligence"

Disagree totally with that which is underlined, I don't think human society and civilisation "naturally" pre-determined to be anything. Human nature is infinitely malleable, and crude evolutionary determinism doesn't change that.

My gripe is that in honesty I dont' have a problem with authority per se, I've got a problem with arbitrary authority that's undemocratic and doesn't rely on any form of consent. I can reluctantly accept the need for a legitimate form of authority in society, at least for now. I do cling onto some small hope that we might get to a point in society where it's politically possible to do away with the state in it's entireity and live in perfect harmony, with no relations of heirachy or dominance or authority of any complexion, but that's a really massive change in human civilisation, I can't see that happening in my lifetime.

 

[Zoltan K.]

Disagree totally with that which is underlined, I don't think human society and civilisation "naturally" pre-determined to be anything. Human nature is infinitely malleable, and crude evolutionary determinism doesn't change that.

That's not what I was getting at. You have to acknowledge that you cannot separate humanity as a social primate from its evolutionary past, that's not the same as saying everything is naturally evolutionary determined, human nature is malleable for sure. One simple illustration is the way we shape our open spaces like the park I walk my dog in. It is ideal "hunting" territory with tree and brush cover to run and hide in if a bigger predator shows up or to watch the wide open savannah where the grazers would have grazed waiting to ambush. The ruling class have been studying humanity for a long time, Eddy Bernays based his work on the work of his uncle, S Freud. It's why fear is such an effective mechanism for control. Maslows hierarchy of needs, Adorno, Altemeyer, Stanley Milgram etc etc.

 

[Delroy Booth]

Maybe we can't "separate humanity as a social primate from its evolutionary past" entirely, but it's not our evolutionary past or some innate genetic desire for authority that will determine if we can live in a world without heirachy, it'll be whether it's politically possible to organize society in that way. The examples of these kinds of societies actually functioning are patchy, but they have and do exist. And unless they're somehow genetically different to the rest of humanity it's pretty hard to explain how they come to exist.

And besides, heirachy in general is one thing, but having a heirachical class system deliberately built into society from the economy upwards certainly isn't something that you can say humans are "naturally" designed to have, there wouldn't be any need for the rich and powerful to maintain it using force if it were simply a natural phenomenon.

There's a lot of really complicated issues rising up here that I'm not so sure I know a great deal about so it's probably best I say nowt and defer to those with a better understanding of the historical issues you're on about.

 

[Zoltan K.]

Maybe we can't "separate humanity as a social primate from its evolutionary past" entirely, but it's not our evolutionary past or some innate genetic desire for authority that will determine if we can live in a world without heirachy, it'll be whether it's politically possible to organize society in that way. The examples of these kinds of societies actually functioning are patchy, but they have and do exist. And unless they're somehow genetically different to the rest of humanity it's pretty hard to explain how they come to exist.

And besides, heirachy in general is one thing, but having a heirachical class system deliberately built into society from the economy upwards certainly isn't something that you can say humans are "naturally" designed to have, there wouldn't be any need for the rich and powerful to maintain it using force if it were simply a natural phenomenon.

There's a lot of really complicated issues rising up here that I'm not so sure I know a great deal about so it's probably best I say nowt and defer to those with a better understanding of the historical issues you're on about.

Well my take on it is this, throughout history the ruling class have developed "technologies" to deal with the inevitable social unrest that an uneven distribution of the commons will lead to. We see them every where as social institutions like "democracy" or the legal system, or taxation or religion or dynasties, they're all ways for the ruling class to keep a bigger share of the commons, if you have a gripe then vote for x, or take it up with the legal system through the Common Law or the "Divine Right of Kings" etc. They're all predicated on fairness, fairness is important to social cohesion a lack of fairness leads to social unrest, things have to be seen to be fair, this is "natural" justice or social justice, we know when we're being fleeced, lied to and generally shat upon you don't need to be a Marxist or have read Bakunin to know that. All of these institutions were invented by a ruling class in order to give an impression of fairness to the way the commons are distributed this is not a naturally occurring hierarchy these are the systems put in place by the ruling class, they can't be used to gain a fairer share of the commons they're all in place to ensure the continued unfair distribution.

Anyway we're heading way off topic so I'll shut the feck up too

 

[Delroy Booth]

I guess you have to try to break the Iron Law otherwise what? join the Fash?.....

Just on this topic, you can't really get around it entierly, but you can mitigate against it. Democratically elected full-timers, who can be recalled, would be a good start. Then open access to all means of communication to anyone in the party, instead of having a central committee who run a paper who control the flow of information to the membership. There's a few other idea's I've come accross. The German Green Party, before they went to the right, had a lot of stuff that was specifically meant to break the Iron Law of oligarchy and I remember reading an academic article on historical attempts in the US Labour movement to get around it too.

 

[Zoltan K.]

Just on this topic, you can't really get around it entierly, but you can mitigate against it. Democratically elected full-timers, who can be recalled, would be a good start. Then open access to all means of communication to anyone in the party, instead of having a central committee who run a paper who control the flow of information to the membership. There's a few other idea's I've come accross. The German Green Party, before they went to the right, had a lot of stuff that was specifically meant to break the Iron Law of oligarchy and I remember reading an academic article on historical attempts in the US Labour movement to get around it too.

That's what's strange with what's happened with the UK Indymedia network looking at the way it was set up would suggest a very clear attempt to mitigate against the Iron Law IMC London were the first to break with the openness and transparency thing, they closed their mailing list and made it private and the "Iron Law" began to have its "ferric" effect. They just got a bit rusty mebe

 

[co-op]

Maybe we can't "separate humanity as a social primate from its evolutionary past" entirely, but it's not our evolutionary past or some innate genetic desire for authority that will determine if we can live in a world without heirachy, it'll be whether it's politically possible to organize society in that way. The examples of these kinds of societies actually functioning are patchy, but they have and do exist. And unless they're somehow genetically different to the rest of humanity it's pretty hard to explain how they come to exist.

And besides, heirachy in general is one thing, but having a heirachical class system deliberately built into society from the economy upwards certainly isn't something that you can say humans are "naturally" designed to have, there wouldn't be any need for the rich and powerful to maintain it using force if it were simply a natural phenomenon.

It's possible to believe that we are hard-wired to desire status (there's some pretty good evidence for this imo) but that the way that we gain status is socially determined. So the form that "status" takes can be (from a left pov) be good or bad. A good form of status = being widely respected and loved for your generosity, bad form = pretty obvious, most of modern society's badges of success really.

In terms of whether hierarchy is "natural" (I know this is a minefield of a subject) but evolutionary psychologists always try and analyse evolved behaviours in terms of the "EEA" the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptation i.e the form of society we were living in when the later parts of our brain evolved and that is your basic hunter-gatherer group 100 - 200 people. For a lot of reasons, mainly the absence of systemic organised surpluses, hierarchies in HG groups are very flat and mainly based on age which gives greater knowledge and experience - of everything - but principally of the group and how to organise it. So in general the idea of human hierarchies as "natural" is weak, there may be some evolved tendency but we basically evolved our modern brains in the absence of hierarchy or - at worst - in very flat ones. What seems much more deeply evolved and ingrained is resistance to being subjected to a degraded position within a hierarchy - in the EEA this would have meant you were regarded as an outcast and it would have been close to a death sentence and would certainly have affected your chances of breeding - especially if you were a man. I've seen right wing EPs (on one occasion unknowingly so) argue that this resistance to degradation is a "relic behaviour" that really needs to be got rid of to allow us to live more successfully in the modern world.

But like I said, evolutionary psychology's a minefield.