Hierarchy

Hierarchies are constructs where some entities are above others. Hierarchies of power are opposed by anarchists, who wish for power to be distributed horizontally - with no person or group having power over another.

Hierarchies are not "natural" or "innate", they are constructed. While people are different - born with different starting conditions, having different qualia (such as height or extroversion), these do not form hierarchies until a society decides to do so.

Diversity in ability, personality, and other aspects is completely fine and natural. There is a common anti-socialist rhetoric that socialists strive for everyone to be literally the same - that no one can be stronger than another or like different things from one another, etc. This is a misunderstanding of what turns differences into hierarchies: power.

People having different heights is a difference. But a society placing food in high places or sees taller people as more "leader like", etc. makes height a hierarchy. Having different skills get paid more or less than others, having certain behaviors be considered normal vs divergent, and so on all form hierarchies that advantage some over others.

Indeed, if you look across history and cultures, you'll often find hierarchies that have flipped values from each other. Body weight and age, for example, have societies and time periods where being heavier or lighter have been indicators of status, as have being older or younger. This emphasizes the constructed nature of hierarchies and how they are not innate nor natural.

Subtle Hierarchies

Some of these hierarchies - both in how they present and how they are reinforced - can be more subtle than others. There's an example I'm really fond of, relating to (one way, of many) how our society is structured to place men over women in terms of pay. We have decided to normalize annual pay increases, anchoring one's pay to how much they made the previous year. This typically even applies across jobs, with interviewers often asking for one's current pay before producing an offer. This is a common practice that many see as normal or natural and non-problematic.

There is, however, a material uneven impact on those who need to take a break from work, which is disproportionately those who become pregnant. This gap can mean skipping a pay raise - or multiple - and can significantly alter their lifetime pay.

What's bitterly ironic about that is it is clearly visible in the statistics, but you'll see people argue against the wage gap by saying you have to control for years of experience. No you don't! The fact experience plays a part in pay is a social decision, and one with sexist impact! A society could just as easily exist where pay is the same independent of experience - either you can do the job or you don't, and everyone who can gets paid the same.

Hierarchies reproduce themselves

Hierarchies of power, by definition, give people power over others. That power can be used to reinforce the hierarchy and even shape society to justify the hierarchy. For example, if height was a hierarchy and only the tall could access food, the tall could use their elevated social status to blame the short for being unable to reach food, and even calling the society that doesn't accommodate for short people natural or just.

Qualifications affecting pay

To continue the pay example from before, another argument for all those doing the same job getting the same pay comes from qualifications, like college degrees. Access to college and other qualifications are uneven, leading to those without that access leading to less pay. That then makes the following generation less likely to have access compared to those who did have the qualifications, thus reproducing the hierarchy.

Non-hierarchical society is stable

For reference, the following is discussing a society without prisons, cops, laws, or government as those are all hierarchical structures. The government in particular enforces a single moral code as if it were universal and slowly changing, whereas a decentralized justice system recognizes how morals are subjective and varying across person and time.

Bad actors will exploit existing hierarchies of power. It gives them an easy path to a large amount of control that can then be leveraged to further consolidate power.

You may think there various ideas that do make sense to forbid with the force of a state, like racism or homophobia, but the state will be exploitable to enforce other ideas that aren't so positive, and make it harder to recognize and abolish those harmful ideas.

Plus, a good law does not fix a society with bad ideas. Lynch mobs were unlawful, but they had cops amongst their ranks and even if they were arrested, no jury would punish them. The government effectively only protected the lynch mobs, even if on paper it should have gone after them.

It's hard for hierarchies to rise from nothing, since there's no leverage. It's not impossible, but harder.

Most of human history (~95%) was stateless, so states are by no means some hard requirement for society to exist. That's not to say society pre-governments was egalitarian nor to discredit the speed of technological advances we've made since, but it's not like society would simply end without states - it, in fact, lasted much longer without states than with.

Decentralized power limits how much damage bad actors can do. Even if they take hold in one local community, that doesn't give them institutionalized power anywhere else.

History of states attacking each other. Government and laws have not stopped things like war and genocide and slavery, and in fact has caused those things throughout history.

How to abolish hierarchies

• Practice solidarity
• Learn to recognize hierarchies and keep an open mind - some are quite entrenched and will require creative thinking to oppose