this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2025
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[–] LeeeroooyJeeenkiiins@hexbear.net 20 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Voluntary hierarchies are absolutely a thing outside of just that joke like oh my fucking god, fake ass anarchists just not understanding that the very act of organizing into political society will create hierarchy as a part of that process. You elect someone to a council or executive position congratulations you just did hierarchy. The problem is when these hierarchies are unaccountable and arbitrary and defined by shit like bloodline or how much stuff you own

[–] 14specks@lemmy.ml 5 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Anarchist thought is applying criticism to hiearchy and abolishing those that fail tonl justify themselves. Unfortunately people online don't read their theory and just say whatever they're thinking.

[–] LeeeroooyJeeenkiiins@hexbear.net 5 points 14 hours ago

i don't read dick all and I know more about it than they do ooooooooooooooh

[–] Diva@lemmy.ml 24 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (1 children)

the best organizers I know do happen to be doms catgirl-smug

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 19 points 22 hours ago
[–] TrueStalinistPatriot@hexbear.net 25 points 23 hours ago (3 children)

I have no issue working under someone who considers my opinion and is generally more skilled than I am at doing a certain task

[–] ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml 22 points 22 hours ago

Is this still about sex

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 20 points 23 hours ago

Yep, management and administration are necessary functions in a large-scale industrial economy, and we should do our best to orient society in a scientific fashion so as to make these necessary functions as useful and accountable as possible. Socialism is a good thing.

[–] lasers4eyes@piefed.zip 1 points 22 hours ago (3 children)

But wouldn't you rather want to work with that person instead of for that person?

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 18 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Those aren't exclusive. Collaboration and leadership can coexist, especially when the leadership is accountable to the led. Differences in skill and experience exist, period, so acknowledging this and accounting for it is the best way to meet everyone's needs best from everyone's skills and talents. It also allows those that have less skill to gain guidance and training in a less directly responsible manner.

[–] freagle@lemmygrad.ml 11 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

It's not even just differences in skill and experience. The person who is busy cutting a path through the first necessarily cannot also see the entirety of the forest. The person who is taking the aerial view of the forest necessarily cannot be cutting through it.

There is a hierarchy of scale and complexity. It can be solved with voluntary hierarchies of work, but it cannot be ignored. Consequences of actions can take minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, or decades to emerge. The people worried about the immediate consequences of individual actions are not going to have the capacity for also worrying about the long-term consequences of collective actions over time.

We know this. We see this all the time. And yet this axiomatic-bordering-on-religious stricture against hierarchy chooses to believe there's some way to handle hierarchies of complexity without hierarchies of coordination.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 12 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Yes, fantastic way to put it, again further illustrating why complex society requires different positions of focus, including different levels of organization. You cannot have local governments functioning properly without a cohesive central government, and a central government cannot properly handle or comprehend the complexities of local life without strong local governments. Democratic centralism and whole process people's democracy are proven tools of meeting the needs of the people.

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 7 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

I like to think about this in terms of levels of abstraction. People deep in a specific domain master its details, but those operating at higher levels need to understand how that work fits into the bigger picture. That’s where mediators come in. They're necessary to bridge the gap between specialists focused on implementation and leaders orchestrating many projects toward a shared vision.

Incidentally, you see the same dynamic in software development. When you assemble libraries into a project, you interact with their APIs which are the interface that defines what the library does, not how it works under the hood. Management, in this sense, functions like that API layer where it surfaces the essential functionality of domain work while shielding higher-level goals from unnecessary complexity.

Ultimately, human cognition has limits making abstractions a necessity for large projects. They let us focus on what matters at each level without drowning in details we can’t possibly hold all at once.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 7 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Yep! Another analogy I love is the tactician and the strategian working hand in hand to come up with a multi-sided and complete solution to a given complex problem.

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 5 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Yup, another great example. I feel like people have a knee jerk reaction to the idea of authority without actually spending the time to think what problems authority addresses, and why it consistently emerges in different domains.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 6 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

A big part of it is how overwhelmingly negative the use of authority is within capitalism. This is a deeply pervasive issue because the ready-made conditions of capitalism make all authority seem to be inherently evil.

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 5 points 18 hours ago

Absolutely, authority under capitalist relations necessarily implies subjugation and people who've grown up in this environment have a hard time imagining how authority can function in a different way.

[–] freagle@lemmygrad.ml 10 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Honestly, what does this mean? If you abolish ownership, then working "for" someone changes in meaning.

Once ownership and profit are gone, working "for" someone stops meaning "for their economic interest" and starts meaning something very ambiguous. Don't carry over the emotional meaning from one mode of production to the other.

You might mean working according to someone else's plan. Is that working "for" someone? Maybe you mean working with someone who has the power to bar you from participating in the work or has the power to stop you doing certain actions?

It's not clear what you mean, so it would be helpful if you clarified.

[–] lasers4eyes@piefed.zip -4 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (3 children)

"You might mean working according to someone else's plan."

Yes, this is what I meant by "working for".

"If you abolish ownership, then working "for" someone changes in meaning."

This is correct, if you stretch the meaning of "working for", it can mean anything in the world. However, when we take the context of a workplace (for example a factory that makes glasses), in a capitalist system where you need to sell your labor in order to have a barely adequate life, you do not work for anything else other than your capitalist boss.

You do not work for the people who need glasses.

You do not work for the glory of the working class.

You work for your capitalist boss. This is pretty easy to understand when you actually manage to develop some class consciousness (you'll get there).

It does not matter if your boss is "kind, considerate and willing to work with you", you still work for him.

I'd be much more in favor of working in a factory if that boss was non-existant, and it instead felt like a union or group instead of a factory where I'm told to shut my trap or risk being homeless, or forced to move somewhere else to find work.

Edit: Looks like I made the Libs mad with this one B)

[–] freagle@lemmygrad.ml 7 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah, no one is mad at you because they're libs. They're downvoting you because you missed the entire point and went off on some bullshit.

You say "working on someone else's plan" is what you mean by "working for". You then go on to talk about selling your labor. These are two different things.

Under capitalism, the capitalist doesn't make a plan. They make a bet. Part of that bet is hiring planners to make the plans that other people will work on. This is why I asked the question I asked.

When you and the manager both sell your labor power to the capitalist for a wage, you both work for the capitalist, but you don't work on the capitalist's plan. You work on your manager's plan.

If you take the capitalist out, and if we define "working for" as selling labor, then "working for" is abolished under socialism, even though hierarchy remains.

If instead the definition of "working for" is "working on someone else's plan", then we have a discussion about the fact that planning is a type of labor. In some context, planning can be done by the people doing the work at the expense of efficiency, which is fine when our goal is maximizing liberty. But there are other contexts where the work to be done and the planning are significantly arduous and complex enough that different people need to do the planning and the execution.

When this is the case, inevitably, anarchists start talking about "voluntary hierarchies" as the correct prefiguration, but this meme is raising the common objections from some anarchists that there is no such thing as a voluntary hierarchy.

Hence, the discussion below about the reality of stratified systems and levels of complexity creating naturally stratified labor distribution, which lends itself to hierarchy.

[–] Nakoichi@hexbear.net 14 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

You work for your capitalist boss. This is pretty easy to understand when you actually manage to develop some class consciousness (you'll get there).

Why the smug condescension?

Pretty sure you're just repeating what was already said to you...

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 11 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

Yes, exactly. This is why socialism is important, not just trying to form a more ethical capitalism. Management is critical. Tacticians, for example, often focus on the immediate, while strategians focus on the large-scale and long-term. They coincide and reinforce each other, and no one person can do both adequately. Production is similar, there is a need for those focused on the bigger picture of organizing and those focused on the small, and though those at the smaller end may be working according to grander plans not set by themselves, this is not done to enrich the grander planners, but to come to success for all.

There's no need to be condescending, the person you are replying to is a communist. They are trying to get you to see the merits of socialist organization, not simply attacking all management.

[–] TrueStalinistPatriot@hexbear.net 7 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (2 children)

You can't (exactly) work with someone when that someone has to manage several other people and make sure everything is going smoothly

I'd rather the means of production to not be split into several small independent workshops look up what happened in Spain for reasons why

[–] Edie@lemmy.ml 4 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

What happened in Spain? Or do you have something I can read?

[–] TrueStalinistPatriot@hexbear.net 5 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (1 children)

I don't remember exactly where I learned it (thanks capitalism) but essentially the Spanish anarchist model caused a bunch of issues to arise essentially the country was divided like Europe in idk 1100s

I think The Finnish Bolshevik video about it should be more informative than my half assed rant ever could https://youtu.be/3ufTFRGPrCM

or also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dz9m8O1fxAs by Marxism Today

[–] Edie@lemmy.ml 6 points 16 hours ago
[–] webghost0101@sopuli.xyz 8 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (1 children)

Role play with consent = \ = real life.

People have (or should have) safe words to end the experience. Both parties are equal in control.

This is true for sex, but can also apply to other “sins” like gambling with a fixed max loss or fascist role play in a video game.

[–] PM_ME_VINTAGE_30S@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

You meant to have a slash in the equals sign like ≠, right? Because it doesn't render on Lemmy 😆

[–] webghost0101@sopuli.xyz 4 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

… this keeps happening i should probably make a shortcut to the character.

[–] Edie@lemmy.ml 6 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

There is likely already something that will work for you:

On windows, holding alt and typing on a numeric keypad 8800 should give you ≠

With ibus or fctix5 on Linux, or without those two in certain programs (such as Firefox), ctrl+shift+u then typing 2260 should also give it.

With hex code input turned on in mac os holding down option and typing 2260

[–] Achyu@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)
[–] comfy@lemmy.ml 7 points 22 hours ago

No spoilers and punchlines in the title pls!

[–] Mrkawfee@lemmy.world 20 points 1 day ago (4 children)

We can dismantle the patriarchy. We just need to find the safeword.

[–] FooBarrington@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago

Supercalifragilisticmegalopolis?

[–] procapra@lemmy.ml 1 points 7 hours ago

It's the capital of Florida spelled backwards.

[–] abekonge@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 day ago
[–] Apeman42@lemmy.world 1 points 23 hours ago

"...Zendaya?"

[–] frankenswine@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago

it's important to acknowledge mistakes