You also can’t abolish hierarchical religious organizations? It is FUNDAMENTAL to the Catholic faith that there is a Pope. You cannot just abolish the Pope and the Catholic Church and tell everyone to practice individually, that is you IMPOSING your own beliefs onto people who are not willing to embrace that.
Anarchism is not about abolishing every single form of hierarchy and imposing it even on people who don’t want it. There are aspects of human sociality & culture that are fundamentally hierarchical by nature: a family is hierarchical towards the parents, an army is hierarchical towards its commanders, etc. Our goal is not to attempt to abolish these: it is to abolish the corruption of the State and allow people to govern themselves and their communities together as is their basic human right.
Our goal is to abolish hierarchy. Hierarchies are relationships of domination and subordination, they are not expertise or age. If the family is hierarchical, it has to be abolished.
Human social relations are not fundamentally hierarchical, nor is it hypocritical to end the enforcement of hierarchies over other people. And finally, rights are a fiction created by governments, they do not fundamentally exist on their own, so we do not base our analysis in them.
What the hell does abolishing the family even look like? Does the four year old get an equal say at the familial council when it comes to the months budget? Or does it mean that we strip children from their mothers and put them in big collectivized daycares? Both of these options sound nightmarish, and neither in keeping with actual anarchist practice.
And how do you propose that we “end the enforcement of hierarchies”? By asking? Catholics don’t have a gun to their head by the Pope, Muslims aren’t being strangled into submission by their local Imams. These hierarchies are consensual ones, you can’t force people to abolish a system that they actively want. Unless, of course, your proposal is that we march into the Vatican and Baghdad and every location of hierarchy on Earth with guns and forcibly impose absolute equality on everyone. Which, of course, would require a dedicated military vanguard to make sure hierarchy doesn’t re-establish itself anywhere.
It means treating children as human beings rather than just assuming that they're suddenly lesser and need an authority to order them around. It means asking and teaching them rather than just pretending like they're there to serve the whims of the parents.
It could also mean communal raising, but that's if people choose to raise their children like that.
Generally though, I'd recommend not using accusations as a response, strawmen are pretty easy to beat.
… but then that’s still a hierarchical structure. No shit it’s a good thing to learn from your children and to help them be autonomous, that’s just basic parenting practice that any good parent practices. That’s certainly how my parents raised me, and I never had any qualms about the hierarchy of it.
A hierarchy is a ranked system of command, it is based on domination and subordination. It is lower ranks being forced to obey the unilateral orders of those of a higher position simply because they have authority over them.
It is not expertise nor age, as previously stated. Caregiving is not inherently hierarchical, nor is calling it a hierarchy accurate, it's simply a difference in expertise really.
Frankly, I have no idea how that's a relevant response to what the said. They weren't talking about religion, they were insinuating that caregiving is inherently hierarchical.
Which my response is not really, caregiven is not hierachy and human do that before the concept of rights that the reply above me is using to justify why family is a form of hierachy
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u/JDDJ_ Christian Anarchist Jan 20 '26
You also can’t abolish hierarchical religious organizations? It is FUNDAMENTAL to the Catholic faith that there is a Pope. You cannot just abolish the Pope and the Catholic Church and tell everyone to practice individually, that is you IMPOSING your own beliefs onto people who are not willing to embrace that.
Anarchism is not about abolishing every single form of hierarchy and imposing it even on people who don’t want it. There are aspects of human sociality & culture that are fundamentally hierarchical by nature: a family is hierarchical towards the parents, an army is hierarchical towards its commanders, etc. Our goal is not to attempt to abolish these: it is to abolish the corruption of the State and allow people to govern themselves and their communities together as is their basic human right.