💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › anonymous-hierarchy.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 07:06:41. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

View Raw

More Information

➡️ Next capture (2024-06-20)

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Title: Hierarchy
Author: Anonymous
Date: 1934
Language: en
Topics: Anarchist Encyclopedia
Source: Retrieved on 11 December 2011 from http://robertgraham.wordpress.com/2008/12/14/hierarchy/
Notes: Originally published as “Hiérarchie” in Encyclopédie Anarchiste. Translated by Paul Sharkey.

Anonymous

Hierarchy

HIERARCHY, noun. (from the Greek hieros, sacred, and arche, command).

The order and subordination of sundry ecclesiastical, civil or military

authorities.

Hierarchy lies at the root of the whole authority principle. Starting

off with the leader and ending with the henchman, through a whole scale

of different executive agents; conjuring up a multitude of gradations

which, as one rises through them, confers an ever greater measure of

authority; splitting the authority of the State to infinity and

bestowing a greater power of resistance upon it by virtue of its

multiplicity and variety; organizing within the State a graduated scale

of sinecures, benefices and privileges; the essence, in fact, of

theories of government.

The yearning for prominence, the lust to command and to rule is, sad to

say, a passion that still drives quite a few people. The moment an

authoritarian regime is established on the ruins of its predecessor, its

first care is to shower its supporters with honours, income and

positions of command.

One who today is an ordinary citizen dreams of becoming a town

councillor; another dreams of a generalship; still another, no more than

a workingman, is gnawed by an ambition to become a supervisor or

foreman.

Every authoritarian faction — even the so-called workers’ parties —

cultivate this hierarchical mind-set. For it is only by planting

ambition in men’s hearts that rulers or would-be rulers can pull the

wool over their eyes and turn them into playthings.

Anarchists are opposed to all hierarchy, be it moral or material. They

counter with respect for the freedom and absolute autonomy of the

individual.

And if they think in terms of a Social Context of the future, it is an

environment wherein every human being will have rights equal to those of

his contemporaries.

We must banish the sentiment of hierarchy from men’s minds and replace

it with love of anarchy.