            B.1 Why are anarchists against authority and hierarchy?

   First, it is necessary to indicate what kind of authority anarchism
   challenges. While it is customary for some opponents of anarchism to
   assert that anarchists oppose all kinds of authority, the reality of
   the situation is more complex. While anarchists have, on occasion,
   stated their opposition to "all authority" a closer reading quickly
   shows that anarchists reject only one specific form of authority, what
   we tend to call hierarchy (see [1]section H.4 for more details). This
   can be seen when Bakunin stated that "the principle of authority" was
   the "eminently theological, metaphysical and political idea that the
   masses, always incapable of governing themselves, must submit at all
   times to the benevolent yoke of a wisdom and a justice, which in one
   way or another, is imposed from above." [Marxism, Freedom and the
   State, p. 33]

   Other forms of authority are more acceptable to anarchists, it depends
   whether the authority in question becomes a source of power over others
   or not. That is the key to understanding the anarchist position on
   authority -- if it is hierarchical authority, then anarchists are
   against it. . The reason is simple:

     "[n]o one should be entrusted with power, inasmuch as anyone
     invested with authority must . . . became an oppressor and exploiter
     of society." [Bakunin, The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, p. 249]

   This distinction between forms of authority is important. As Erich
   Fromm pointed out, "authority" is "a broad term with two entirely
   different meanings: it can be either 'rational' or 'irrational'
   authority. Rational authority is based on competence, and it helps the
   person who leans on it to grow. Irrational authority is based on power
   and serves to exploit the person subjected to it." [To Have or To Be,
   pp. 44-45] The same point was made by Bakunin over 100 years earlier
   when he indicated the difference between authority and "natural
   influence." For Bakunin, individual freedom "results from th[e] great
   number of material, intellectual, and moral influences which every
   individual around him [or her] and which society . . . continually
   exercise . . . To abolish this mutual influence would be to die."
   Consequently, "when we reclaim the freedom of the masses, we hardly
   wish to abolish the effect of any individual's or any group of
   individual's natural influence upon the masses. What we wish is to
   abolish artificial, privileged, legal, and official influences." [The
   Basic Bakunin, p. 140 and p. 141]

   It is, in other words, the difference between taking part in a decision
   and listening to alternative viewpoints and experts ("natural
   influence") before making your mind up and having a decision made for
   you by a separate group of individuals (who may or may not be elected)
   because that is their role in an organisation or society. In the
   former, the individual exercises their judgement and freedom (i.e. is
   based on rational authority). In the latter, they are subjected to the
   wills of others, to hierarchical authority (i.e. is based on irrational
   authority). This is because rational authority "not only permits but
   requires constant scrutiny and criticism . . . it is always temporary,
   its acceptance depending on its performance." The source of irrational
   authority, on the other hand, "is always power over people . . . Power
   on the one side, fear on the other, are always the buttresses on which
   irrational authority is built." Thus former is based upon "equality"
   while the latter "is by its very nature based upon inequality." [Erich
   Fromm, Man for Himself, pp. 9-10]

   This crucial point is expressed in the difference between having
   authority and being an authority. Being an authority just means that a
   given person is generally recognised as competent for a given task,
   based on his or her individual skills and knowledge. Put differently,
   it is socially acknowledged expertise. In contrast, having authority is
   a social relationship based on status and power derived from a
   hierarchical position, not on individual ability. Obviously this does
   not mean that competence is not an element for obtaining a hierarchical
   position; it just means that the real or alleged initial competence is
   transferred to the title or position of the authority and so becomes
   independent of individuals, i.e. institutionalised (or what Bakunin
   termed "official").

   This difference is important because the way people behave is more a
   product of the institutions in which we are raised than of any inherent
   nature. In other words, social relationships shape the individuals
   involved. This means that the various groups individuals create have
   traits, behaviours and outcomes that cannot be understood by reducing
   them to the individuals within them. That is, groups consist not only
   of individuals, but also relationships between individuals and these
   relationships will affect those subject to them. For example, obviously
   "the exercise of power by some disempowers others" and so through a
   "combination of physical intimidation, economic domination and
   dependency, and psychological limitations, social institutions and
   practices affect the way everyone sees the world and her or his place
   in it." This, as we discuss in the [2]next section, impacts on those
   involved in such authoritarian social relationships as "the exercise of
   power in any institutionalised form -- whether economic, political or
   sexual -- brutalises both the wielder of power and the one over whom it
   is exercised." [Martha A. Ackelsberg, Free Women of Spain, p. 41]

   Authoritarian social relationships means dividing society into (the
   few) order givers and (the many) order takers, impoverishing the
   individuals involved (mentally, emotionally and physically) and society
   as a whole. Human relationships, in all parts of life, are stamped by
   authority, not liberty. And as freedom can only be created by freedom,
   authoritarian social relationships (and the obedience they require) do
   not and cannot educate a person in freedom -- only participation
   (self-management) in all areas of life can do that. "In a society based
   on exploitation and servitude," in Kropotkin's words, "human nature
   itself is degraded" and it is only "as servitude disappears" shall we
   "regain our rights." [Anarchism, p. 104]

   Of course, it will be pointed out that in any collective undertaking
   there is a need for co-operation and co-ordination and this need to
   "subordinate" the individual to group activities is a form of
   authority. Therefore, it is claimed, a democratically managed group is
   just as "authoritarian" as one based on hierarchical authority.
   Anarchists are not impressed by such arguments. Yes, we reply, of
   course in any group undertaking there is a need make and stick by
   agreements but anarchists argue that to use the word "authority" to
   describe two fundamentally different ways of making decisions is
   playing with words. It obscures the fundamental difference between free
   association and hierarchical imposition and confuses co-operation with
   command (as we note in [3]section H.4, Marxists are particularly fond
   of this fallacy). Simply put, there are two different ways of
   co-ordinating individual activity within groups -- either by
   authoritarian means or by libertarian means. Proudhon, in relation to
   workplaces, makes the difference clear:

     "either the workman. . . will be simply the employee of the
     proprietor-capitalist-promoter; or he will participate. . . [and]
     have a voice in the council, in a word he will become an associate.

     "In the first case the workman is subordinated, exploited: his
     permanent condition is one of obedience. . . In the second case he
     resumes his dignity as a man and citizen. . . he forms part of the
     producing organisation, of which he was before but the slave; as, in
     the town, he forms part of the sovereign power, of which he was
     before but the subject . . . we need not hesitate, for we have no
     choice. . . it is necessary to form an ASSOCIATION among workers . .
     . because without that, they would remain related as subordinates
     and superiors, and there would ensue two . . . castes of masters and
     wage-workers, which is repugnant to a free and democratic society."
     [General Idea of the Revolution, pp. 215-216]

   In other words, associations can be based upon a form of rational
   authority, based upon natural influence and so reflect freedom, the
   ability of individuals to think, act and feel and manage their own time
   and activity. Otherwise, we include elements of slavery into our
   relationships with others, elements that poison the whole and shape us
   in negative ways (see [4]section B.1.1). Only the reorganisation of
   society in a libertarian way (and, we may add, the mental
   transformation such a change requires and would create) will allow the
   individual to "achieve more or less complete blossoming, whilst
   continuing to develop" and banish "that spirit of submission that has
   been artificially thrust upon him [or her]" [Nestor Makhno, The
   Struggle Against the State and Other Essays, p. 62]

   So, anarchists "ask nothing better than to see [others]. . . exercise
   over us a natural and legitimate influence, freely accepted, and never
   imposed . . . We accept all natural authorities and all influences of
   fact, but none of right." [Bakunin, The Political Philosophy of
   Bakunin, p. 255] Anarchist support for free association within directly
   democratic groups is based upon such organisational forms increasing
   influence and reducing irrational authority in our lives. Members of
   such organisations can create and present their own ideas and
   suggestions, critically evaluate the proposals and suggestions from
   their fellows, accept those that they agree with or become convinced by
   and have the option of leaving the association if they are unhappy with
   its direction. Hence the influence of individuals and their free
   interaction determine the nature of the decisions reached, and no one
   has the right to impose their ideas on another. As Bakunin argued, in
   such organisations "no function remains fixed and it will not remain
   permanently and irrevocably attached to one person. Hierarchical order
   and promotion do not exist. . . In such a system, power, properly
   speaking, no longer exists. Power is diffused to the collectivity and
   becomes the true expression of the liberty of everyone." [Bakunin on
   Anarchism, p. 415]

   Therefore, anarchists are opposed to irrational (e.g., illegitimate)
   authority, in other words, hierarchy -- hierarchy being the
   institutionalisation of authority within a society. Hierarchical social
   institutions include the state (see [5]section B.2), private property
   and the class systems it produces (see [6]section B.3) and, therefore,
   capitalism (see [7]section B.4). Due to their hierarchical nature,
   anarchists oppose these with passion. "Every institution, social or
   civil," argued Voltairine de Cleyre, "that stands between man [or
   woman] and his [or her] right; every tie that renders one a master,
   another a serf; every law, every statue, every be-it-enacted that
   represents tyranny" anarchists seek to destroy. However, hierarchy
   exists beyond these institutions. For example, hierarchical social
   relationships include sexism, racism and homophobia (see [8]section
   B.1.4), and anarchists oppose, and fight, them all. Thus, as well as
   fighting capitalism as being hierarchical (for workers "slave in a
   factory," albeit "the slavery ends with the working hours") de Cleyre
   also opposed patriarchal social relationships which produce a "home
   that rests on slavery" because of a "marriage that represents the sale
   and transfer of the individuality of one of its parties to the other!"
   [The Voltairine de Cleyre Reader, p. 72, p. 17 and p. 72]

   Needless to say, while we discuss different forms of hierarchy in
   different sections this does not imply that anarchists think they, and
   their negative effects, are somehow independent or can be easily
   compartmentalised. For example, the modern state and capitalism are
   intimately interrelated and cannot be considered as independent of each
   other. Similarly, social hierarchies like sexism and racism are used by
   other hierarchies to maintain themselves (for example, bosses will use
   racism to divide and so rule their workers). From this it follows that
   abolishing one or some of these hierarchies, while desirable, would not
   be sufficient. Abolishing capitalism while maintaining the state would
   not lead to a free society (and vice versa) -- if it were possible. As
   Murray Bookchin notes:

     "there can be a decidedly classless, even a non-exploitative society
     in the economic sense that still preserves hierarchical rule and
     domination in the social sense -- whether they take the form of the
     patriarchal family, domination by age and ethnic groups,
     bureaucratic institutions, ideological manipulation or a pyramidal
     division of labour . . . classless or not, society would be riddles
     by domination and, with domination, a general condition of command
     and obedience, of unfreedom and humiliation, and perhaps most
     decisively, an abortion of each individual's potentiality for
     consciousness, reason, selfhood, creativity, and the right to assert
     full control over her or his daily live." [Toward an Ecological
     Society, pp. 14-5]

   This clearly implies that anarchists "challenge not only class
   formations but hierarchies, not only material exploitation but
   domination in every form." [Bookchin, Op. Cit., p. 15] Hence the
   anarchist stress on opposing hierarchy rather than just, say, the state
   (as some falsely assert) or simply economic class and exploitation (as,
   say, many Marxists do). As noted earlier (in [9]section A.2.8),
   anarchists consider all hierarchies to be not only harmful but
   unnecessary, and think that there are alternative, more egalitarian
   ways to organise social life. In fact, we argue that hierarchical
   authority creates the conditions it is presumably designed to combat,
   and thus tends to be self-perpetuating. Thus hierarchical organisations
   erode the ability of those at the bottom to manage their own affairs
   directly so requiring hierarchy and some people in positions to give
   orders and the rest to follow them. Rather than prevent disorder,
   governments are among its primary causes while its bureaucracies
   ostensibly set up to fight poverty wind up perpetuating it, because
   without poverty, the high-salaried top administrators would be out of
   work. The same applies to agencies intended to eliminate drug abuse,
   fight crime, etc. In other words, the power and privileges deriving
   from top hierarchical positions constitute a strong incentive for those
   who hold them not to solve the problems they are supposed to solve.
   (For further discussion see Marilyn French, Beyond Power: On Women,
   Men, and Morals, Summit Books, 1985).

B.1.1 What are the effects of authoritarian social relationships?

   Hierarchical authority is inextricably connected with the
   marginalisation and disempowerment of those without authority. This has
   negative effects on those over whom authority is exercised, since
   "[t]hose who have these symbols of authority and those who benefit from
   them must dull their subject people's realistic, i.e. critical,
   thinking and make them believe the fiction [that irrational authority
   is rational and necessary], . . . [so] the mind is lulled into
   submission by cliches . . . [and] people are made dumb because they
   become dependent and lose their capacity to trust their eyes and
   judgement." [Erich Fromm, To Have or To Be?, p. 47]

   Or, in the words of Bakunin, "the principle of authority, applied to
   men who have surpassed or attained their majority, becomes a
   monstrosity, a source of slavery and intellectual and moral depravity."
   [God and the State, p. 41]

   This is echoed by the syndicalist miners who wrote the classic The
   Miners' Next Step when they indicate the nature of authoritarian
   organisations and their effect on those involved. Leadership (i.e.
   hierarchical authority) "implies power held by the leader. Without
   power the leader is inept. The possession of power inevitably leads to
   corruption. . . in spite of. . . good intentions . . . [Leadership
   means] power of initiative, this sense of responsibility, the
   self-respect which comes from expressed manhood [sic!], is taken from
   the men, and consolidated in the leader. The sum of their initiative,
   their responsibility, their self-respect becomes his . . . [and the]
   order and system he maintains is based upon the suppression of the men,
   from being independent thinkers into being 'the men' . . . In a word,
   he is compelled to become an autocrat and a foe to democracy." Indeed,
   for the "leader," such marginalisation can be beneficial, for a leader
   "sees no need for any high level of intelligence in the rank and file,
   except to applaud his actions. Indeed such intelligence from his point
   of view, by breeding criticism and opposition, is an obstacle and
   causes confusion." [The Miners' Next Step, pp. 16-17 and p. 15]

   Anarchists argue that hierarchical social relationships will have a
   negative effect on those subject to them, who can no longer exercise
   their critical, creative and mental abilities freely. As Colin Ward
   argues, people "do go from womb to tomb without realising their human
   potential, precisely because the power to initiate, to participate in
   innovating, choosing, judging, and deciding is reserved for the top
   men" (and it usually is men!) [Anarchy in Action, p, 42]. Anarchism is
   based on the insight that there is an interrelationship between the
   authority structures of institutions and the psychological qualities
   and attitudes of individuals. Following orders all day hardly builds an
   independent, empowered, creative personality ("authority and servility
   walk ever hand in hand." [Peter Kropotkin, Anarchism, p. 81]). As Emma
   Goldman made clear, if a person's "inclination and judgement are
   subordinated to the will of a master" (such as a boss, as most people
   have to sell their labour under capitalism) then little wonder such an
   authoritarian relationship "condemns millions of people to be mere
   nonentities." [Red Emma Speaks, p. 50]

   As the human brain is a bodily organ, it needs to be used regularly in
   order to be at its fittest. Authority concentrates decision-making in
   the hands of those at the top, meaning that most people are turned into
   executants, following the orders of others. If muscle is not used, it
   turns to fat; if the brain is not used, creativity, critical thought
   and mental abilities become blunted and side-tracked onto marginal
   issues, like sports and fashion. This can only have a negative impact:

     "Hierarchical institutions foster alienated and exploitative
     relationships among those who participate in them, disempowering
     people and distancing them from their own reality. Hierarchies make
     some people dependent on others, blame the dependent for their
     dependency, and then use that dependency as a justification for
     further exercise of authority. . . . Those in positions of relative
     dominance tend to define the very characteristics of those
     subordinate to them . . . Anarchists argue that to be always in a
     position of being acted upon and never to be allowed to act is to be
     doomed to a state of dependence and resignation. Those who are
     constantly ordered about and prevented from thinking for themselves
     soon come to doubt their own capacities . . . [and have] difficulty
     acting on [their] sense of self in opposition to societal norms,
     standards and expectations." [Martha Ackelsberg, Free Women of
     Spain, pp. 40-1]

   And so, in the words of Colin Ward, the "system makes its morons, then
   despises them for their ineptitude, and rewards its 'gifted few' for
   their rarity." [Op. Cit., p. 43]

   This negative impact of hierarchy is, of course, not limited to those
   subject to it. Those in power are affected by it, but in different
   ways. As we noted in [10]section A.2.15, power corrupts those who have
   it as well as those subjected to it. The Spanish Libertarian Youth put
   it this way in the 1930s:

     "Against the principle of authority because this implies erosion of
     the human personality when some men submit to the will of others,
     arousing in these instincts which predispose them to cruelty and
     indifference in the face of the suffering of their fellows." [quoted
     by Jose Peirats, The CNT in the Spanish Revolution, vol. 2, p. 76]

   Hierarchy impoverishes the human spirit. "A hierarchical mentality,"
   notes Bookchin, "fosters the renunciation of the pleasures of life. It
   justifies toil, guilt, and sacrifice by the 'inferiors,' and pleasure
   and the indulgent gratification of virtually every caprice by their
   'superiors.' The objective history of the social structure becomes
   internalised as a subjective history of the psychic structure." In
   other words, being subject to hierarchy fosters the internalisation of
   oppression -- and the denial of individuality necessary to accept it.
   "Hierarchy, class, and ultimately the State," he stresses, "penetrate
   the very integument of the human psyche and establish within it
   unreflective internal powers of coercion and constraint . . . By using
   guilt and self-blame, the inner State can control behaviour long before
   fear of the coercive powers of the State have to be invoked." [The
   Ecology of Freedom, p. 72 and p. 189]

   In a nutshell, "[h]ierarchies, classes, and states warp the creative
   powers of humanity." However, that is not all. Hierarchy, anarchists
   argue, also twists our relationships with the environment. Indeed, "all
   our notions of dominating nature stem from the very real domination of
   human by human . . . And it is not until we eliminate domination in all
   its forms . . . that we will really create a rational, ecological
   society." For "the conflicts within a divided humanity, structured
   around domination, inevitably leads to conflicts with nature. The
   ecological crisis with its embattled division between humanity and
   nature stems, above all, from divisions between human and human." While
   the "rise of capitalism, with a law of life based on competition,
   capital accumulation, and limitless growth, brought these problems --
   ecological and social -- to an acute point," anarchists "emphasise that
   major ecological problems have their roots in social problems --
   problems that go back to the very beginnings of patricentric culture
   itself." [Murray Bookchin, Remaking Society, p. 72, p. 44, p. 72 and
   pp. 154-5]

   Thus, anarchists argue, hierarchy impacts not only on us but also our
   surroundings. The environmental crisis we face is a result of the
   hierarchical power structures at the heart of our society, structures
   which damage the planet's ecology at least as much as they damage
   humans. The problems within society, the economic, ethnic, cultural,
   and gender conflicts, among many others, lie at the core of the most
   serious ecological dislocations we face. The way human beings deal with
   each other as social beings is crucial to addressing the ecological
   crisis. Ultimately, ecological destruction is rooted in the
   organisation of our society for a degraded humanity can only yield a
   degraded nature (as capitalism and our hierarchical history have sadly
   shown).

   This is unsurprising as we, as a species, shape our environment and,
   consequently, whatever shapes us will impact how we do so. This means
   that the individuals produced by the hierarchy (and the authoritarian
   mentality it produces) will shape the planet in specific, harmful,
   ways. This is to be expected as humans act upon their environment
   deliberately, creating what is most suitable for their mode of
   existence. If that mode of living is riddled with hierarchies, classes,
   states and the oppression, exploitation and domination they create then
   our relations with the natural world will hardly be any better. In
   other words, social hierarchy and class legitimises our domination of
   the environment, planting the seeds for the believe that nature exists,
   like other people, to be dominated and used as required.

   Which brings us to another key reason why anarchists reject hierarchy.
   In addition to these negative psychological effects from the denial of
   liberty, authoritarian social relationships also produce social
   inequality. This is because an individual subject to the authority of
   another has to obey the orders of those above them in the social
   hierarchy. In capitalism this means that workers have to follow the
   orders of their boss (see [11]next section), orders that are designed
   to make the boss richer. And richer they have become, with the Chief
   Executive Officers (CEOs) of big firms earning 212 times what the
   average US worker did in 1995 (up from a mere 44 times 30 years
   earlier). Indeed, from 1994 to 1995 alone, CEO compensation in the USA
   rose 16 percent, compared to 2.8 percent for workers, which did not
   even keep pace with inflation, and whose stagnating wages cannot be
   blamed on corporate profits, which rose a healthy 14.8 percent for that
   year.

   Needless to say, inequality in terms of power will translate itself
   into inequality in terms of wealth (and vice versa). The effects of
   such social inequality are wide-reaching. For example, health is
   affected significantly by inequality. Poor people are more likely to be
   sick and die at an earlier age, compared to rich people. Simply put,
   "the lower the class, the worse the health. Going beyond such static
   measures, even interruptions in income of the sort caused by
   unemployment have adverse health effects." Indeed, the sustained
   economic hardship associated with a low place in the social hierarchy
   leads to poorer physical, psychological and cognitive functioning
   ("with consequences that last a decade or more"). "Low incomes,
   unpleasant occupations and sustained discrimination," notes Doug
   Henwood, "may result in apparently physical symptoms that confuse even
   sophisticated biomedical scientists . . . Higher incomes are also
   associated with lower frequency of psychiatric disorders, as are higher
   levels of asset ownership." [After the New Economy, pp. 81-2]

   Moreover, the degree of inequality is important (i.e. the size of the
   gap between rich and poor). According to an editorial in the British
   Medical Journal "what matters in determining mortality and health in a
   society is less the overall wealth of that society and more how evenly
   wealth is distributed. The more equally wealth is distributed the
   better the health of that society." [vol. 312, April 20, 1996, p. 985]

   Research in the USA found overwhelming evidence of this. George Kaplan
   and his colleagues measured inequality in the 50 US states and compared
   it to the age-adjusted death rate for all causes of death, and a
   pattern emerged: the more unequal the distribution of income, the
   greater the death rate. In other words, it is the gap between rich and
   poor, and not the average income in each state, that best predicts the
   death rate in each state. ["Inequality in income and mortality in the
   United States: analysis of mortality and potential pathways," British
   Medical Journal, vol. 312, April 20, 1996, pp. 999-1003]

   This measure of income inequality was also tested against other social
   conditions besides health. States with greater inequality in the
   distribution of income also had higher rates of unemployment, higher
   rates of incarceration, a higher percentage of people receiving income
   assistance and food stamps, a greater percentage of people without
   medical insurance, greater proportion of babies born with low birth
   weight, higher murder rates, higher rates of violent crime, higher
   costs per-person for medical care, and higher costs per person for
   police protection. Moreover states with greater inequality of income
   distribution also spent less per person on education, had fewer books
   per person in the schools, and had poorer educational performance,
   including worse reading skills, worse mathematics skills, and lower
   rates of completion of high school.

   As the gap grows between rich and poor (indicating an increase in
   social hierarchy within and outwith of workplaces) the health of a
   people deteriorates and the social fabric unravels. The psychological
   hardship of being low down on the social ladder has detrimental effects
   on people, beyond whatever effects are produced by the substandard
   housing, nutrition, air quality, recreational opportunities, and
   medical care enjoyed by the poor (see George Davey Smith, "Income
   inequality and mortality: why are they related?" British Medical
   Journal, Vol. 312, April 20, 1996, pp. 987-988).

   So wealth does not determine health. What does is the gap between the
   rich and the poor. The larger the gap, the sicker the society.
   Countries with a greater degree of socioeconomic inequality show
   greater inequality in health status; also, that middle-income groups in
   relatively unequal societies have worse health than comparable, or even
   poorer, groups in more equal societies. Unsurprisingly, this is also
   reflected over time. The widening income differentials in both the USA
   and the UK since 1980 have coincided with a slowing down of
   improvements in life-expectancy, for example.

   Inequality, in short, is bad for our health: the health of a population
   depends not just on the size of the economic pie, but on how the pie is
   shared.

   This is not all. As well as inequalities in wealth, inequalities in
   freedom also play a large role in overall human well-being. According
   to Michael Marmot's The Status Syndrome: How Social Standing Affects
   Our Health and Longevity, as you move up any kind of hierarchy your
   health status improves. Autonomy and position in a hierarchy are
   related (i.e. the higher you are in a hierarchy, the more autonomy you
   have). Thus the implication of this empirical work is that autonomy is
   a source of good health, that the more control you have over your work
   environment and your life in general, the less likely you are to suffer
   the classic stress-related illnesses, such as heart disease. As
   public-Health scholars Jeffrey Johnson and Ellen Hall have noted, the
   "potential to control one's own environment is differentially
   distributed along class lines." [quoted by Robert Kuttner, Everything
   for Sale, p. 153]

   As would be expected from the very nature of hierarchy, to "be in a
   life situation where one experiences relentless demands by others, over
   which one has relatively little control, is to be at risk of poor
   health, physically as well as mentally." Looking at heart disease, the
   people with greatest risk "tended to be in occupations with high
   demands, low control, and low social support. People in demanding
   positions but with great autonomy were at lower risk." Under
   capitalism, "a relatively small elite demands and gets empowerment,
   self-actualisation, autonomy, and other work satisfaction that
   partially compensate for long hours" while "epidemiological data
   confirm that lower-paid, lower-status workers are more likely to
   experience the most clinically damaging forms of stress, in part
   because they have less control over their work." [Kuttner, Op. Cit., p.
   153 and p. 154]

   In other words, the inequality of autonomy and social participation
   produced by hierarchy is itself a cause of poor health. There would be
   positive feedback on the total amount of health -- and thus of social
   welfare -- if social inequality was reduced, not only in terms of
   wealth but also, crucially, in power. This is strong evidence in
   support of anarchist visions of egalitarianism. Some social structures
   give more people more autonomy than others and acting to promote social
   justice along these lines is a key step toward improving our health.
   This means that promoting libertarian, i.e. self-managed, social
   organisations would increase not only liberty but also people's health
   and well-being, both physical and mental. Which is, as we argued above,
   to be expected as hierarchy, by its very nature, impacts negatively on
   those subject to it.

   This dovetails into anarchist support for workers' control. Industrial
   psychologists have found that satisfaction in work depends on the "span
   of autonomy" works have. Unsurprisingly, those workers who are
   continually making decisions for themselves are happier and live
   longer. It is the power to control all aspects of your life -- work
   particularly -- that wealth and status tend to confer that is the key
   determinant of health. Men who have low job control face a 50% higher
   risk of new illness: heart attacks, stroke, diabetes or merely ordinary
   infections. Women are at slightly lower risk but low job control was
   still a factor in whether they fell ill or not.

   So it is the fact that the boss is a boss that makes the employment
   relationship so troublesome for health issues (and genuine
   libertarians). The more bossy the boss, the worse, as a rule is the
   job. So part of autonomy is not being bossed around, but that is only
   part of the story. And, of course, hierarchy (inequality of power) and
   exploitation (the source of material inequality) are related. As we
   indicate in the [12]next section, capitalism is based on wage labour.
   The worker sell their liberty to the boss for a given period of time,
   i.e. they loose their autonomy. This allows the possibility of
   exploitation, as the worker can produce more wealth than they receive
   back in wages. As the boss pockets the difference, lack of autonomy
   produces increases in social inequality which, in turn, impacts
   negatively on your well-being.

   Then there is the waste associated with hierarchy. While the proponents
   of authority like to stress its "efficiency," the reality is different.
   As Colin Ward points out, being in authority "derives from your rank in
   some chain of command . . . But knowledge and wisdom are not
   distributed in order of rank, and they are no one person's monopoly in
   any undertaking. The fantastic inefficiency of any hierarchical
   organisation -- any factory, office, university, warehouse or hospital
   -- is the outcome of two almost invariable characteristics. One is that
   the knowledge and wisdom of the people at the bottom of the pyramid
   finds no place in the decision-making leadership hierarchy of the
   institution. Frequently it is devoted to making the institution work in
   spite of the formal leadership structure, or alternatively to
   sabotaging the ostensible function of the institution, because it is
   none of their choosing. The other is that they would rather not be
   there anyway: they are there through economic necessity rather than
   through identification with a common task which throws up its own
   shifting and functional leadership." [Op. Cit., p. 41]

   Hierarchy, in other words, blocks the flow of information and
   knowledge. Rulers, as Malatesta argued, "can only make use of the
   forces that exist in society -- except for those great forces" their
   action "paralyses and destroys, and those rebel forces, and all that is
   wasted through conflicts; inevitable tremendous losses in such an
   artificial system." And so as well as individuals being prevented from
   developing to their fullest, wasting their unfulfilled potentialities,
   hierarchy also harms society as a whole by reducing efficiency and
   creativity. This is because input into decisions are limited "only to
   those individuals who form the government [of a hierarchical
   organisation] or who by reason of their position can influence the[ir]
   policy." Obviously this means "that far from resulting in an increase
   in the productive, organising and protective forces in society,"
   hierarchy "greatly reduce[s] them, limiting initiative to a few, and
   giving them the right to do everything without, of course, being able
   to provide them with the gift of being all-knowing." [Anarchy, p. 38
   and p. 39]

   Large scale hierarchical organisations, like the state, are also marked
   by bureaucracy. This becomes a necessity in order to gather the
   necessary information it needs to make decisions (and, obviously, to
   control those under it). However, soon this bureaucracy becomes the
   real source of power due to its permanence and control of information
   and resources. Thus hierarchy cannot "survive without creating around
   itself a new privileged class" as well as being a "privileged class and
   cut off from the people" itself. [Malatesta, Op. Cit., p. 37 and p. 36]
   This means that those at the top of an institution rarely know the
   facts on the ground, making decisions in relative ignorance of their
   impact or the actual needs of the situation or people involved. As
   economist Joseph Stiglitz concluded from his own experiences in the
   World Bank, "immense time and effort are required to effect change even
   from the inside, in an international bureaucracy. Such organisations
   are opaque rather than transparent, and not only does far too little
   information radiate from inside to the outside world, perhaps even less
   information from outside is able to penetrate the organisation. The
   opaqueness also means that it is hard for information from the bottom
   of the organisation to percolate to the top." [Globalisation and its
   Discontents, p. 33] The same can be said of any hierarchical
   organisation, whether a nation state or capitalist business.

   Moreover, as Ward and Malatesta indicate, hierarchy provokes a struggle
   between those at the bottom and at the top. This struggle is also a
   source of waste as it diverts resources and energy from more fruitful
   activity into fighting it. Ironically, as we discuss in [13]section
   H.4.4, one weapon forged in that struggle is the "work to rule," namely
   workers bringing their workplace to a grinding halt by following the
   dictates of the boss to the letter. This is clear evidence that a
   workplace only operates because workers exercise their autonomy during
   working hours, an autonomy which authoritarian structures stifle and
   waste. A participatory workplace, therefore, would be more efficient
   and less wasteful than the hierarchical one associated with capitalism.
   As we discuss in [14]section J.5.12, hierarchy and the struggle it
   creates always acts as a barrier stopping the increased efficiency
   associated with workers' participation undermining the autocratic
   workplace of capitalism.

   All this is not to suggest that those at the bottom of hierarchies are
   victims nor that those at the top of hierarchies only gain benefits --
   far from it. As Ward and Malatesta indicated, hierarchy by its very
   nature creates resistance to it from those subjected to it and, in the
   process, the potential for ending it (see [15]section B.1.6 for more
   discussion). Conversely, at the summit of the pyramid, we also see the
   evils of hierarchy.

   If we look at those at the top of the system, yes, indeed they often do
   very well in terms of material goods and access to education, leisure,
   health and so on but they lose their humanity and individuality. As
   Bakunin pointed out, "power and authority corrupt those who exercise
   them as much as those who are compelled to submit to them." [The
   Political Philosophy of Bakunin, p. 249] Power operates destructively,
   even on those who have it, reducing their individuality as it "renders
   them stupid and brutal, even when they were originally endowed with the
   best of talents. One who is constantly striving to force everything
   into a mechanical order at last becomes a machine himself and loses all
   human feeling." [Rudolf Rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism, pp. 17-8]

   When it boils down to it, hierarchy is self-defeating, for if "wealth
   is other people," then by treating others as less than yourself,
   restricting their growth, you lose all the potential insights and
   abilities these individuals have, so impoverishing your own life and
   restricting your own growth. Unfortunately in these days material
   wealth (a particularly narrow form of "self-interest") has replaced
   concern for developing the whole person and leading a fulfilling and
   creative life (a broad self-interest, which places the individual
   within society, one that recognises that relationships with others
   shape and develop all individuals). In a hierarchical, class based
   society everyone loses to some degree, even those at the "top."

   Looking at the environment, the self-defeating nature of hierarchy also
   becomes clear. The destiny of human life goes hand-in-hand with the
   destiny of the non-human world. While being rich and powerful may
   mitigate the impact of the ecological destruction produced by
   hierarchies and capitalism, it will not stop them and will, eventually,
   impact on the elite as well as the many.

   Little wonder, then, that "anarchism . . . works to destroy authority
   in all its aspects . . . [and] refuses all hierarchical organisation."
   [Kropotkin, Anarchism, p. 137]

B.1.2 Is capitalism hierarchical?

   Yes. Under capitalism workers do not exchange the products of their
   labour they exchange the labour itself for money. They sell themselves
   for a given period of time, and in return for wages, promise to obey
   their paymasters. Those who pay and give the orders -- owners and
   managers -- are at the top of the hierarchy, those who obey at the
   bottom. This means that capitalism, by its very nature, is
   hierarchical.

   As Carole Pateman argues:

     "Capacities or labour power cannot be used without the worker using
     his will, his understanding and experience, to put them into effect.
     The use of labour power requires the presence of its 'owner,' and it
     remains mere potential until he acts in the manner necessary to put
     it into use, or agrees or is compelled so to act; that is, the
     worker must labour. To contract for the use of labour power is a
     waste of resources unless it can be used in the way in which the new
     owner requires. The fiction 'labour power' cannot be used; what is
     required is that the worker labours as demanded. The employment
     contract must, therefore, create a relationship of command and
     obedience between employer and worker . . . In short, the contract
     in which the worker allegedly sells his labour power is a contract
     in which, since he cannot be separated from his capacities, he sells
     command over the use of his body and himself. To obtain the right to
     use another is to be a (civil) master." [The Sexual Contract, pp.
     150-1]

   You need only compare this to Proudhon's comments quoted in [16]section
   B.1 to see that anarchists have long recognised that capitalism is, by
   its very nature, hierarchical. The worker is subjected to the authority
   of the boss during working hours (sometimes outside work too). As Noam
   Chomsky summarises, "a corporation, factory of business is the economic
   equivalent of fascism: decisions and control are strictly top-down."
   [Letters from Lexington, p. 127] The worker's choices are extremely
   limited, for most people it amount to renting themselves out to a
   series of different masters (for a lucky few, the option of being a
   master is available). And master is the right word for, as David
   Ellerman reminds us, "[s]ociety seems to have 'covered up' in the
   popular consciousness the fact that the traditional name [for employer
   and employee] is 'master and servant.'" [Property and Contract in
   Economics, p. 103]

   This hierarchical control of wage labour has the effect of alienating
   workers from their own work, and so from themselves. Workers no longer
   govern themselves during work hours and so are no longer free. And so,
   due to capitalism, there is "an oppression in the land," a "form of
   slavery" rooted in current "property institutions" which produces "a
   social war, inevitable so long as present legal-social conditions
   endure." [Voltairine de Cleyre, Op. Cit., pp. 54-5]

   Some defenders of capitalism are aware of the contradiction between the
   rhetoric of the system and its reality for those subject to it. Most
   utilise the argument that workers consent to this form of hierarchy.
   Ignoring the economic conditions which force people to sell their
   liberty on the labour market (see [17]section B.4.3), the issue
   instantly arises of whether consent is enough in itself to justify the
   alienation/selling of a person's liberty. For example, there have been
   arguments for slavery and monarchy (i.e. dictatorship) rooted in
   consent. Do we really want to say that the only thing wrong with
   fascism or slavery is that people do not consent to it? Sadly, some
   right-wing "libertarians" come to that conclusion (see [18]section
   B.4).

   Some try to redefine the reality of the command-and-obey of wage
   labour. "To speak of managing, directing, or assigning workers to
   various tasks is a deceptive way of noting that the employer
   continually is involved in re-negotiation of contracts on terms that
   must be acceptable to both parties," argue two right-wing economists.
   [Arman Alchian and Harold Demsetz, quoted by Ellerman, Op. Cit., p.
   170] So the employer-employee (or, to use the old, more correct,
   terminology, master-servant) contract is thus a series of unspoken
   contracts.

   However, if an oral contract is not worth the paper it is written on,
   how valuable is an unspoken one? And what does this "re-negotiation of
   contracts" amount to? The employee decides whether to obey the command
   or leave and the boss decides whether the employee is obedient and
   productive enough to remain in under his or her control. Hardly a
   relationship based on freedom between equal partners! As such, this
   capitalist defence of wage labour "is a deceptive way of noting" that
   the employee is paid to obey. The contract between them is simply that
   of obedience on one side and power on the other. That both sides may
   break the contract does not alter this fact. Thus the capitalist
   workplace "is not democratic in spite of the 'consent of the governed'
   to the employment contract . . . In the employment contract, the
   workers alienate and transfer their legal rights to the employer to
   govern their activities 'within the scope of the employment' to the
   employer." [David Ellerman, The Democratic Worker-Owned Firm, p. 50]

   Ultimately, there is one right that cannot be ceded or abandoned,
   namely the right to personality. If a person gave up their personality
   they would cease to be a person yet this is what the employment
   contract imposes. To maintain and develop their personality is a basic
   right of humanity and it cannot be transferred to another, permanently
   or temporarily. To argue otherwise would be to admit that under certain
   circumstances and for certain periods of time a person is not a person
   but rather a thing to be used by others. Yet this is precisely what
   capitalism does due to its hierarchical nature.

   This is not all. Capitalism, by treating labour as analogous to all
   other commodities denies the key distinction between labour and other
   "resources" - that is to say its inseparability from its bearer -
   labour, unlike other "property," is endowed with will and agency. Thus
   when one speaks of selling labour there is a necessary subjugation of
   will (hierarchy). As Karl Polanyi writes:

     "Labour is only another name for human activity which goes with life
     itself, which is in turn not produced for sale but for entirely
     different reasons, nor can that activity be detached from the rest
     of life itself, be stored or mobilised . . . To allow the market
     mechanism to be sole director of the fate of human beings and their
     natural environment . . . would result in the demolition of society.
     For the alleged commodity 'labour power' cannot be shoved about,
     used indiscriminately, or even left unused, without affecting also
     the human individual who happens to be the bearer of this peculiar
     commodity. In disposing of a man's labour power the system would,
     incidentally, dispose of the physical, psychological, and moral
     entity 'man' attached to that tag." [The Great Transformation, p.
     72]

   In other words, labour is much more than the commodity to which
   capitalism tries to reduce it. Creative, self-managed work is a source
   of pride and joy and part of what it means to be fully human. Wrenching
   control of work from the hands of the worker profoundly harms his or
   her mental and physical health. Indeed, Proudhon went so far as to
   argue that capitalist companies "plunder the bodies and souls of the
   wage-workers" and were an "outrage upon human dignity and personality."
   [Op. Cit., p. 219] This is because wage labour turns productive
   activity and the person who does it into a commodity. People "are not
   human beings so much as human resources. To the morally blind
   corporation, they are tool to generate as much profit as possible. And
   'the tool can be treated just like a piece of metal -- you use it if
   you want, you throw it away if you don't want it,' says Noam Chomsky.
   'If you can get human beings to become tool like that, it's more
   efficient by some measure of efficiency . . . a measure which is based
   on dehumanisation. You have to dehumanise it. That's part of the
   system.'" [Joel Bakan, The Corporation, p. 69]

   Separating labour from other activities of life and subjecting it to
   the laws of the market means to annihilate its natural, organic form of
   existence -- a form that evolved with the human race through tens of
   thousands of years of co-operative economic activity based on sharing
   and mutual aid -- and replacing it with an atomistic and
   individualistic one based on contract and competition. Unsurprisingly,
   this relationship is a very recent development and, moreover, the
   product of substantial state action and coercion (see [19]section F.8
   for some discussion of this). Simply put, "the early labourer . . .
   abhorred the factory, where he [or she] felt degraded and tortured."
   While the state ensured a steady pool of landless workers by enforcing
   private property rights, the early manufacturers also utilised the
   state to ensure low wages, primarily for social reasons -- only an
   overworked and downtrodden labourer with no other options would agree
   to do whatever their master required of them. "Legal compulsion and
   parish serfdom as in England," noted Polanyi, "the rigors of an
   absolutist labour police as on the Continent, indented labour as in the
   early Americas were the prerequisites of the 'willing worker.'" [Op.
   Cit., pp. 164-5]

   Ignoring its origins in state action, the social relationship of wage
   labour is then claimed by capitalists to be a source of "freedom,"
   whereas in fact it is a form of (in)voluntary servitude (see sections
   [20]B.4 and [21]A.2.14 for more discussion). Therefore a libertarian
   who did not support economic liberty (i.e. self-government in industry,
   libertarian socialism) would be no libertarian at all, and no believer
   in liberty. Capitalism is based upon hierarchy and the denial of
   liberty. To present it otherwise denies the nature of wage labour.
   However, supporters of capitalism try to but -- as Karl Polanyi points
   out -- the idea that wage labour is based upon some kind of "natural"
   liberty is false:

     "To represent this principle [wage labour] as one of
     non-interference [with freedom], as economic liberals were wont to
     do, was merely the expression of an ingrained prejudice in favour of
     a definite kind of interference, namely, such as would destroy
     non-contractual relations between individuals and prevent their
     spontaneous re-formation." [Op. Cit., p.163]

   As noted above, capitalism itself was created by state violence and the
   destruction of traditional ways of life and social interaction was part
   of that task. From the start, bosses spent considerable time and energy
   combating attempts of working people to join together to resist the
   hierarchy they were subjected to and reassert human values. Such forms
   of free association between equals (such as trade unions) were
   combated, just as attempts to regulate the worse excesses of the system
   by democratic governments. Indeed, capitalists prefer centralised,
   elitist and/or authoritarian regimes precisely because they are sure to
   be outside of popular control (see [22]section B.2.5). They are the
   only way that contractual relations based on market power could be
   enforced on an unwilling population. Capitalism was born under such
   states and as well as backing fascist movements, they made high profits
   in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Today many corporations "regularly
   do business with totalitarian and authoritarian regimes -- again,
   because it is profitable to do so." Indeed, there is a "trend by US
   corporations to invest in" such countries. [Joel Bakan, Op. Cit., p. 89
   and p. 185] Perhaps unsurprisingly, as such regimes are best able to
   enforce the necessary conditions to commodify labour fully.

B.1.3 What kind of hierarchy of values does capitalism create?

   Anarchists argue that capitalism can only have a negative impact on
   ethical behaviour. This flows from its hierarchical nature. We think
   that hierarchy must, by its very nature, always impact negatively on
   morality.

   As we argued in [23]section A.2.19, ethics is dependent on both
   individual liberty and equality between individuals. Hierarchy violates
   both and so the "great sources of moral depravity" are "capitalism,
   religion, justice, government." In "the domain of economy, coercion has
   lead us to industrial servitude; in the domain of politics to the State
   . . . [where] the nation . . . becomes nothing but a mass of obedient
   subjects to a central authority." This has "contributed and powerfully
   aided to create all the present economic, political, and social evils"
   and "has given proof of its absolute impotence to raise the moral level
   of societies; it has not even been able to maintain it at the level it
   had already reached." This is unsurprising, as society developed
   "authoritarian prejudices" and "men become more and more divided into
   governors and governed, exploiters and exploited, the moral level fell
   . . . and the spirit of the age declined." By violating equality, by
   rejecting social co-operation between equals in favour of top-down,
   authoritarian, social relationships which turn some into the tools of
   others, capitalism, like the state, could not help but erode ethical
   standards as the "moral level" of society is "debased by the practice
   of authority." [Kropotkin, Anarchism, pp. 137-8, p. 106 and p. 139]

   However, as we as promoting general unethical behaviour, capitalism
   produces a specific perverted hierarchy of values -- one that places
   humanity below property. As Erich Fromm argues:

     "The use [i.e. exploitation] of man by man is expressive of the
     system of values underlying the capitalistic system. Capital, the
     dead past, employs labour -- the living vitality and power of the
     present. In the capitalistic hierarchy of values, capital stands
     higher than labour, amassed things higher than the manifestations of
     life. Capital employs labour, and not labour capital. The person who
     owns capital commands the person who 'only' owns his life, human
     skill, vitality and creative productivity. 'Things' are higher than
     man. The conflict between capital and labour is much more than the
     conflict between two classes, more than their fight for a greater
     share of the social product. It is the conflict between two
     principles of value: that between the world of things, and their
     amassment, and the world of life and its productivity." [The Sane
     Society, pp. 94-95]

   Capitalism only values a person as representing a certain amount of the
   commodity called "labour power," in other words, as a thing. Instead of
   being valued as an individual -- a unique human being with intrinsic
   moral and spiritual worth -- only one's price tag counts. This
   replacement of human relationships by economic ones soon results in the
   replacement of human values by economic ones, giving us an "ethics" of
   the account book, in which people are valued by how much they earn. It
   also leads, as Murray Bookchin argues, to a debasement of human values:

     "So deeply rooted is the market economy in our minds that its grubby
     language has replaced our most hallowed moral and spiritual
     expressions. We now 'invest' in our children, marriages, and
     personal relationships, a term that is equated with words like
     'love' and 'care.' We live in a world of 'trade-offs' and we ask for
     the 'bottom line' of any emotional 'transaction.' We use the
     terminology of contracts rather than that of loyalties and spiritual
     affinities." [The Modern Crisis, p. 79]

   With human values replaced by the ethics of calculation, and with only
   the laws of market and state "binding" people together, social
   breakdown is inevitable. Little wonder modern capitalism has seen a
   massive increase in crime and dehumanisation under the freer markets
   established by "conservative" governments, such as those of Thatcher
   and Reagan and their transnational corporate masters. We now live in a
   society where people live in self-constructed fortresses, "free" behind
   their walls and defences (both emotional and physical).

   Of course, some people like the "ethics" of mathematics. But this is
   mostly because -- like all gods -- it gives the worshipper an easy rule
   book to follow. "Five is greater than four, therefore five is better"
   is pretty simple to understand. John Steinbeck noticed this when he
   wrote:

     "Some of them [the owners] hated the mathematics that drove them [to
     kick the farmers off their land], and some were afraid, and some
     worshipped the mathematics because it provided a refuge from thought
     and from feeling." [The Grapes of Wrath, p. 34]

   The debasement of the individual in the workplace, where so much time
   is spent, necessarily affects a person's self-image, which in turn
   carries over into the way he or she acts in other areas of life. If one
   is regarded as a commodity at work, one comes to regard oneself and
   others in that way also. Thus all social relationships -- and so,
   ultimately, all individuals -- are commodified. In capitalism,
   literally nothing is sacred -- "everything has its price" -- be it
   dignity, self-worth, pride, honour -- all become commodities up for
   grabs. Such debasement produces a number of social pathologies.
   "Consumerism" is one example which can be traced directly to the
   commodification of the individual under capitalism. To quote Fromm
   again, "Things have no self, and men who have become things [i.e.
   commodities on the labour market] can have no self." [Op. Cit., p. 143]

   However, people still feel the need for selfhood, and so try to fill
   the emptiness by consuming. The illusion of happiness, that one's life
   will be complete if one gets a new commodity, drives people to consume.
   Unfortunately, since commodities are yet more things, they provide no
   substitute for selfhood, and so the consuming must begin anew. This
   process is, of course, encouraged by the advertising industry, which
   tries to convince us to buy what we don't need because it will make us
   popular/sexy/happy/free/etc. (delete as appropriate!). But consuming
   cannot really satisfy the needs that the commodities are bought to
   satisfy. Those needs can only be satisfied by social interaction based
   on truly human values and by creative, self-directed work.

   This does not mean, of course, that anarchists are against higher
   living standards or material goods. To the contrary, they recognise
   that liberty and a good life are only possible when one does not have
   to worry about having enough food, decent housing, and so forth.
   Freedom and 16 hours of work a day do not go together, nor do equality
   and poverty or solidarity and hunger. However, anarchists consider
   consumerism to be a distortion of consumption caused by the alienating
   and inhuman "account book" ethics of capitalism, which crushes the
   individual and his or her sense of identity, dignity and selfhood.

B.1.4 Why do racism, sexism and homophobia exist?

   Since racism, sexism and homophobia (hatred/fear of homosexuals) are
   institutionalised throughout society, sexual, racial and gay oppression
   are commonplace. The primary cause of these three evil attitudes is the
   need for ideologies that justify domination and exploitation, which are
   inherent in hierarchy -- in other words, "theories" that "justify" and
   "explain" oppression and injustice. As Tacitus said, "We hate those
   whom we injure." Those who oppress others always find reasons to regard
   their victims as "inferior" and hence deserving of their fate. Elites
   need some way to justify their superior social and economic positions.
   Since the social system is obviously unfair and elitist, attention must
   be distracted to other, less inconvenient, "facts," such as alleged
   superiority based on biology or "nature." Therefore, doctrines of
   sexual, racial, and ethnic superiority are inevitable in hierarchical,
   class-stratified societies.

   We will take each form of bigotry in turn.

   From an economic standpoint, racism is associated with the exploitation
   of cheap labour at home and imperialism abroad. Indeed, early
   capitalist development in both America and Europe was strengthened by
   the bondage of people, particularly those of African descent. In the
   Americas, Australia and other parts of the world the slaughter of the
   original inhabitants and the expropriation of their land was also a key
   aspect in the growth of capitalism. As the subordination of foreign
   nations proceeds by force, it appears to the dominant nation that it
   owes its mastery to its special natural qualities, in other words to
   its "racial" characteristics. Thus imperialists have frequently
   appealed to the Darwinian doctrine of "Survival of the Fittest" to give
   their racism a basis in "nature."

   In Europe, one of the first theories of racial superiority was proposed
   by Gobineau in the 1850s to establish the natural right of the
   aristocracy to rule over France. He argued that the French aristocracy
   was originally of Germanic origin while the "masses" were Gallic or
   Celtic, and that since the Germanic race was "superior", the
   aristocracy had a natural right to rule. Although the French "masses"
   didn't find this theory particularly persuasive, it was later taken up
   by proponents of German expansion and became the origin of German
   racial ideology, used to justify Nazi oppression of Jews and other
   "non-Aryan" types. Notions of the "white man's burden" and "Manifest
   Destiny" developed at about the same time in England and to a lesser
   extent in America, and were used to rationalise Anglo-Saxon conquest
   and world domination on a "humanitarian" basis.

   Racism and authoritarianism at home and abroad has gone hand in hand.
   As Rudolf Rocker argued, "[a]ll advocates of the race doctrine have
   been and are the associates and defenders of every political and social
   reaction, advocates of the power principle in its most brutal form . .
   . He who thinks that he sees in all political and social antagonisms
   merely blood-determined manifestations of race, denies all conciliatory
   influence of ideas, all community of ethical feeling, and must at every
   crisis take refuge in brute force. In fact, race theory is only the
   cult of power." Racism aids the consolidation of elite power for by
   attacking "all the achievements . . . in the direction of personal
   freedom" and the idea of equality "[n]o better moral justification
   could be produced for the industrial bondage which our holders of
   industrial power keep before them as a picture of the future."
   [Nationalism and Culture, pp. 337-8]

   The idea of racial superiority was also found to have great domestic
   utility. As Paul Sweezy points out, "[t]he intensification of social
   conflict within the advanced capitalist countries. . . has to be
   directed as far as possible into innocuous channels -- innocuous, that
   is to say, from the standpoint of capitalist class rule. The stirring
   up of antagonisms along racial lines is a convenient method of
   directing attention away from class struggle," which of course is
   dangerous to ruling-class interests. [Theory of Capitalist Development,
   p. 311] Indeed, employers have often deliberately fostered divisions
   among workers on racial lines as part of a strategy of "divide and
   rule" (in other contexts, like Northern Ireland or Scotland, the
   employers have used religion in the same way instead).

   Employers and politicians have often deliberately fostered divisions
   among workers on racial lines as part of a strategy of "divide and
   rule." In other contexts, like Tzarist Russia, Northern Ireland or
   Scotland, the employers have used religion in the same way. In others,
   immigrants and native born is the dividing line. The net effect is the
   same, social oppressions which range from the extreme violence
   anarchists like Emma Goldman denounced in the American South ("the
   atrocities rampant in the South, of negroes lynched, tortured and
   burned by infuriated crowds without a hand being raised or a word said
   for their protection" [Emma Goldman: A Documentary History of the
   American Years, vol. 1, p. 386]) or the pogroms against Jews in Tsarist
   Russia to discrimination in where people can live, what jobs people can
   get, less pay and so on.

   For those in power, this makes perfect sense as racism (like other
   forms of bigotry) can be used to split and divide the working class by
   getting people to blame others of their class for the conditions they
   all suffer. In this way, the anger people feel about the problems they
   face are turned away from their real causes onto scapegoats. Thus white
   workers are subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) encouraged, for
   example, to blame unemployment, poverty and crime on blacks or
   Hispanics instead of capitalism and the (white, male) elites who run it
   and who directly benefit from low wages and high profits.
   Discrimination against racial minorities and women makes sense for
   capitalism, for in this way profits are enlarged directly and
   indirectly. As jobs and investment opportunities are denied to the
   disadvantaged groups, their wages can be depressed below prevailing
   levels and profits, correspondingly, increased. Indirectly,
   discrimination adds capitalist profits and power by increasing
   unemployment and setting workers against each other. Such factors
   ensure that capitalism will never "compete" discrimination way as some
   free-market capitalist economists argue.

   In other words, capitalism has benefited and will continue to benefit
   from its racist heritage. Racism has provided pools of cheap labour for
   capitalists to draw upon and permitted a section of the population to
   be subjected to worse treatment, so increasing profits by reducing
   working conditions and other non-pay related costs. In America, blacks
   still get paid less than whites for the same work (around 10% less than
   white workers with the same education, work experience, occupation and
   other relevent demographic variables). This is transferred into wealth
   inequalities. In 1998, black incomes were 54% of white incomes while
   black net worth (including residential) was 12% and nonresidential net
   worth just 3% of white. For Hispanics, the picture was similar with
   incomes just 62% of whites, net worth, 4% and nonresidential net worth
   0%. While just under 15% of white households had zero or negative net
   worth, 27% of black households and 36% Hispanic were in the same
   situation. Even at similar levels of income, black households were
   significantly less wealthy than white ones. [Doug Henwood, After the
   New Economy, p. 99 and pp. 125-6]

   All this means that racial minorities are "subjected to oppression and
   exploitation on the dual grounds of race and class, and thus have to
   fight the extra battles against racism and discrimination." [Lorenzo
   Kom'boa Ervin, Anarchism and the Black Revolution, p. 126]

   Sexism only required a "justification" once women started to act for
   themselves and demand equal rights. Before that point, sexual
   oppression did not need to be "justified" -- it was "natural" (saying
   that, of course, equality between the sexes was stronger before the
   rise of Christianity as a state religion and capitalism so the "place"
   of women in society has fallen over the last few hundred years before
   rising again thanks to the women's movement).

   The nature of sexual oppression can be seen from marriage. Emma Goldman
   pointed out that marriage "stands for the sovereignty of the man over
   the women," with her "complete submission" to the husbands "whims and
   commands." [Red Emma Speaks, p. 164] As Carole Pateman notes, until
   "the late nineteenth century the legal and civil position of a wife
   resembled that of a slave. . . A slave had no independent legal
   existence apart from his master, and husband and wife became 'one
   person,' the person of the husband." Indeed, the law "was based on the
   assumption that a wife was (like) property" and only the marriage
   contract "includes the explicit commitment to obey." [The Sexual
   Contract, p. 119, p. 122 and p. 181]

   However, when women started to question the assumptions of male
   domination, numerous theories were developed to explain why women's
   oppression and domination by men was "natural." Because men enforced
   their rule over women by force, men's "superiority" was argued to be a
   "natural" product of their gender, which is associated with greater
   physical strength (on the premise that "might makes right"). In the
   17th century, it was argued that women were more like animals than men,
   thus "proving" that women had as much right to equality with men as
   sheep did. More recently, elites have embraced socio-biology in
   response to the growing women's movement. By "explaining" women's
   oppression on biological grounds, a social system run by men and for
   men could be ignored.

   Women's subservient role also has economic value for capitalism (we
   should note that Goldman considered capitalism to be another "paternal
   arrangement" like marriage, both of which robbed people of their
   "birthright," "stunts" their growth, "poisons" their bodies and keeps
   people in "ignorance, in poverty and dependence." [Op. Cit., p. 210]).
   Women often provide necessary (and unpaid) labour which keeps the
   (usually) male worker in good condition; and it is primarily women who
   raise the next generation of wage-slaves (again without pay) for
   capitalist owners to exploit. Moreover, women's subordination gives
   working-class men someone to look down upon and, sometimes, a
   convenient target on whom they can take out their frustrations (instead
   of stirring up trouble at work). As Lucy Parsons pointed out, a working
   class woman is "a slave to a slave."

   Sexism, like all forms of bigotry, is reflected in relative incomes and
   wealth levels. In the US women, on average, were being paid 57% the
   amount men were in 2001 (an improvement than the 39% 20 years earlier).
   Part of this is due to fewer women working than men, but for those who
   do work outside the home their incomes were 66% than of men's (up from
   47% in 1980 and 38% in 1970). Those who work full time, their incomes
   76% of men's, up from the 60% average through most of the 1970s.
   However, as with the black-white gap, this is due in part to the
   stagnant income of male workers (in 1998 men's real incomes were just
   1% above 1989 levels while women's were 14% above). So rather than the
   increase in income being purely the result of women entering
   high-paying and largely male occupations and them closing the gender
   gap, it has also been the result of the intense attacks on the working
   class since the 1980s which has de-unionised and de-industrialised
   America. This has resulted in a lot of high-paying male jobs have been
   lost and more and more women have entered the job market to make sure
   their families make ends. [Henwood, Op. Cit., p. 91-2]

   Turning away from averages, we discover that sexism results in women
   being paid about 12% less than men during the same job, with the same
   relative variables (like work experience, education and so forth).
   Needless to say, as with racism, such "relevant variables" are
   themselves shaped by discrimination. Women, like blacks, are less
   likely to get job interviews and jobs. Sexism even affects types of
   jobs, for example, "caring" professions pay less than non-caring ones
   because they are seen as feminine and involve the kinds of tasks which
   women do at home without pay. In general, female dominated industries
   pay less. In 1998, occupations that were over 90% male had a median
   wage almost 10% above average while those over 90% female, almost 25%
   below. One study found that a 30% increase in women in an occupation
   translated into a 10% decline in average pay. Needless to say, having
   children is bad economic news for most women (women with children earn
   10 to 15% less than women without children while for men the opposite
   is the case). Having maternity level, incidentally, have a far smaller
   motherhood penalty. [Henwood, Op. Cit., p. 95-7]

   The oppression of lesbians, gays and bisexuals is inextricably linked
   with sexism. A patriarchal, capitalist society cannot see homosexual
   practices as the normal human variations they are because they blur
   that society's rigid gender roles and sexist stereotypes. Most young
   gay people keep their sexuality to themselves for fear of being kicked
   out of home and all gays have the fear that some "straights" will try
   to kick their sexuality out of them if they express their sexuality
   freely. As with those subject to other forms of bigotry, gays are also
   discriminated against economically (gay men earning about 4-7% less
   than the average straight man [Henwood, Op. Cit., p. 100]). Thus the
   social oppression which result in having an alternative sexuality are
   experienced on many different levels, from extreme violence to less pay
   for doing the same work.

   Gays are not oppressed on a whim but because of the specific need of
   capitalism for the nuclear family. The nuclear family, as the primary -
   and inexpensive - creator of submissive people (growing up within the
   authoritarian family gets children used to, and "respectful" of,
   hierarchy and subordination - see [24]section B.1.5) as well as
   provider and carer for the workforce fulfils an important need for
   capitalism. Alternative sexualities represent a threat to the family
   model because they provide a different role model for people. This
   means that gays are going to be in the front line of attack whenever
   capitalism wants to reinforce "family values" (i.e. submission to
   authority, "tradition", "morality" and so on). The introduction of
   Clause 28 in Britain is a good example of this, with the government
   making it illegal for public bodies to promote gay sexuality (i.e. to
   present it as anything other than a perversion). In American, the right
   is also seeking to demonise homosexuality as part of their campaign to
   reinforce the values of the patriarchal family unit and submission to
   "traditional" authority. Therefore, the oppression of people based on
   their sexuality is unlikely to end until sexism is eliminated.

   This is not all. As well as adversely affecting those subject to them,
   sexism, racism and homophobia are harmful to those who practice them
   (and in some way benefit from them) within the working class itself.
   Why this should be the case is obvious, once you think about it. All
   three divide the working class, which means that whites, males and
   heterosexuals hurt themselves by maintaining a pool of low-paid
   competing labour, ensuring low wages for their own wives, daughters,
   mothers, relatives and friends. Such divisions create inferior
   conditions and wages for all as capitalists gain a competitive
   advantage using this pool of cheap labour, forcing all capitalists to
   cut conditions and wages to survive in the market (in addition, such
   social hierarchies, by undermining solidarity against the employer on
   the job and the state possibly create a group of excluded workers who
   could become scabs during strikes). Also, "privileged" sections of the
   working class lose out because their wages and conditions are less than
   those which unity could have won them. Only the boss really wins.

   This can be seen from research into this subject. The researcher Al
   Szymanski sought to systematically and scientifically test the
   proposition that white workers gain from racism ["Racial Discrimination
   and White Gain", in American Sociological Review, vol. 41, no. 3, June
   1976, pp. 403-414]. He compared the situation of "white" and
   "non-white" (i.e. black, Native American, Asian and Hispanic) workers
   in United States and found several key things:

   (1) the narrower the gap between white and black wages in an American
       state, the higher white earnings were relative to white earnings
       elsewhere. This means that "whites do not benefit economically by
       economic discrimination. White workers especially appear to benefit
       economically from the absence of economic discrimination. . . both
       in the absolute level of their earnings and in relative equality
       among whites." [p. 413] In other words, the less wage
       discrimination there was against black workers, the better were the
       wages that white workers received.
       (2) the more "non-white" people in the population of a given
       American State, the more inequality there was between whites. In
       other words, the existence of a poor, oppressed group of workers
       reduced the wages of white workers, although it did not affect the
       earnings of non-working class whites very much ("the greater the
       discrimination against [non-white] people, the greater the
       inequality among whites" [p. 410]). So white workers clearly lost
       economically from this discrimination.
       (3) He also found that "the more intense racial discrimination is,
       the lower are the white earnings because of . . . [its effect on]
       working-class solidarity." [p. 412] In other words, racism
       economically disadvantages white workers because it undermines the
       solidarity between black and white workers and weakens trade union
       organisation.

   So overall, these white workers receive some apparent privileges from
   racism, but are in fact screwed by it. Thus racism and other forms of
   hierarchy actually works against the interests of those working class
   people who practice it -- and, by weakening workplace and social unity,
   benefits the ruling class:

     "As long as discrimination exists and racial or ethnic minorities
     are oppressed, the entire working class is weakened. This is so
     because the Capitalist class is able to use racism to drive down the
     wages of individual segments of the working class by inciting racial
     antagonism and forcing a fight for jobs and services. This division
     is a development that ultimately undercuts the living standards of
     all workers. Moreover, by pitting Whites against Blacks and other
     oppressed nationalities, the Capitalist class is able to prevent
     workers from uniting against their common enemy. As long as workers
     are fighting each other, the Capitalist class is secure." [Lorenzo
     Kom'boa Ervin, Op. Cit., pp. 12-3]

   In addition, a wealth of alternative viewpoints, insights, experiences,
   cultures, thoughts and so on are denied the racist, sexist or
   homophobe. Their minds are trapped in a cage, stagnating within a
   mono-culture -- and stagnation is death for the personality. Such forms
   of oppression are dehumanising for those who practice them, for the
   oppressor lives as a role, not as a person, and so are restricted by it
   and cannot express their individuality freely (and so do so in very
   limited ways). This warps the personality of the oppressor and
   impoverishes their own life and personality. Homophobia and sexism also
   limits the flexibility of all people, gay or straight, to choose the
   sexual expressions and relationships that are right for them. The
   sexual repression of the sexist and homophobe will hardly be good for
   their mental health, their relationships or general development.

   From the anarchist standpoint, oppression based on race, sex or
   sexuality will remain forever intractable under capitalism or, indeed,
   under any economic or political system based on domination and
   exploitation. While individual members of "minorities" may prosper,
   racism as a justification for inequality is too useful a tool for
   elites to discard. By using the results of racism (e.g. poverty) as a
   justification for racist ideology, criticism of the status quo can, yet
   again, be replaced by nonsense about "nature" and "biology." Similarly
   with sexism or discrimination against gays.

   The long-term solution is obvious: dismantle capitalism and the
   hierarchical, economically class-stratified society with which it is
   bound up. By getting rid of capitalist oppression and exploitation and
   its consequent imperialism and poverty, we will also eliminate the need
   for ideologies of racial or sexual superiority used to justify the
   oppression of one group by another or to divide and weaken the working
   class. However, struggles against bigotry cannot be left until after a
   revolution. If they were two things are likely: one, such a revolution
   would be unlikely to happen and, two, if it were then these problems
   would more than likely remain in the new society created by it.
   Therefore the negative impacts of inequality can and must be fought in
   the here and now, like any form of hierarchy. Indeed, as we discuss in
   more detail [25]section B.1.6 by doing so we make life a bit better in
   the here and now as well as bringing the time when such inequalities
   are finally ended nearer. Only this can ensure that we can all live as
   free and equal individuals in a world without the blights of sexism,
   racism, homophobia or religious hatred.

   Needless to say, anarchists totally reject the kind of "equality" that
   accepts other kinds of hierarchy, that accepts the dominant priorities
   of capitalism and the state and accedes to the devaluation of
   relationships and individuality in name of power and wealth. There is a
   kind of "equality" in having "equal opportunities," in having black,
   gay or women bosses and politicians, but one that misses the point.
   Saying "Me too!" instead of "What a mess!" does not suggest real
   liberation, just different bosses and new forms of oppression. We need
   to look at the way society is organised, not at the sex, colour,
   nationality or sexuality of who is giving the orders!

B.1.5 How is the mass-psychological basis for authoritarian civilisation
created?

   We noted in [26]section A.3.6 that hierarchical, authoritarian
   institutions tend to be self-perpetuating, because growing up under
   their influence creates submissive/authoritarian personalities --
   people who both "respect" authority (based on fear of punishment) and
   desire to exercise it themselves on subordinates. Individuals with such
   a character structure do not really want to dismantle hierarchies,
   because they are afraid of the responsibility entailed by genuine
   freedom. It seems "natural" and "right" to them that society's
   institutions, from the authoritarian factory to the patriarchal family,
   should be pyramidal, with an elite at the top giving orders while those
   below them merely obey. Thus we have the spectacle of so-called
   "Libertarians" and "anarcho" capitalists bleating about "liberty" while
   at the same time advocating factory fascism and privatised states. In
   short, authoritarian civilisation reproduces itself with each
   generation because, through an intricate system of conditioning that
   permeates every aspect of society, it creates masses of people who
   support the status quo.

   Wilhelm Reich has given one of the most thorough analyses of the
   psychological processes involved in the reproduction of authoritarian
   civilisation. Reich based his analysis on four of Freud's most solidly
   grounded discoveries, namely, (1) that there exists an unconscious part
   of the mind which has a powerful though irrational influence on
   behaviour; (2) that even the small child develops a lively "genital"
   sexuality, i.e. a desire for sexual pleasure which has nothing to do
   with procreation; (3) that childhood sexuality along with the Oedipal
   conflicts that arise in parent-child relations under monogamy and
   patriarchy are usually repressed through fear of punishment or
   disapproval for sexual acts and thoughts; (4) that this blocking of the
   child's natural sexual activity and extinguishing it from memory does
   not weaken its force in the unconscious, but actually intensifies it
   and enables it to manifest itself in various pathological disturbances
   and anti-social drives; and (5) that, far from being of divine origin,
   human moral codes are derived from the educational measures used by the
   parents and parental surrogates in earliest childhood, the most
   effective of these being the ones opposed to childhood sexuality.

   By studying Bronislaw Malinowsli's research on the Trobriand Islanders,
   a woman-centred (matricentric) society in which children's sexual
   behaviour was not repressed and in which neuroses and perversions as
   well as authoritarian institutions and values were almost non-existent,
   Reich came to the conclusion that patriarchy and authoritarianism
   originally developed when tribal chieftains began to get economic
   advantages from a certain type of marriage ("cross-cousin marriages")
   entered into by their sons. In such marriages, the brothers of the
   son's wife were obliged to pay a dowry to her in the form of continuous
   tribute, thus enriching her husband's clan (i.e. the chief's). By
   arranging many such marriages for his sons (which were usually numerous
   due to the chief's privilege of polygamy), the chief's clan could
   accumulate wealth. Thus society began to be stratified into ruling and
   subordinate clans based on wealth.

   To secure the permanence of these "good" marriages, strict monogamy was
   required. However, it was found that monogamy was impossible to
   maintain without the repression of childhood sexuality, since, as
   statistics show, children who are allowed free expression of sexuality
   often do not adapt successfully to life-long monogamy. Therefore, along
   with class stratification and private property, authoritarian
   child-rearing methods were developed to inculcate the repressive sexual
   morality on which the new patriarchal system depended for its
   reproduction. Thus there is a historical correlation between, on the
   one hand, pre-patriarchal society, primitive libertarian communism (or
   "work democracy," to use Reich's expression), economic equality, and
   sexual freedom, and on the other, patriarchal society, a
   private-property economy, economic class stratification, and sexual
   repression. As Reich puts it:

     "Every tribe that developed from a [matricentric] to a patriarchal
     organisation had to change the sexual structure of its members to
     produce a sexuality in keeping with its new form of life. This was a
     necessary change because the shifting of power and of wealth from
     the democratic gens [maternal clans] to the authoritarian family of
     the chief was mainly implemented with the help of the suppression of
     the sexual strivings of the people. It was in this way that sexual
     suppression became an essential factor in the division of society
     into classes.

     "Marriage, and the lawful dowry it entailed, became the axis of the
     transformation of the one organisation into the other. In view of
     the fact that the marriage tribute of the wife's gens to the man's
     family strengthened the male's, especially the chief's, position of
     power, the male members of the higher ranking gens and families
     developed a keen interest in making the nuptial ties permanent. At
     this stage, in other words, only the man had an interest in
     marriage. In this way natural work-democracy's simple alliance,
     which could be easily dissolved at any time, was transformed into
     the permanent and monogamous marital relationship of patriarchy. The
     permanent monogamous marriage became the basic institution of
     patriarchal society -- which it still is today. To safeguard these
     marriages, however, it was necessary to impose greater and greater
     restrictions upon and to depreciate natural genital strivings."
     [The Mass Psychology of Fascism, p. 90]

   The suppression of natural sexuality involved in this transformation
   from matricentric to patriarchal society created various anti-social
   drives (sadism, destructive impulses, rape fantasies, etc.), which then
   also had to be suppressed through the imposition of a compulsive
   morality, which took the place the natural self-regulation that one
   finds in pre-patriarchal societies. In this way, sex began to be
   regarded as "dirty," "diabolical," "wicked," etc. -- which it had
   indeed become through the creation of secondary drives. Thus:

     "The patriarchal- authoritarian sexual order that resulted from the
     revolutionary processes of latter-day [matricentrism] (economic
     independence of the chief's family from the maternal gens, a growing
     exchange of goods between the tribes, development of the means of
     production, etc.) becomes the primary basis of authoritarian
     ideology by depriving the women, children, and adolescents of their
     sexual freedom, making a commodity of sex and placing sexual
     interests in the service of economic subjugation. From now on,
     sexuality is indeed distorted; it becomes diabolical and demonic and
     has to be curbed." [Reich, Op. Cit., p. 88]

   Once the beginnings of patriarchy are in place, the creation of a fully
   authoritarian society based on the psychological crippling of its
   members through sexual suppression follows:

     "The moral inhibition of the child's natural sexuality, the last
     stage of which is the severe impairment of the child's genital
     sexuality, makes the child afraid, shy, fearful of authority,
     obedient, 'good,' and 'docile' in the authoritarian sense of the
     words. It has a crippling effect on man's rebellious forces because
     every vital life-impulse is now burdened with severe fear; and since
     sex is a forbidden subject, thought in general and man's critical
     faculty also become inhibited. In short, morality's aim is to
     produce acquiescent subjects who, despite distress and humiliation,
     are adjusted to the authoritarian order. Thus, the family is the
     authoritarian state in miniature, to which the child must learn to
     adapt himself as a preparation for the general social adjustment
     required of him later. Man's authoritarian structure -- this must be
     clearly established -- is basically produced by the embedding of
     sexual inhibitions and fear." [Reich, Op. Cit., p. 30]

   In this way, by damaging the individual's power to rebel and think for
   him/herself, the inhibition of childhood sexuality -- and indeed other
   forms of free, natural expression of bioenergy (e.g. shouting, crying,
   running, jumping, etc.) -- becomes the most important weapon in
   creating reactionary personalities. This is why every reactionary
   politician puts such an emphasis on "strengthening the family" and
   promoting "family values" (i.e. patriarchy, compulsive monogamy,
   premarital chastity, corporal punishment, etc.). In the words of Reich:

     "Since authoritarian society reproduces itself in the individual
     structures of the masses with the help of the authoritarian family,
     it follows that political reaction has to regard and defend the
     authoritarian family as the basis of the 'state, culture, and
     civilisation. . . .' [It is] political reaction's germ cell, the
     most important centre for the production of reactionary men and
     women. Originating and developing from definite social processes, it
     becomes the most essential institution for the preservation of the
     authoritarian system that shapes it." [Op. Cit., pp. 104-105]

   The family is the most essential institution for this purpose because
   children are most vulnerable to psychological maiming in their first
   few years, from the time of birth to about six years of age, during
   which time they are mostly in the charge of their parents. The schools
   and churches then continue the process of conditioning once the
   children are old enough to be away from their parents, but they are
   generally unsuccessful if the proper foundation has not been laid very
   early in life by the parents. Thus A.S. Neill observes that "the
   nursery training is very like the kennel training. The whipped child,
   like the whipped puppy, grows into an obedient, inferior adult. And as
   we train our dogs to suit our own purposes, so we train our children.
   In that kennel, the nursery, the human dogs must be clean; they must
   feed when we think it convenient for them to feed. I saw a hundred
   thousand obedient, fawning dogs wag their tails in the Templehof,
   Berlin, when in 1935, the great trainer Hitler whistled his commands."
   [Summerhill: a Radical Approach to Child Rearing, p. 100]

   The family is also the main agency of repression during adolescence,
   when sexual energy reaches its peak. This is because the vast majority
   of parents provide no private space for adolescents to pursue
   undisturbed sexual relationships with their partners, but in fact
   actively discourage such behaviour, often (as in fundamentalist
   Christian families) demanding complete abstinence -- at the very time
   when abstinence is most impossible! Moreover, since teenagers are
   economically dependent on their parents under capitalism, with no
   societal provision of housing or dormitories allowing for sexual
   freedom, young people have no alternative but to submit to irrational
   parental demands for abstention from premarital sex. This in turn
   forces them to engage in furtive sex in the back seats of cars or other
   out-of-the-way places where they cannot relax or obtain full sexual
   satisfaction. As Reich found, when sexuality is repressed and laden
   with anxiety, the result is always some degree of what he terms
   "orgastic impotence": the inability to fully surrender to the flow of
   energy discharged during orgasm. Hence there is an incomplete release
   of sexual tension, which results in a state of chronic bioenergetic
   stasis. Such a condition, Reich found, is the breeding ground for
   neuroses and reactionary attitudes. (For further details see the
   [27]section J.6).

   In this connection it is interesting to note that "primitive"
   societies, such as the Trobriand Islanders, prior to their developing
   patriarchal-authoritarian institutions, provided special community
   houses where teenagers could go with their partners to enjoy
   undisturbed sexual relationships -- and this with society's full
   approval. Such an institution would be taken for granted in an
   anarchist society, as it is implied by the concept of freedom. (For
   more on adolescent sexual liberation, see [28]section J.6.8.)

   Nationalistic feelings can also be traced to the authoritarian family.
   A child's attachment to its mother is, of course, natural and is the
   basis of all family ties. Subjectively, the emotional core of the
   concepts of homeland and nation are mother and family, since the mother
   is the homeland of the child, just as the family is the "nation in
   miniature." According to Reich, who carefully studied the mass appeal
   of Hitler's "National Socialism," nationalistic sentiments are a direct
   continuation of the family tie and are rooted in a fixated tie to the
   mother. As Reich points out, although infantile attachment to the
   mother is natural, fixated attachment is not, but is a social product.
   In puberty, the tie to the mother would make room for other
   attachments, i.e., natural sexual relations, if the unnatural sexual
   restrictions imposed on adolescents did not cause it to be eternalised.
   It is in the form of this socially conditioned externalisation that
   fixation on the mother becomes the basis of nationalist feelings in the
   adult; and it is only at this stage that it becomes a reactionary
   social force.

   Later writers who have followed Reich in analysing the process of
   creating reactionary character structures have broadened the scope of
   his analysis to include other important inhibitions, besides sexual
   ones, that are imposed on children and adolescents. Rianne Eisler, for
   example, in her book Sacred Pleasure, stresses that it is not just a
   sex-negative attitude but a pleasure-negative attitude that creates the
   kinds of personalities in question. Denial of the value of pleasurable
   sensations permeates our unconscious, as reflected, for example, in the
   common idea that to enjoy the pleasures of the body is the
   "animalistic" (and hence "bad") side of human nature, as contrasted
   with the "higher" pleasures of the mind and "spirit." By such dualism,
   which denies a spiritual aspect to the body, people are made to feel
   guilty about enjoying any pleasurable sensations -- a conditioning that
   does, however, prepare them for lives based on the sacrifice of
   pleasure (or indeed, even of life itself) under capitalism and statism,
   with their requirements of mass submission to alienated labour,
   exploitation, military service to protect ruling-class interests, and
   so on. And at the same time, authoritarian ideology emphasises the
   value of suffering, as for example through the glorification of the
   tough, insensitive warrior hero, who suffers (and inflicts "necessary"
   suffering on others ) for the sake of some pitiless ideal.

   Eisler also points out that there is "ample evidence that people who
   grow up in families where rigid hierarchies and painful punishments are
   the norm learn to suppress anger toward their parents. There is also
   ample evidence that this anger is then often deflected against
   traditionally disempowered groups (such as minorities, children, and
   women)." [Sacred Pleasure, p. 187] This repressed anger then becomes
   fertile ground for reactionary politicians, whose mass appeal usually
   rests in part on scapegoating minorities for society's problems.

   As the psychologist Else Frenkel-Brunswick documents in The
   Authoritarian Personality, people who have been conditioned through
   childhood abuse to surrender their will to the requirements of feared
   authoritarian parents, also tend to be very susceptible as adults to
   surrender their will and minds to authoritarian leaders. "In other
   words," Frenkel-Brunswick summarises, "at the same time that they learn
   to deflect their repressed rage against those they perceive as weak,
   they also learn to submit to autocratic or 'strong-man' rule. Moreover,
   having been severely punished for any hint of rebellion (even 'talking
   back' about being treated unfairly), they gradually also learn to deny
   to themselves that there was anything wrong with what was done to them
   as children -- and to do it in turn to their own children." [The
   Authoritarian Personality, p. 187]

   These are just some of the mechanisms that perpetuate the status quo by
   creating the kinds of personalities who worship authority and fear
   freedom. Consequently, anarchists are generally opposed to traditional
   child-rearing practices, the patriarchal-authoritarian family (and its
   "values"), the suppression of adolescent sexuality, and the
   pleasure-denying, pain-affirming attitudes taught by the Church and in
   most schools. In place of these, anarchists favour non-authoritarian,
   non-repressive child-rearing practices and educational methods (see
   sections [29]J.6 and [30]secJ.5.13, respectively) whose purpose is to
   prevent, or at least minimise, the psychological crippling of
   individuals, allowing them instead to develop natural self-regulation
   and self-motivated learning. This, we believe, is the only way to for
   people to grow up into happy, creative, and truly freedom-loving
   individuals who will provide the psychological ground where anarchist
   economic and political institutions can flourish.

B.1.6 Can hierarchy be ended?

   Faced with the fact that hierarchy, in its many distinctive forms, has
   been with us such a long time and so negatively shapes those subject to
   it, some may conclude that the anarchist hope of ending it, or even
   reducing it, is little more than a utopian dream. Surely, it will be
   argued, as anarchists acknowledge that those subject to a hierarchy
   adapt to it this automatically excludes the creation of people able to
   free themselves from it?

   Anarchists disagree. Hierarchy can be ended, both in specific forms and
   in general. A quick look at the history of the human species shows that
   this is the case. People who have been subject to monarchy have ended
   it, creating republics where before absolutism reigned. Slavery and
   serfdom have been abolished. Alexander Berkman simply stated the
   obvious when he pointed out that "many ideas, once held to be true,
   have come to be regarded as wrong and evil. Thus the ideas of divine
   right of kings, of slavery and serfdom. There was a time when the whole
   world believed those institutions to be right, just, and unchangeable."
   However, they became "discredited and lost their hold upon the people,
   and finally the institutions that incorporated those ideas were
   abolished" as "they were useful only to the master class" and "were
   done away with by popular uprisings and revolutions." [What is
   Anarchism?, p. 178] It is unlikely, therefore, that current forms of
   hierarchy are exceptions to this process.

   Today, we can see that this is the case. Malatesta's comments of over
   one hundred years ago are still valid: "the oppressed masses . . . have
   never completely resigned themselves to oppression and poverty . . .
   [and] show themselves thirsting for justice, freedom and wellbeing."
   [Anarchy, p. 33] Those at the bottom are constantly resisting both
   hierarchy and its the negative effects and, equally important, creating
   non-hierarchical ways of living and fighting. This constant process of
   self-activity and self-liberation can be seen from the labour, women's
   and other movements -- in which, to some degree, people create their
   own alternatives based upon their own dreams and hopes. Anarchism is
   based upon, and grew out of, this process of resistance, hope and
   direct action. In other words, the libertarian elements that the
   oppressed continually produce in their struggles within and against
   hierarchical systems are extrapolated and generalised into what is
   called anarchism. It is these struggles and the anarchistic elements
   they produce which make the end of all forms of hierarchy not only
   desirable, but possible.

   So while the negative impact of hierarchy is not surprising, neither is
   the resistance to it. This is because the individual "is not a blank
   sheet of paper on which culture can write its text; he [or she] is an
   entity charged with energy and structured in specific ways, which,
   while adapting itself, reacts in specific and ascertainable ways to
   external conditions." In this "process of adaptation," people develop
   "definite mental and emotional reactions which follow from specific
   properties" of our nature. [Eric Fromm, Man for Himself, p. 23 and p.
   22] For example:

     "Man can adapt himself to slavery, but he reacts to it by lowering
     his intellectual and moral qualities . . . Man can adapt himself to
     cultural conditions which demand the repression of sexual strivings,
     but in achieving this adaptation he develops . . . neurotic
     symptoms. He can adapt to almost any culture pattern, but in so far
     as these are contradictory to his nature he develops mental and
     emotional disturbances which force him eventually change these
     conditions since he cannot change his nature. . . . If . . . man
     could adapt himself to all conditions without fighting those which
     are against his nature, he would have no history. Human evolution is
     rooted in man's adaptability and in certain indestructible qualities
     of his nature which compel him to search for conditions better
     adjusted to his intrinsic needs." [Op. Cit., pp. 22-23]

   So as well as adaptation to hierarchy, there is resistance. This means
   that modern society (capitalism), like any hierarchical society, faces
   a direct contradiction. On the one hand, such systems divide society
   into a narrow stratum of order givers and the vast majority of the
   population who are (officially) excluded from decision making, who are
   reduced to carrying out (executing) the decisions made by the few. As a
   result, most people suffer feelings of alienation and unhappiness.
   However, in practice, people try and overcome this position of
   powerlessness and so hierarchy produces a struggle against itself by
   those subjected to it. This process goes on all the time, to a greater
   or lesser degree, and is an essential aspect in creating the
   possibility of political consciousness, social change and revolution.
   People refuse to be treated like objects (as required by hierarchical
   society) and by so doing hierarchy creates the possibility for its own
   destruction.

   For the inequality in wealth and power produced by hierarchies, between
   the powerful and the powerless, between the rich and the poor, has not
   been ordained by god, nature or some other superhuman force. It has
   been created by a specific social system, its institutions and workings
   -- a system based upon authoritarian social relationships which effect
   us both physically and mentally. So there is hope. Just as
   authoritarian traits are learned, so can they be unlearned. As Carole
   Pateman summarises, the evidence supports the argument "that we do
   learn to participate by participating" and that a participatory
   environment "might also be effective in diminishing tendencies toward
   non-democratic attitudes in the individual." [Participaton and
   Democratic Theory, p. 105] So oppression reproduces resistance and the
   seeds of its own destruction.

   It is for this reason anarchists stress the importance of
   self-liberation (see [31]section A.2.7) and "support all struggles for
   partial freedom, because we are convinced that one learns through
   struggle, and that once one begins to enjoy a little freedom one ends
   by wanting it all." [Malatesta, Errico Malatesta: His Life and Ideas,
   p. 195] By means of direct action (see [32]section J.2), people exert
   themselves and stand up for themselves. This breaks the conditioning of
   hierarchy, breaks the submissiveness which hierarchical social
   relationships both need and produce. Thus the daily struggles against
   oppression "serve as a training camp to develop" a person's
   "understanding of [their] proper role in life, to cultivate [their]
   self-reliance and independence, teach him [or her] mutual help and
   co-operation, and make him [or her] conscious of [their]
   responsibility. [They] will learn to decide and act on [their] own
   behalf, not leaving it to leaders or politicians to attend to [their]
   affairs and look out for [their] welfare. It will be [them] who will
   determine, together with [their] fellows . . . , what they want and
   what methods will best serve their aims." [Berkman, Op. Cit., p. 206]

   In other words, struggle encourages all the traits hierarchy erodes
   and, consequently, develop the abilities not only to question and
   resist authority but, ultimately, end it once and for all. This means
   that any struggle changes those who take part in it, politicising them
   and transforming their personalities by shaking off the servile traits
   produced and required by hierarchy. As an example, after the sit-down
   strikes in Flint, Michigan, in 1937 one eye-witness saw how "the auto
   worker became a different human being. The women that had participated
   actively became a different type of women . . . They carried themselves
   with a different walk, their heads were high, and they had confidence
   in themselves." [Genora (Johnson) Dollinger, contained in Voices of a
   People's History of the United States, Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove
   (eds.), p. 349] Such changes happen in all struggles (also see
   [33]section J.4.2). Anarchists are not surprised for, as discussed in
   [34]section J.1 and [35]J.2.1, we have long recognised the liberating
   aspects of social struggle and the key role it plays in creating free
   people and the other preconditions for needed for an anarchist society
   (like the initial social structure -- see [36]section I.2.3).

   Needless to say, a hierarchical system like capitalism cannot survive
   with a non-submissive working class and the bosses spend a considerable
   amount of time, energy and resources trying to break the spirits of the
   working class so they will submit to authority (either unwillingly, by
   fear of being fired, or willingly, by fooling them into believing that
   hierarchy is natural or by rewarding subservient behaviour).
   Unsurprisingly, this never completely succeeds and so capitalism is
   marked by constant struggles between the oppressed and oppressor. Some
   of these struggles succeed, some do not. Some are defensive, some are
   not. Some, like strikes, are visible, other less so (such a working
   slowly and less efficiently than management desires). And these
   struggles are waged by both sides of the hierarchical divide. Those
   subject to hierarchy fight to limit it and increase their autonomy and
   those who exercise authority fight to increase their power over others.
   Who wins varies. The 1960s and 1970s saw a marked increase in victories
   for the oppressed all throughout capitalism but, unfortunately, since
   the 1980s, as we discuss in [37]section C.8.3, there has been a
   relentless class war conducted by the powerful which has succeeded in
   inflicting a series of defeats on working class people. Unsurprisingly,
   the rich have got richer and more powerful since.

   So anarchists take part in the on-going social struggle in society in
   an attempt to end it in the only way possible, the victory of the
   oppressed. A key part of this is to fight for partial freedoms, for
   minor or major reforms, as this strengthens the spirit of revolt and
   starts the process towards the final end of hierarchy. In such
   struggles we stress the autonomy of those involved and see them not
   only as the means of getting more justice and freedom in the current
   unfree system but also as a means of ending the hierarchies they are
   fighting once and for all. Thus, for example, in the class struggle we
   argue for "[o]rganisation from the bottom up, beginning with the shop
   and factory, on the foundation of the joint interests of the workers
   everywhere, irrespective of trade, race, or country." [Alexander
   Berkman, Op. Cit., p. 207] Such an organisation, as we discuss in
   [38]section J.5.2, would be run via workplace assemblies and would be
   the ideal means of replacing capitalist hierarchy in industry by
   genuine economic freedom, i.e. worker's self-management of production
   (see [39]section I.3). Similarly, in the community we argue for popular
   assemblies (see [40]section J.5.1) as a means of not only combating the
   power of the state but also replaced it with by free, self-managed,
   communities (see [41]section I.5).

   Thus the current struggle itself creates the bridge between what is and
   what could be:

     "Assembly and community must arise from within the revolutionary
     process itself; indeed, the revolutionary process must be the
     formation of assembly and community, and with it, the destruction of
     power. Assembly and community must become 'fighting words,' not
     distant panaceas. They must be created as modes of struggle against
     the existing society, not as theoretical or programmatic
     abstractions." [Murray Bookchin, Post-Scarcity Anarchism, p. 104]

   This is not all. As well as fighting the state and capitalism, we also
   need fight all other forms of oppression. This means that anarchists
   argue that we need to combat social hierarchies like racism and sexism
   as well as workplace hierarchy and economic class, that we need to
   oppose homophobia and religious hatred as well as the political state.
   Such oppressions and struggles are not diversions from the struggle
   against class oppression or capitalism but part and parcel of the
   struggle for human freedom and cannot be ignored without fatally
   harming it.

   As part of that process, anarchists encourage and support all sections
   of the population to stand up for their humanity and individuality by
   resisting racist, sexist and anti-gay activity and challenging such
   views in their everyday lives, everywhere (as Carole Pateman points
   out, "sexual domination structures the workplace as well as the
   conjugal home" [The Sexual Contract, p. 142]). It means a struggle of
   all working class people against the internal and external tyrannies we
   face -- we must fight against own our prejudices while supporting those
   in struggle against our common enemies, no matter their sex, skin
   colour or sexuality. Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin words on fighting racism are
   applicable to all forms of oppression:

     "Racism must be fought vigorously wherever it is found, even if in
     our own ranks, and even in ones own breast. Accordingly, we must end
     the system of white skin privilege which the bosses use to split the
     class, and subject racially oppressed workers to super-exploitation.
     White workers, especially those in the Western world, must resist
     the attempt to use one section of the working class to help them
     advance, while holding back the gains of another segment based on
     race or nationality. This kind of class opportunism and
     capitulationism on the part of white labour must be directly
     challenged and defeated. There can be no workers unity until the
     system of super-exploitation and world White Supremacy is brought to
     an end." [Anarchism and the Black Revolution, p. 128]

   Progress towards equality can and has been made. While it is still true
   that (in the words of Emma Goldman) "[n]owhere is woman treated
   according to the merit of her work, but rather as a sex" [Red Emma
   Speaks, p. 177] and that education is still patriarchal, with young
   women still often steered away from traditionally "male" courses of
   study and work (which teaches children that men and women are assigned
   different roles in society and sets them up to accept these limitations
   as they grow up) it is also true that the position of women, like that
   of blacks and gays, has improved. This is due to the various
   self-organised, self-liberation movements that have continually
   developed throughout history and these are the key to fighting
   oppression in the short term (and creating the potential for the long
   term solution of dismantling capitalism and the state).

   Emma Goldman argued that emancipation begins "in [a] woman's soul."
   Only by a process of internal emancipation, in which the oppressed get
   to know their own value, respect themselves and their culture, can they
   be in a position to effectively combat (and overcome) external
   oppression and attitudes. Only when you respect yourself can you be in
   a position to get others to respect you. Those men, whites and
   heterosexuals who are opposed to bigotry, inequality and injustice,
   must support oppressed groups and refuse to condone racist, sexist or
   homophobic attitudes and actions by others or themselves. For
   anarchists, "not a single member of the Labour movement may with
   impunity be discriminated against, suppressed or ignored. . . Labour
   [and other] organisations must be built on the principle of equal
   liberty of all its members. This equality means that only if each
   worker is a free and independent unit, co-operating with the others
   from his or her mutual interests, can the whole labour organisation
   work successfully and become powerful." [Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin, Op.
   Cit., pp. 127-8]

   We must all treat people as equals, while at the same time respecting
   their differences. Diversity is a strength and a source of joy, and
   anarchists reject the idea that equality means conformity. By these
   methods, of internal self-liberation and solidarity against external
   oppression, we can fight against bigotry. Racism, sexism and homophobia
   can be reduced, perhaps almost eliminated, before a social revolution
   has occurred by those subject to them organising themselves, fighting
   back autonomously and refusing to be subjected to racial, sexual or
   anti-gay abuse or to allowing others to get away with it (which plays
   an essential role in making others aware of their own attitudes and
   actions, attitudes they may even be blind to!).

   The example of the Mujeres Libres (Free Women) in Spain during the
   1930s shows what is possible. Women anarchists involved in the C.N.T.
   and F.A.I. organised themselves autonomously to raise the issue of
   sexism in the wider libertarian movement, to increase women's
   involvement in libertarian organisations and help the process of
   women's self-liberation against male oppression. Along the way they
   also had to combat the (all too common) sexist attitudes of their
   "revolutionary" male fellow anarchists. Martha A. Ackelsberg's book
   Free Women of Spain is an excellent account of this movement and the
   issues it raises for all people concerned about freedom. Decades
   latter, the women's movement of the 1960s and 1970s did much the same
   thing, aiming to challenge the traditional sexism and patriarchy of
   capitalist society. They, too, formed their own organisations to fight
   for their own needs as a group. Individuals worked together and drew
   strength for their own personal battles in the home and in wider
   society.

   Another essential part of this process is for such autonomous groups to
   actively support others in struggle (including members of the dominant
   race/sex/sexuality). Such practical solidarity and communication can,
   when combined with the radicalising effects of the struggle itself on
   those involved, help break down prejudice and bigotry, undermining the
   social hierarchies that oppress us all. For example, gay and lesbian
   groups supporting the 1984/5 UK miners' strike resulted in such groups
   being given pride of place in many miners' marches. Another example is
   the great strike by Jewish immigrant workers in 1912 in London which
   occurred at the same time as a big London Dock Strike. "The common
   struggle brought Jewish and non-Jewish workers together. Joint strike
   meetings were held, and the same speakers spoke at huge joint
   demonstrations." The Jewish strike was a success, dealing a "death-blow
   to the sweatshop system. The English workers looked at the Jewish
   workers with quite different eyes after this victory." Yet the London
   dock strike continued and many dockers' families were suffering real
   wants. The successful Jewish strikers started a campaign "to take some
   of the dockers' children into their homes." This practical support "did
   a great deal to strengthen the friendship between Jewish and non-Jewish
   workers." [Rudolf Rocker, London Years, p. 129 and p. 131] This
   solidarity was repaid in October 1936, when the dockers were at the
   forefront in stopping Mosley's fascist blackshirts marching through
   Jewish areas (the famous battle of Cable street).

   For whites, males and heterosexuals, the only anarchistic approach is
   to support others in struggle, refuse to tolerate bigotry in others and
   to root out their own fears and prejudices (while refusing to be
   uncritical of self-liberation struggles -- solidarity does not imply
   switching your brain off!). This obviously involves taking the issue of
   social oppression into all working class organisations and activity,
   ensuring that no oppressed group is marginalised within them.

   Only in this way can the hold of these social diseases be weakened and
   a better, non-hierarchical system be created. An injury to one is an
   injury to all.

References

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