Arthur Noll
My response to the following post at the Alas Babylon Yahoo group:
“Hierarchy is something that keeps society secure. Any society without a clean chain of command is an anarchy, which can be easily overcome by smaller but more organized groups.”
Partnerships, cooperative societies, have hierarchies. The main difference, is that these hierarchies are more flexible. For any given situation, you are likely to have a different set of masters and servants. These can be very clear lines, even though more flexible. You don’t question what a doctor says about health issues, or what an engineer has to say about engineering issues, unless you have very good reason to think they are wrong, like the patient gets sicker, the building falls apart.
In a cooperative society, as I envision it, people also feel comfortable with the direction they are being pointed because there is more trust that the master of a given situation didn’t get there by cheating. They didn’t inherit the position, didn’t buy it. They got it because they were competent to have it. They are not there by cheating and they are not there to continue the cheating and give you false direction in order to further advance themselves at your expense.
Fixed hierarchies are often wasteful of human resources, which in turn makes them wasteful of natural resources. Stalin, for example, deliberately went against engineering recommendations for energy efficiency in the manufacture of many things. He had factories spread out in different cities, so that things had to be transported long distances for final assembly. Why? He was holding power by force, by the army, by secret police. He couldn’t trust anyone, and if things were set up efficiently, people could revolt easier. In effect, he put shackles of inefficiency on his people. He could control them easier that way. That is a general principle of controlling people by force. You put shackles on them, maybe real iron ones, maybe shackles of fear, maybe shackles of inefficient design. Maybe all of them. The shackles you forge to control, of whatever type, always cut into the efficiency of movement.
As a cooperative society gets bigger, with more specialists, it will find it needs some generalists to sit at the center of things, able to facilitate communications between the specialists, and with such a broad view, generalists will more often than specialists be able to provide overall direction for the group when that is needed. But such leadership is cooperative, if it is going to be efficient. It listens to everyone, and doesn’t put shackles on the people to force them to behave easier. If such generalists do their job properly, what they end up doing most of the time is lending a hand to whatever part of society needs a little extra help, and in that role, they act as servants to various specialist masters.
One commonly sees this model with an orchestra. The conductor is needed to coordinate everyone, especially at the beginning and learning a new piece. S/he must understand on a fairly high level all the instruments, the capabilities of the players, and can probably play many of them, but not as well as the people who have specialized. Once the group is started playing, and is familiar with a piece, the conductor can do just as well to grab an instrument and play along. In a well run society, central leaders might be found milking the goats or fixing a net, doing any number of common jobs, and taking direction about them, too.
“The meek will inherit the earth.”