Send him mail. “Finding the Challenges” is an original column appearing every other Wednesday at Everything-Voluntary.com, by Verbal Vol. Verbal is a software engineer, college professor, corporate information officer, life long student, farmer, libertarian, literarian, student of computer science and self-ordering phenomena. Archived columns can be found here. FTC-only RSS feed available here. Because many…
Tag: hierarchy
On Hierarchy III
I love left anarchist Michael Bakunin’s essay on natural law and authority. In it he wrote, “Does it follow that I reject all authority? Perish the thought. In the mater of boots, I defer to the authority of the bootmaker; concerning houses, canals, or railroads, I consult the architect or the engineer… But I allow…
Voluntaryism among Other Philosophies
Send him mail. “One Voluntaryist’s Perspective” is an original column appearing most Mondays at Everything-Voluntary.com, by the founder and editor Skyler J. Collins. Archived columns can be found here. OVP-only RSS feed available here. Voluntaryism is the philosophy based on the voluntary principle, that all human relations should happen voluntarily or not at all. In…
RE: Hierarchy II
Nobody asked but … Hierarchy in its self-ordering occurrence in nature is no more ruler-dominated than any other relationship among people, places, things (including relationships), and events (all objects fall into one of these categories). The food chain is an anarchical hierarchy. The trouble is, in part, a failure of language. The root suffix “-archy”…
On Hierarchy II
Are echelons of authority (misnomer: hierarchy) un-anarchistic? While I think it’s reasonable to predict that there will be fewer associations organized in an echelonical manner in a free society than under a culture of statism, the prevalence of echelony is evidence that it’s an efficient and sometimes necessary form of organization. Can a movie or…
An Open Letter to Anarcho-Socialists
Socialism is an economic system based on the collectivist ownership (e.g., co-ops, worker-management, the people as a whole, etc.) of the means of production (i.e., capital). Anarcho-socialism (a.k.a., social anarchism) is likewise, except ownership is voluntary, without a state. Different schools of thought make up this ansoc philosophy; such as anarcho-collectivism, anarcho-communism, anarcho-syndicalism, mutualism, libertarian…
On Hierarchy
Hierarchy is an unfortunate misnomer. Etymologically, hier means “sacred” and archy means “ruler”, giving us “sacred ruler” as the etymological definition of hierarchy. Theocracy has hierarchy; you could even say that certain conceptions have God as a hierarch. In popular usage, however, it’s used to refer to echelons of authority, inside and outside of government. Because anarchists…
Qualifying Anarchism
We can qualify our use of anarchism, such as “organizational anarchism” or “pedagogical anarchism”… in which case we’re talking about, most likely, the absence of hierarchy within an organization or educational model (respectively, which may or may not be ideas within the broader context of political anarchism). Without the qualification, anarchism, historically, has been about…
Knowledge, Wisdom, and Wealth
Send him mail. “One Improved Unit” is an original column appearing sporadically on Thursday at Everything-Voluntary.com, by the founder and editor Skyler J. Collins. Archived columns can be found here. OIU-only RSS feed available here. I live in a great age. Despite all the problems in the world, the present era has so much knowledge,…
The Argument from Patriotism
Send him mail. “Food for Thought” is an original column appearing every other Tuesday at Everything-Voluntary.com, by Norman Imberman. Norman is a retired podiatrist who loves playing piano, writing music, lawn bowling, bridge, reading, classical music, going to movies, plays, concerts and traveling. He is not a member of any social network, nor does he…