99.9% of all institutions in my life are at best feudal orders, run by aristocrats so far removed from my life that they wouldn’t even know how to survive without their armies of servants, nannies, and assistants. Democracy needs to extend beyond the state. Democracy must be present in every part of our society, or it will, as it has now, inevitably become nothing more than another oligarchy for and by the rich.
Recommended readings:
Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire.
Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon.
Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber.
Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti.
Neocolonialism by Kwame Nkrumah.
Anarchism and other Essays by Emma Goldman.
Recommendations from the comments:
/u/BallShapedMan - The Dictator’s Handbook by by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith
Unless it's democratically elected hierarchy, right?
Sort of. Think for example, of consent-based policing. There are some tasks police do that are genuinely good and worthwhile. However, if there is not a democratic process to bar people from being in those roles of power after abusing them, then it's still a bad heirarchy.
Different example: say there's an elected steward of the commons in a library economy who fails to uphold their duties of automating the means of production. It would still be a bad heirarchy if this problem cannot be resolved by democratic means.
Edit: I forgot about the solution to preventing these problems: unions. They would serve a drastically different role, obviously. But their purpose would still be to facilitate these democratic actions through direct action and organizing.
No need for hierarchy, it is different than designated leadership and roles.
How is it different? That doesn't seem obvious to me.
Leaders and organizers and stuff will always be necessary even in an anarchist society, but those roles shouldn't be given the reverence and special treatment that they currently are. They're important roles, and should be respected and cooperated with just like any other role, but if they've proven themselves to be unworthy of that there should be democratic processes to replace them. People in leadership roles shouldn't be earning 10+x what everyone else is, and they shouldn't be able to hold onto power the way they currently are
no. power centralized in the beaurocratic state apparatus is also oppressive. electoral politics are a sham, and democracy is impotent when the capital owning class can simply buy influence.
if 9 people vote to kill the 10th, is that just?