I know I’m far from the sharpest reptile slithering around, but even after a supposed clarification, I am still at a loss to grok Francois Tremblay’s recent post, Why Hierarchies Are Immoral.... Perhaps someone here can help enlighten me.

First, some context. Here are the opening paragraphs of Tremblay’s post, lightly trimmed, italics his:

The proposition that hierarchies are immoral and must be eradicated is a fundamental Anarchist premise. It is safe to say that one cannot be an Anarchist without agreeing with it in some form. But it has occurred to me that I have never discussed the issue of what hierarchies are and why they are immoral. This is something that capitalists tend to ask, so it’s worth discussing if only for that purpose.

I would therefore like to present my definition of a hierarchy:
A hierarchy is any social system where control is used in a way that is both 1. systemic and 2. directed.

1. The use of control must be systemic, that is to say, part of the system, not incidental to it. ....

2. The use of control must be directed, that is to say, from one specific person or group of people- the superiors- to another specific person or group of people- the inferiors.

My first action upon reading that was to turn to an online dictionary; it reaffirmed my suspicion that Tremblay’s definition as provided above is highly specific: the first definition given is “any system of persons or things ranked one above another”. So, I observed in a comment that from my perspective, the immorality arose from the specification of control being present. Tremblay’s reply was that he thought it was obvious that he’s talking about “the political concept”. Okay, so I re-read the post with that context now in place ... and I still don’t grok. Understanding “politics” to refer to government in general (as opposed to electoral politics), my troubles begin with Tremblay’s claim that one cannot be an anarchist (unless perhaps he means something specific that I don’t know in capitalizing that term) without agreeing that hierarchies are immoral. I’ve been an anarchist for over ten years now, and I have never agreed with any such thing.

A large part of my difficulty stems from his inclusion of parenting as an immoral hierarchy; Tremblay writes of it:

Parenting and schools, which both aim to control children for the purposes of indoctrination and (in the case of parenting) status.

Tremblay assigns a very unusual additional purpose to parenting—one I find very amusing because I don’t recall ever thinking about how my status may have changed in others’ eyes as a result of becoming a parent. Sure, it may be a factor in many individuals’ decision-making, but to state so baldly that those two things are the purposes behind all reproduction is just silly. (Surely at least anarchists—or the Anarchists—would have different aims than indoctrination and status.)

More importantly, though, this inclusion leads me to believe Tremblay is arguing that families are inherently, fundamentally immoral. Even anarchist ones would be, because “control” and a rank order exists among members. Here’s his explanation of the immorality, all emphasis mine:

Hierarchies are immoral, not only because they are based on false fundamental premises, but also because they go against the values we must seek out in our society: freedom, equality, legitimate (i.e. non-statist, non-capitalist) property rights, and the elimination of control.

How can “we” create equality? How can the life experiences and knowledge of an 8-year-old and an 80-year-old be equalized? If a parent doesn’t provide some minimal level of control for a child (via narrowing the child's environment, choices, and/or actions to some degree) in order to keep it alive until it’s old enough to begin assuming that responsibility for itself, I doubt most children would survive to adulthood as accidents would kill many.

Some may think that my arguments are not in good faith—that surely Tremblay doesn’t mean to do away with that kind of control. Perhaps; but that still begs the question of exactly what is considered control. Is my failure to have every book in the English language in my home an effort to control what the snolfs can read? Is my unwillingness to provide them with all the candy they might want control? In our house, property rights are taken pretty seriously; thus, even when I do make candy or cookies, if they are not explicitly offered as dessert or treats open for everyone to help himself, they are considered mine and are not touched without my permission. How is that inherently immoral, when I have bought the ingredients and used my time and energy to create something with them?

And that’s a fundamental element of property rights—the ability to control what’s mine. How can there be property rights without some measure of control over said property? If the concept of property is legitimate, then control over it must follow; and as a consequence, a simple hierarchy inevitably forms—the owner of something is entitled to things regarding that property that all nonowners are not.

I think that points to my fundamental issue with Tremblay’s post: hierarchies, even political hierarchies, are inescapable. They exist among many other animals besides us. Are coercive ones among adults immoral? Of course. But voluntary hierarchies among them are not. Parent–child relationships are more complex (in part because they are very dynamic), and harder to cleanly judge. You can call me immoral if you want because I took a poinsettia leaf out of Darlin’ Daughter’s hand before she could eat it; but in my experience as a parent no amount of words telling a toddler that a pretty red leaf is poisonous is going to keep the leaf from ending up in the toddler’s mouth. However, you’d also better make it clear that I’m an immoral mother who loves her children deeply and who takes her responsibility to help them become mature adults very seriously.