The Legendary Dragon Alephwyr, named Alephwyr, BA

Current nascent criticism of anarchy is probably that it looks at the conditions where maximum sane and good things happen and then imagines these conditions are implementable from the outset as praxis rather than themselves the outcome of complex factors beyond human control.

What about post-left thought that says these "sane and good" things aren't worth the oppression that hierarchy imposes, and that if they can't be built without it then we're better off without?

You may have misunderstood me. I mean that anarchism looks and sees that where there is no oppression there is human flourishing and thinks "aha, we just have to prevent oppression" as if oppression is a free-floating social decision that's downstream of absolutely nothing.

Interesting. TBH I'm against Hierarchy on first principles not because things look better without it. It's just obviously evil. Someone's gonna be getting the shit end of the stick.

Hierarchy seems like a property of most systems to me in the same way gravity is a property of matter. It is only wrong to essentialize and say that wherever there is hierarchy, there are inferiors and superiors, and even wronger to make decisions based on such essentializing.

How can their be hierarchy without the inferior-superior distinction? Genuinely curious. I've never come across that assertion and struggle to imagine it.

You wouldn't say the earth orbits the sun because it is better, or because the sun has sun-essence and the earth "only" has earth essence. You would just describe the relationship and move on. The (largely fictive, admittedly) distinction between class and caste is illustrative