FAUX EGALITARIANS: Another problem with trying to sustain an institution (even a small one) while promoting an egalitarian ideology: Real inequalities become hidden behind a screen of egalitarian rhetoric. Here is just one example of this phenomenon, which I saw a lot at college. For a brief period I hung out with a lefty group that supported the local labor unions. (Except for the police union, but that’s a different story.) I was quickly turned off by this group (before one meeting, we all had to chant, “Hey hey! ho ho! Oppression has got to go!”–could I make that up?), but I did log a bit of time with them. They were run in a “non-hierarchical” fashion; no one was supposed to be more important or authoritative than anyone else. In practice, of course, this meant that the person with the fastest mouth ran all the meetings. Nobody else could get a word in edgewise. One guy dominated the meeting and basically left no room for other voices. And the great thing about the “egalitarian” system was that no one could stop him! No one could exert authority over him–that would be suppressing him and exerting one’s own power-over. So because he relentlessly proclaimed his devotion to the principle of equality, he got to yammer on and on while the rest of us sat there cynically passing notes.

I have yet to see a “non-hierarchical” group that actually had no hierarchy. Some hierarchies are based on charisma (which does not always coincide with good judgment), other hierarchies are based on intelligence (same), others on who is best friends with whom (and frankly, this is the most likely outcome in a small, close-knit group). Often the hidden hierarchies were made all the more problematic because no one could acknowledge them. And often there is no counterbalance–the strongest personalities win every dispute.

I’m not saying that every group should be structured in the same way, of course–that would be silly. Neither do I mean to denigrate equality before the law, responsive leadership, the idea that all members of a group should have rights and a say in its operation, or whatever–I saw hard-core “Do as I say! You have no rights!” petty-dictator groups fail just as badly if not more so, and if I absolutely had to pick one, I’d go for the lefty-group model over the top-down control model any day. But there’s a third alternative–authority.