I know that anarchism, specifically anarcho-communism and marxism are very different. People always talk about their main difference being that they have a different means of achieving their goals but the same end goal , but that’s definitely not true. So what are some of the ways they are different?
I’m taller than you. I leave some important stuff up on a high shelf. You have to ask me for the stuff.
Simple as that, a power imbalance waiting to be exploited, entirely absent a state.
And oh yes gerontocracy absolutely can and does assert itself without a state. Unless you consider tribal society to be a state - Which neither Marx or I would.
And OK, I agree that if an organization implements voluntary, revokable hierarchy (Autonomy retained after) you’ve got yourself a non-power hierarchy. I just find that to be such a confusion of terms. “It’s structure can be drawn as a tree” seems so different to me from “This structure will hypercharge humanity toward total annihilation” that I shy from thinking of the former as falling under the same definition as the latter and tend to not even call it that. It’s like how elephants and shrews are closely related.
This is definitely not the type of hierarchy anarchism or marxism seek to dismantle. Natural formations of ‘power’ that come from biological differences arent the ones we’re concerned with, but the larger structures built around them are. If you’re taller than me and can reach things I cant, we can structure our organization so that either I can reach it wothout you (stairs) or so that I dont need whatever those things are (a job that doesnt require those things). What anarchism definitely isnt going to do is either make me taller or you shorter.
Same deal. Being older and less able is a natural ‘hierarchy’, but what concerns us isnt the handicaps that naturally arise but the structures we build around them. If we distribute food and resources according to ability but make no consideration for less-abled people, thats the problem we are solving for, not the eradication of handicaps entirely.
Maybe you know this and it’ll sound like I’m being patronizing, but ultimately both anarchism and marxism seek to arrive at the same place of ‘to each according to need, from each according to ability’, and that will require structures that replace the things states do with more involved community organizations.
We are definitely in agreement. My example highlights to the potential exploitation of the height difference, not the height difference itself. I refer to natural differences in power specifically to refer to the hierarchical social structures that they have the potential coalesce, absent alternatives. You describe such alternatives in your two examples because anarchists are indeed concerned with abolishing even such “primitive” hierarchical outcomes.
Then I guess it bears repeating that marxism is also concerned with those outcomes.