In principle, the steelworkers would be like any group of people working together without hierarchy. How would a group of friends decide where to go in the afternoon? If there is more than one option, but only one can be taken, then either they'd split off into multiple groups, or they'd vote on which option has the greater support, perhaps with dissenters leaving.
One of the dissenters is the chemistry experts, setting the charges in the steel factory, his specialization is something he can hold hostage and he takes it with him. Now you have a crew with no idea, producing low value steel, maybe even destroying the steelworks in the process. Once the factory is worn out, they all decides its to much hassle to run it and go fishing.
Societal complexity does not hold up without external pressures.
Some positions in a complicated workflow do require far more experience and skill than others, so it would seem a hierarchy of some kind would naturally arise? You really wouldn't want someone with just a few months of experience making potentially catastrophic decisions, for example.
As someone who has written a work anarchist political theory 15 years ago, my understanding is that many anarchist theories argue among the lines of:
The political question is not about whether there are hierarchies, but how to organize them in a way that:
1. hierarchies are not set in stone and won't get people stuck in one space
2. power accumulation and corruption through power is successfully prevented both in the short and the long term (ideally while still keeping the whole thing very mobile on small matters and more stable and careful on grand matters)
3. hierarchies are not steeper than absolutely necessary and there should be a high mobility between hierarchical layers
4. anarchy is about an absence of centralized ruling structure, not about an absence of rules. This might seem a weird distinction, but having a ruler and no rules is not the same as having no ruler and coming up with a set of clear rules
Most anarchist theorists would therefore have argued the notion that anarchy requires a higher sense of order and does not represent "chaos" as it is often described. One of the most important prerequisites for that was good education, at least in the CNT educating yourself was seen as one of the prime duties of an anarchist, because if everybody comes into the role of the decider, it is good if you know what you are doing.
Democracy is also a system that tries to deal with the way power is given, transitioned by giving the people a vote. In most anarchist or anarchosyndicalist systems voting is also pretty important, it is just much more self-organized, more bottom up than top down and came with ideas like strict term limits and rotations for all positions of power. Often councils where proposed to gain some continuity, with members of these councils often leaving and new ones coming in.
Please note that I describe that CNT flavoured anarchism from the top of my head, there are different notions elsewhere (e.g. less collectivist and much more libertarian ones in the US).
Thank you for this edifying comment. As someone who has, at best, an extremely surface level understanding of anarchism, I found some aspects of what I understood quite appealing but I thought that it may be impractical or too idealistic. This has sparked my interest to actually go deep.
if me and a group of friends are on a sunny weekend building a house together, we’re going to show much more deference to the person who has 20 years of electrician experience when it comes electrical work. and the same would go with plumbing and a plumber. etc… etc…
this doesn’t really have anything to do with how an anarchist would view hierarchy. i think most people would show deference to domain knowledge, but this wouldn’t suddenly make the electrician “the boss”.
It would make the architect the boss because he would tell you what needs to happen next. That scenario with a client deadline means the “architect” is going to push you to finish before the deadline, prod you to get back to work if you’re lazing around and generally fulfill the role of a foreman. Anarchism is a theoretical mental exercise with no basis in anything in the real world. True anarchism is just current day Haiti where there strong rule over the weak because anarchism doesn’t provide any solutions as to how to build and maintain a society without hierarchies.
Your reasoning seems a bit tangled. In one sense, "anarchism" is just the absence of government, so is often used to describe the state where a government has collapsed and various groups are vying violently for power. But they aren't trying to create an anarchist society with an absence of hierarchy, but to simply reinstate the power pyramid with themselves on top.
As for an architect somehow becoming a boss because they are the only one who knows what to do, I can't even imagine this happening. Anarchists would walk out instead of being bossed around. Lazing around can be acceptable in anarchism, since maximising production (with most of it taken by the rich anyway) isn't the goal.
"It would make the architect the boss because he would tell you what needs to happen next."
But he would have no formal power and there would be no underlings. The other people would voluntaritly accept his leadership based on his skills. (Or they would not and leave). So he cannot treat them bad just because he feels like it.
That is a different approach to power and I have seen it working in the real world (think of the friends example).
But yes, I also have not seen it working stable and consistent enough to base all of society on it.
So the explicit anarchistic projects I have seen, definitely had (informal) power structures.
So I really love the consensus approach of anarchism when it is working. It is really awesome working together with people who all do it because they want to, not because they have to. But the hypocrosy regarding power is turning me off. Because in reality there are no true equals and also in anarchistic projects there are people having way more power than others. Which I don't think is bad, but it is bad pretending this isn't the case.
again, in this scenario that wouldn't magically make the architect "the boss", at least according to the US idea of "boss", it simply means he's leading the project.
ive been fortunate enough to know quite a few adult anarchists, professionals who are very very respected in their fields. engineers who you have probably heard of. im not referring to college age kids still on wobbly legs, young bambis who are still trying to find their footings. actual mature professionals. and i hesitate to put words in their mouth but ill give it a shot. apologies in advance if im off, anarchists please absolutely correct me:
i suspect they would say something like you have to distinguish between a leader and a boss. you also have to distinguish between someone who is an "authority in their field" vs "authority figure." one is an expert who is well respected, they're an authority in their field, they have wisdom and expertise in some subject. their words have more weight in that subject. that isn't the same as an authority figure, someone who has power to cause negative outcomes for you personally. we see a lot of noise about "anarchists are anti-authority", but they absolutely are not anti-wisdom or anti-expertise. they're anti-authority_figure.
from what i've seen anarchist projects have no problem with team leaders and they certainly have no problem at all with someone being an expert authority in their field. for example they have no problem at all with the concept of a team leader because if the project 'leader' is an obnoxious dickbag, they can just all pick up and move the meeting next door and leave the obnoxious person behind. we do this kind of team organizing everyday outside of work without bosses, whether its a camping trip amongst friends, a family reunion, hackathon, lan party, etc... etc...
to an anarchist, someone being good at something doesn't mean that im not good at something else. and both of us being good at different things doesn't magically give either of us the right to be a dickbag to each other. for groups of people organizing to complete some random large project, leaders need someone to do x, y, and z just as much as the team needs organization. and if the leader is awful the team is always free to metaphorically move the meeting next door and leave the awful person behind. there is no shortage of organizing that happens outside of a boss/employee relationship where the person organizing knows they can't be a dickbag because no one would help them. if no one wants to help them, they can't realize their project.
anyway, anarchists, again, sorry if anything ive said is entirely wrong. please please correct me.
The main idea behind anarchism is free association, meaning a group of people can freely decide who leads them. It isnt too far fetched an idea. There are several working implementation of worker owned democratic workplaces, of which the Isreali kibbutz communities are one the largest.
Imagine replacing corporate entities with structures where the employees all have share of the company and have direct access to vote in leadership, or decide some other kind of structure (as Valve supposedly does). Theres some challenges to work though but I dont see why any new startup cant take this approach.
If I ever get a successful product going Im going to give it a try.
There is a difference between a hierarchy of control, and a hierarchy of capabilities. Think of a student driver and instructor scenario. The student driver is in direct control of the car, while the instructor has more experience and is a better driver than the student. The instructor can mentor the student and provide safeguards so that the student does not kill themselves while obtaining knowledge. It's accepting these sorts of hierarchies in humanity that allow us to make better decisions, and listen to experts, while not giving up control over our own actions.
I suppose any kind of hierarchy would need to be informal, based on workers following the examples set by other workers who they trust to have the right expertise. But unlike in a typical formal hierarchy, this wouldn't need to be those who have simply worked there the longest, or have the greatest drive for power over others, or those who have the best connections with the owners. There wouldn't be any fringe benefits (payment) for having greater influence through expertise.
