[qzcx]

> Management versus worker is an adversarial relationship

This is because the needs of a company are not the needs of an individual.

>Management democratically accountable to labor seems perfectly reasonable

Have you seen the US political system? Do you think if you apply democracy to management then it won't be corrupt? I only see people voting for the manager who promises the biggest benefits.

[danharaj]

Sorry, I deleted my message (don't ask how..)

Prev message:

" I don't think specialization requires hierarchy. It merely requires... specialization. Specialists require support from society. Where does hierarchy enter into this? I don't think it enters at all, merely on grounds of efficiency, nor do I think that if that were the case, that such a utilitarian mode of reasoning justifies hierarchy.

If it were merely efficiency that justifies hierarchy, no one would need to fight to establish it. What we observe instead is that hierarchies are intimately tied up with the mechanisms that enforce them: Usually violence of some sort. It would not be hard for me to accept a line of thinking that started with the idea that an acceptable definition of violence is any force required to enforce a relationship of domination.

> Do you think companies could do without CEOs?

Well I think as a worker that I do best working with peers who value their relationship with me and respect my autonomy. Management versus worker is an adversarial relationship and its manifestation in my work environment is deeply rooted in a much more violent, oppressive relationship that persists to this day in some places.

A CEO is useful. That does not mean a CEO cannot be accountable to their workers instead of to property owners (hierarchies upon hierarchies upon hierarchies). Management democratically accountable to labor seems perfectly reasonable, in fact, perhaps a desirable evolution on the model.

The only problem is that it contradicts the hierarchical structures that shape our society. This isn't a meritocracy of ideas, there are a few ideas with all the guns that are actively hostile against anything possible outside of their paradigm. "

New message:

> Have you seen the US political system? Do you think if you apply democracy to management then it won't be corrupt? I only see people voting for the manager who promises the biggest benefits.

That is because we live in an adversarial economic system where everyone is supposed to pretend they are an individual with needs that are at odds with everyone else. The only reason we need to accept this is because we want to 'reward' 'better' people with more resources, power, status, and ability to control our destinies.

We don't have to accept that. A lot of effort is put into making us accept it. A lot of propaganda goes into teaching people that property is good and that the state is good, and that an individual exists without taking into account their social relationships with other human beings.

We cut people up into individuals, tell them they have no common lot with others, then force feed them a lot of ideology in order to convince them that they are freer the less they care about others and the more they try to accumulate wealth for them'selves'. The system clearly benefits the fraction of a percent that reside at the top and steer it towards their own self enrichment far more than it benefits me, someone who is somewhere between the middle and the top, and far, far more than it benefits those at the bottom.

[qzcx]

>We cut people up into individuals, tell them they have no common lot with others, then force feed them a lot of ideology in order to convince them that they are freer the less they care about others and the more they try to accumulate wealth for them'selves'.

This is exactly the opposite of what most "big God" religions teach. I mean Jesus's big messages were "Do unto others" and "Be one". Not going to argue that Christianity didn't stray from that from time to time. But you're starting to go in circles here.

This goes back to the point of the article in the first place which is that "Big God" religions are a counter balance to large structured hierarchical societies.

[danharaj]

"big God" emphasizes a figure head, and then reflects that figurehead in less spiritual realms recursively until you get to the bottom of a hierarchy. Christianity the social structure (as opposed to the abstract religion) is very tied up in a patriarchal view of the world. Indeed, God's at the top, then it used to be the kings, the pope, the priests, etc., and slowly it descends until you get to the household, headed of course by a father. Everyone below that level was hardly a person at all, historically, traditionally.

Jesus's messages may have been egalitarian, communal, and all that, but Christianity the social structure was very much not. The God/believer relationship was a model for human relationships, which, of course, put a man in the position of God, and a man with lesser status or someone with no status, below him.

That statement you cited, of course, does not fall into that paradigm. That's a modern idea which incidentally became more and more prominent as the "big God" paradigm became less and less important. Of course, the truth historically and even in the present day is much muckier than that: the ideologies and their attendant power structures are very intertwined. But it's clear that bourgeoise liberalism won out a while ago and religious hierarchies like Christianity have been sliding since.

I should have made it clear that what I'm criticizing is the common root of all hierarchical ideologies, not just the ones investigated in this article.