"post-leftism"

JCWisc at aol.com JCWisc at aol.com
Fri Aug 16 13:35:39 PDT 2002


In a message dated Fri, 16 Aug 2002 3:19:38 PM Eastern Standard Time, seamus2001 at attbi.com writes:


> Don't you think it's a bit of an analogical stretch to say
> that the workers at Boeing and
> Airbus have guns held to their heads?
>
> Ian

Quite.

I don't disagree that present society has far too much coercion and hierarchy.

That said, yes I do think that hierarchy of some kind will always be needed to carry out tasks of any size or complexity. Does hierarchy rest simply and solely on coercion? I don't like the word "coercion" in this context because it seems too simplistic, even if one is only talking about present society.

Reducing it all to a simple matter of coercion, as it were, at gunpoint, as though we were all simply being herded into the mines and galleys, ignores the complexity of modern society.

At a minimum, some people just *are* more experienced, knowledgeable, capable,or what have you, than others, and so *ought* to direct the work of other people. Is it, for example, intolerable coercion, in some ultimate sense "at gunpoint," if a senior scientist, let's say, assigns her grad students to do a lot of boring scut work in the lab?

More to say, but I am at work and my boss is reaching for her .36, so I've gotta go.

Jacob Conrad



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