> Aargh I hate this analogy.
I love it because it compares people to animals and that offends plenty of pettit bourgeois sensibilities.
> But taking it as seriously as I possibly can (and you owe me
> for this)... why
> is the dog chained up, and what does the chain mean about
> either "dog" or the
> dog's experience of itself>
Because that keeps him well fed, relatively safe from dangers, and doubles his life expetancy.
More seriously - the only type of human society (not counting religious kooks who go to the woods to escape civilisation) that is relatively free of hierarchical institutions are pre-historic hunters and gatherers. I do not their living consitions were that great, as their life expectancy was less than half of what it is today.
As soon as people started producing their own means of subsistence - the complexity of human societies started to grow exponentially, and that required some form of institutionalized order. The greater the number of people, and the greater their specialization, the more elaborate institutional order. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure that out.
Everyone who seriously thinks that a modern society can abolish institutions and live the same kind of life as we do, only better and free of coercion is hallucinating. Abolishing hierarchical institutions and coercion (or "power" as some would say) belongs to the same category as the dreams of immortality. It is a daydreaming fantasy that often diverts attention from the more attainable goal of making those hierarchies and the use of corecion more accountable. But such "reformism" is beneath the dignity of a true idealist, I suppose.
Wojtek