Doug Henwood wrote:
>> Oooh, "the workers' movement never really had the revolutionary
>> potentialities that Marx attributed to it." The factory programmed
>> workers' minds to be regimented & obedient. So MB turns to anarchism
>> as a critique of all hierarchies. But what if the original
>> parent-child relationship is the source of our longing for hierarchy?
>
The parent-child relationship is not a single thing. How you relate to
your parents changes as you get older and more able and they get older
and less so. It also matters a great deal what kind of parents you
wound up getting: psychopaths? drug addicts? alcohoolics? CPA's?
musicians? artists? teachers? and what their ideas of raising kids is
about. So I have a hard time attributing any particular quality to this
relationship whose essence is only that at a certain point of utter
helplessness, we survive only because we are taken care of. This may
have a lot to do with our tendency toward identification and
introjection, but otherwise.... it definitely matters who we identify
with and what we introject -- so essentialisms about the child/parent
relationship immediately relate to the larger culture.
There is nothing inherently wrong with heirarchies; in some situations they can be efficient or entertaining; in others, they get in the way.
Most of the time however, hierarchies and meritocracies are simply ways to rationalize an unjust distribution of goods and goodies. That's the problem.
Joanna