Herbert Spencer has a great little essay on this called The Great Political Superstition¹. He makes the decisive case that political authority is nonsense.

To paraphrase, the belief in the political authority of men is just as superstitious as the belief in the authority of God because there is no natural justification for either.

Given the premise of the divine right of kings, that the king was god-appointed, there is at least the logical conclusion that no bounds can be set on political authority. But for modern political authority no such premise exists.

Since the divine right of kings, philosophers have tried to invent justifications like the social contract, where we came together “organically” in order to give up our freedoms to the sovereignty of some autocrat. Nowhere in history can we find evidence of this. But all we have done is rejected in name the doctrines which we now hold in fact. We retained the substance, posture, and hierarchies of the divine right of kings after we have abandoned the form. Now we’re left to wonder why we must submit to a group of men which has no naturally or supernaturally-derived authority.

1. Spencer, Man Vs. The State, p. 123 https://oll-resources.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/oll3/store/titles/330/0020_Bk.pdf

I assume (maybe wrongly) that most people are raised by women in their "formative years". This suggests the influence of the mother at a time when a human being learns the most is at its highest, and in a way sets the conditions of the majority of human behaviors and impacts everything from simple relationships on down to the formation of entire societies.

Colonization is a fiction too because tribes had no governments and thus nothing could be stolen.

I’m not sure why. It doesn’t follow that because I reject abstract entities I ought not to use abstract language. I remain aware the term ‘organization’ refers to nothing in particular, so I’m not troubled by any dissonance. It’s just that it would take too much effort to find every particular entity involved in any given organization and furnish each with its proper noun. It’s enough to just recognize the limits of language and move on.

Nonetheless among the people who organize themselves under a common banner and around a common code, there are a minority who hold authority and status above the rest.

That’s how one can have an account that has all social institutions tending towards oligarchy while denying that there are any social institutions.

The mistake is conflating society and government. Government is compulsory while society is largely voluntary.

Remember Thomas Paine’s Common Sense.

SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.

The government is anti-social, while the same cannot be said of the people who oppose it. Government seeks to regulate society and have it conform to its will. The people who oppose it do not. I doubt that the people seeking to escape government control would bring it with them. But they would no doubt bring society and forge a new one.

There are governments who protect the freedom of people in such zones, like the Sentinelese people, for fear that they may be interfered with. But they are not completely helpless. Anyone who has shown up there has been met with proper hostility and force, proving that they are not entirely dependent.

Note that somehow the leaders were able to come together consensually and work together without any government forcing them to do so.

I don’t use the word “gender” anymore unless it refers to grammar. Better to abandon the term, I say, and stick to “sex”. It basically clears up any confusion.

Money is just a medium of exchange. We could use jumping beans if it makes you feel better.

Note that no one can do anything other than pooh-pooh his criticisms and try to attack his character as if they knew the guy, and all to defend a system in which they pretend they have some modicum of control. It’s knee jerk, like he was saying something about their mom.

I think it’s a good book. The superstition is obvious. None of which critics say is even physically true, let alone logically. They pretend politicians represent them, as if a person they’ve never conversed with, nor ever would, was somehow able to grasp their concerns. It’s all true to them by sheer force of repetition, or ritual, or whatever else it takes the superstitious to begin to believe nonsense.

Even the rare self-employed sole-proprietor requires a state to enforce contracts and tender.

Would you say that such a state, where everyone is a sole-proprietor and self-employed but there is a state, is somehow oligarchy free?

I think it’s a superstition that only man in the form of a state employee can enforce contracts and tender and pave roads. That being said my own statism does go that far. I fear that by now people are so inured to government doing these things for them, that without it, they wouldn’t be able to come up with any other reasons to abide by contracts. No government for them = no contracts, as if people couldn’t abide by them and enforce them on principle and morality alone.

As for your state, I would not say it is somehow oligarchy free. People love oligarchy, apparently.

The way I look at organization -- work is already an organization, even of the more traditional sort. It's a legal entity with property claims and contracts. It requires a state to function. It's a space which is already organized with its own hierarchies and rules around property and propriety. People obey the rules, and are subject to discipline for disobeying the rules, and there are people who aren't even allowed in.

Not if you’re a sole-proprietor and self-employed.

I believe you. Heh, no point in disputing what real anarchy is.

Not all of them work like that, as you might imagine.

It didn’t last long. The Gov burned down their makeshift homes and sent them packing. I wouldn’t even say they were anarchists, to be honest, though a few were.

I can’t remember the last time I’ve spoken to someone in authority or any leaders but I interact with people every day for work and pleasure. Imagine that: people just getting along with some pushy organization telling them what to do. If I was in an organization, though, that would be quite different in virtue of its structure.

I’ve actually spent a few months in a supposed anarchist community, believe it or not. No leaders, elders, or anything of the sort. The only meetings we had were surfing and fishing and the odd celebration.

Imagine starting your arguments with “imagine” all the time.

Oligarchy is the rule of the few. So I see a few people holding positions of power over the vast majority of human beings. I would argue that very little in everyday social life is oligarchic in character, that neither rule nor coercive power need apply to any of it, really. In most instances and in most interactions throughout history, self-rule is the norm.

I’m not so sure of anarchism yet but I definitely wish to promote self-government and the rule of people over their own lives. The problem with democracy, from Plato onward, is that the state is always assumed in its realization. It might be that democracy is a one-to-one ratio with anarchy, hence why Plato and later conservatives thought it would lead invariably to some kind of anarchy.

How about the Quakers? They run their organization on the basis of consensus. Not just consensus building, but 100% consensus.

There's a lot of groups out there which don't follow this purported law.

After a brief look it appears the Quakers have clerks and elders and committees. Besides the belief that they are following God's will and not their own, Quakerism is a good example of oligarchy done right, in my opinion. Decentralized and largely volunteer authorities and administers, direct deliberation in how to apply God's will on even the most mundane of matters, active participation in governing affairs—should one wish to form an organization perhaps it would be a good idea to emulate them.

https://quaker.org/meeting-for-business/

I'm not sure oligarchy fails because I see it everywhere, I'm afraid. People keep instituting it, justifying it, and seeking to benefit from its fruits. Given the very structure of their organizations, it appears to me that everyone concerned with building democracy are really concerned with building a better oligarchy, especially one amenable to their tastes.

Better to remove the organization from power and politics. Organize for other reasons like cleaning up the neighborhood or helping a community member get on his feet.

I read the paper you presented earlier but thanks for the exposition. I do think quibbling about his use of the word “law” here and there is warranted but doesn’t say much about his central thesis or arguments, which need to be addressed as much as his choice of terminology.

It’s clear from the book what he means by “oligarchy”. Besides, I’m not sure the term has varied too much in the last millennia.

If Michels’ ideas are wrong there should be cases where he is. All it takes is some examples and the theory is essentially falsified. Wherever it is falsified democracy is possible. Wherever it is not falsified democracy is not.

But so far it’s nothing, at least as far as organizations are concerned. So why should someone like me or anyone else sit around and wait for political parties and organizers to bring us democracy, when it is more than likely they’ll bring us oligarchy? If they actually cared for democracy they might try something different. If they cared for others they might actually make an effort to do so.

But they don’t. It’s obvious to me it’s the power they are after, and nothing besides. Their advocacy of policies and laws does little more than puts a veil over the fact they want government employees to do the work they refuse to do themselves.

I've read The Poverty of Historicism and am confident that Popper would approve of Michels' theory and methodology. I think it falls under what Popper called a technological social science, which he distinguished from historicist methodology.

No one is absolved from the fact they trumpeted nonsense for years and were complicit in injustice, undermining everything from the justice system to the intelligence community to diplomacy, and leading directly to the sordid states of affairs we see today. History won’t forget these crimes.

Which organizations push the ideology of individualism? If I believed the fascist and socialist literature from the French Revolution onward I’d think you were right, but during my lifetime I cannot say I’ve heard much of it. I have to read the likes of Wilhelm Von Humboldt, Herbert Spencer, Henry Thoreau, John Locke, JS Mill to find any trace of it. I know Hoover once mention “rugged individualism” a long time ago and it has become sort of a meme, but not much else. Maybe I’m naive.

The 300-page Durham report is finally out. Better late than never, I suppose.

No probable cause, systematic failures, personal bias, two-tiered justice—the works. It's difficult and maddening to believe people were led so easily to such false and dangerous conclusions by what amounts to lies, corruption, and stupidity.

Durham Report

"Relationship" is a metaphor because there is no actual, physical connection between mother and child, save for the umbilical cord. "Connection" is also metaphorical, I believe. Rather, to relate is an action performed by things. Turning the verb "relate" into a noun by adding the suffix "ship" does not signify some other thing, but is used in abstracto to describe mother and child relating to one another.

I call myself an object because I fit the definition, at least according to the hard sciences. I have a boundary; I move as one; I occupy a position in space and time; and so on.

The brute facts are important for politics because one requires a political unit or subject to value. The fascist, for instance, would value the State and give it primacy in all matters political, and is willing to sacrifice flesh-and-blood individuals for its sake. The Marxist would do the same for the Proletariat. The liberal or republican would do it for the People or the Res publica. The National Socialist would do it for the Race. Collectivism is a tried-and-true method for justifying atrocity and injustice. Worse, their demand for the subordination of the individual to some notion of the collective proves that it is not about the collective at all, but about subordinating certain segments and individuals of the collective to others.

I don't think I have poisoned the well with the Law of Oligarchy because Michels' is concerned with systematic organizations and not the spontaneous familial relationships and other aggregates of human beings. His book is called Political Parties, after all. But I guess its an interesting question if any aggregate of human beings can be considered an organization. if you want to get into it, it's clear that the relationship of mother and child, or the bourgeois family, are not democracies by any stretch of the imagination.

It's true that human beings and other primates are gregarious. But you are a single object. The last dyad you or I have ever experienced ended when the umbilical cord was severed. Any and all attachments are strictly metaphorical. To me it's patently false to treat aggregates of any number of human beings as single objects, so I'm a strict nominalist in that regard. I can't get around it and I can't help but fashion my politics around what I see as brute facts.

For these reasons I believe any effort to give a group priority over the individuals in it—collectivism—is to prioritize ideas over actuality, and worse, one's own ideas and nothing more. It is never about the collective qua collective, nor could it be.

I don't see social interactions, conversations, and natural groupings as organizations because they are not arranged systematically and artificially. They are not organized.

I don’t get why people push back against it because everyone we organize with is an individual. If you only see them as a means to some collective end, then it is their subordination rather than their cooperation you require. I fear that holding abstractions over and above actual flesh-and-blood individuals justifies the worst of humanity, and is egotism of the highest order.

We can quibble about how ferrous his law is. It just seems to me that if oligarchy wasn’t inevitable, and the law not so iron, that we’d see some solid examples proving otherwise. Maybe someone can provide one and we can weigh it to the countless examples supporting Michels theory, but I don't even know if that's necessary.

Michels' thesis that "with the advance of organization, democracy tends to decline", and "where organization is stronger, we find that there is a lesser degree of applied democracy", stands more solid than the gaseous notion that the state is potentially democratic. If oligarchy is not inevitable, how long do we have to wait for its opposite?

Harth dropped the lawsuit right after Trump settled an outstanding business lawsuit from her partner. Weird how that happens.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/20/donald-trump-sexual-assault-allegations-jill-harth-interview

Ivana walked back the allegation back in 93:

“During a deposition given by me in connection with my matrimonial case, I stated that my husband had raped me,” Ivana Trump said in a statement at the time, as the Daily Beast reported. "[O]n one occasion during 1989, Mr. Trump and I had marital relations in which he behaved very differently toward me than he had during our marriage. As a woman, I felt violated, as the love and tenderness, which he normally exhibited towards me, was absent. I referred to this as a 'rape,' but I do not want my words to be interpreted in a literal or criminal sense."

https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Politics/donald-trumps-wife-ivana-disavows-rape-allegation/story?id=32732204

Why aren’t you mentioning these things?

Look at the date of their accusations. October 2016. Why are you lying?

As with Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby it's:
He said; she said. And she said, and she said, and she said ...

All after he became a political target of the highest order. Just a big coincidence, I guess.

@Banno is a collectivist. Given his inclination he sees hierarchies of power and the structure of a political party as folks working together.

I don’t doubt for a second that the Adult Survivors Act was designed to allow E. Jean Carrol an opportunity to attack Trump before the election, a scheme as political as it is unjust.

The act was introduced by Senator Hoylman-Sigal, known as he is to use legislation to persecute Trump, proving to me that bending the law is the only way to make it seem like the president broke it. Political from conception to use. According to E Jean Carrols lawyer they had much to do with it as well. It wouldn’t be so bad if it was about principle, but the tiny window of one year proves it’s about expediency. Maybe they realized how dangerous it is to to forgo the statute of limitations entirely, but their hatred ran hotter than their sense of justice.

They are going to hang them on gallows too small and weak to be used. Fact is, people often erect mock gallows at protests.

Then the very structure of your organization and path to democracy betrays your goals. Your organization requires hierarchy, the rule of the few, in the conservative tradition. Now it is just a matter of who is more honest about it.

Wrong again. It was an unusual voir dire, which I assume was designed to protect the identities of the jurors. Protect them from delusional Trump supporters. Trump supporters often don't have a good grasp on reality and have been known to be violent when things don't go their way.

It's a self-fulfilling prophesy. Treat unjustly a group of people and then get angry when they get mad. The logic of petty tyrants.

None of your straw-grasping can contend with the fact no evidence of any sexual assault or admission of any sexual assault occurred in the video. All sexual assault has been explicitly denied. He said; she said. You: She said, therefor he did. I just don't follow it.

As for the jury selection it was an anonymous jury. No lawyers had access to them during the process, therefor no voir dire.

True enough. But they wouldn’t have coercive political power. And I think cooperation could beat out organization any day. I’m not sure if this is true or not but I do believe a voluntary army could stick it to a slave army.

I do appreciate all the attention but I'm far more interested in your opinion on the topic. Can you think of a way around the Iron Law of Oligarchy? Or would you admit, like the conservatives do, that the very structure of your organization requires a hierarchy of betters and lessers, elites and the masses, masters and slaves?

You would think that Trumps lawyers would have done better in the jury selection process. I hear he only hires the best people.

There was no jury selection process. Such a fair trial.

If you can show where someone in the trial claimed that the video proves that Trump sexually assaulted a woman then do so.

Are you saying that I think that others believe Trump assaulted someone in the video?

Do you think that when "they let you do it", it is assault?

What I seem to think to you can be contrasted to what I actually do think: Nowhere does he admit to any assault in the video. Nowhere has assault been proven beyond any reasonable doubt. That's it. All there is are accusation, all of which can be seriously doubted.

It was literally presented as evidence in a rape trial. I don’t get what you’re saying here.