Notes on Hierarchy
By Niall Twohig
Social Hierarchy in the United States
A social hierarchy is an inequitable social arrangement. The group claiming a superior position in any socially constructed hierarchy has greater access to rights, resources, and political power. The groups relegated to the inferior positions in a socially constructed order are excluded from (or marginally included in) rights, resources, and political power. As a result, their lives and cultures are devalued. They are exposed to higher risk of disease, greater threat of violence, and premature death.
In capitalist countries, the social hierarchy is built on a class relationship where the working class creates value and the elite class extracts that value. In the United States, this hierarchy is further stratified and divided by the process of racialization that positions groups above or below the color line.
Each segment is further stratified by such categories as gender, sexuality, ability, etc. Those in the dominant group of each category (male, heterosexual, able-bodied) are constructed as superior while those outside those categories are relegated to inferior positions.
I. Early Formations
Early Colonial Period
Note: The structure of early colonial society is born from the monarchial social order brought overseas and superimposed on the Americas through colonial warfare, genocide, and land grabs. That manmade order is made to appear natural by the dominant ideologies circulating through society: Religious ideologies, such as the Great Chain of Being, and European philosophical ideologies depict the masses as unruly, savage, and incapable of governing themselves. These same ideologies depict the aristocratic class as superior and natural, or divinely, appointed rulers. The “great fear” of those at the top of the hierarchy is class rebellion. To quell rebellion, the masses are taught, to paraphrase Howard Zinn, that everything is alright, even when they have cause for rebellion. In other words, they are taught to accept their position as part of the divine or natural order of things.
Bacon’s Rebellion (1676 - 1776)
Note: The great fear comes true as indentured servants and slaves start to gain class consciousness and act in defiance of elite landowners and governors. Bacon’s rebellion is the most notable example. In response to this rebellion, the artificial category of race (the color line) is deployed in Virginia to divide the working class and quell potential rebellions.
II. Birth of a Nation
1776 – Civil War
Note: The new nation is forged through violence. Despite the founders appeal to an Enlightenment philosophy of natural rights, they maintain a hierarchy stratified along the lines of race and class (similar to Virginia after Bacon’s Rebellion). Their reluctance to transform society may stem from them being beneficiaries of cheap labor and slavery. It also stems from the fact that older ideologies (white supremacy, paternalism, and class elitism) still dominate society and shaped consciousness across the hierarchy. These ideologies instill a fear of excess democracy and rationalize excluding certain groups from liberal rights. By the early 19th century, the dominant ideologies shape a corporatist State that puts profits above people and the planet (Gilded Age).
Failed Reconstruction – World War II
Note: The Civil War fails to resolve the contradictions of earlier periods; instead new contradictions emerge: liberal ideologies of freedom exist alongside segregationist ideologies. This leads to laws and institutional practices that further divide working class groups along racial lines. In urban centers, corporations and class elites work with local governments and courts to maintain corporate rights while disenfranchising the working class (Gilded Age). In the Progressive Era, ideologies of resistance (feminism, unionism) empower working class groups to come together and challenge corporations and a corporatist government. Conservative power blocs push back against progressives by depicting them as Anti-American during the first Red Scare.
III. Revolutions and Counter-Revolutions
WWII – Civil Rights Period
Note: Conditions and policies during World War II allow for some upward mobility and working class empowerment (unionism and New Deal). However, embedded racial ideologies and racist policies (redlining, racial zoning, Jim Crow Segregation, etc.) still bar working class people of color from rights, resources, and security. After WWII, a “liberal consensus” emerges that says liberal capitalism, as opposed to Communism, is the road to freedom. This consensus hides the realities of systemic violence at home and the reality of imperialist violence abroad. Confronted by these contradictions, progressive groups mobilize to reform and transform the status quo. They are motivated by a variety of ideologies including democratic ideologies (Civil Rights Movement) and more radical ideologies such as socialism and third world liberation. These social and political movements affect institutional and legislative reforms (corporate regulations, worker’s rights, voting rights, laws protecting women’s rights and gay rights). Their movements also send ripples through consciousness that are still with us today.
Neoliberal Period to Present
Note: Elite groups embracing the ideologies of neoliberalism and neoconservatism respond to the “democratizing force” of social movements. Their ideologies of “market freedom” and traditional values infiltrate institutions and begin to shape economic and political policy. Protections for workers, women, and vulnerable groups come under attack and, in many cases, are rolled back. The social safety net is dismantled, taxes on the wealthiest are cut, and corporations are deregulated. In these ways, this period rhymes with the Gilded Age: once again a corporatist state puts private profit above the common good of people and the planet. Once again, wealth and power are concentrated in the hands of a tiny fraction of the population. There are some signs that a progressive response, like that of the New Deal and Civil Rights Movement, is forming at the grassroots. The terrain for such movements is ever more hostile: Corporatist forces have learned how to defuse labor struggles, the Far Right has capitalized upon a disorganized and atomized populous, the Right has taken the opportunity to roll back progressive victories. And, above all, a limited conception of freedom (negative liberty) continues to cloud out any sense of solidarity.
Since we are born into this hierarchy, it is worth considering how it has shaped your life and limited your range of choices: What expectations and pressures do you face? What material or ecological conditions make it very difficult or near impossible to meet these expectations or deal with these pressures?
Looking at the Social Hierarchies Through an Intersectional Lens
Each segment of a social hierarchy is further stratified by such categories as gender, sexuality, ability. Those in the dominant group of each category (male, heterosexual, able-bodied) are constructed as superior while those outside those categories are relegated to inferior positions.
Judith Lorber and Nancy Jay offer a useful schema for thinking about how certain identities are “privileged” and marginalized within a socially constructed hierarchy: “As Nancy Jay says: ‘That which is defined, separated out, isolated from all else is A and pure. Not-A is necessarily impure, a random catchall, to which nothing is external except A and the principle of order that separates it from Not-A.’ From society’s point of view, one [identity formation] is usually the touchstone, the normal, the dominant, and the other is different, deviant, [inhuman] and subordinate.”
Consider how the following hierarchical constructions add further layers of stratification to the previous hierarchies:
Gender Hierarchy (Early Americas – WWII)
Gender Hierarchy (Post WWII)
Sexuality Hierarchy
Ability Hierarchy
An Arcane Hierarchy
Through the course of Western history, dominant groups have constructed and superimposed an artificial hierarchy upon the world that sets man above, and against, Nature. This old, but very active, hierarchy is so engrained in Western consciousness, so woven into the fabric of life, that most accept it as the natural order of things.
This hierarchy found its early justifications in Judeo-Christian religious ideology. Take, for example, this passage from the King James Bible: “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth” (Genesis 1:26-28, emphasis mine). Bible scholars tell us that such translations distort the original Hebrew phrasing which was closer to stewardship of, not dominion over, Nature. Nevertheless, this ideology of man, as God’s appointed Master of Nature, came to define the West’s relationship with the environment and with those beyond the bounds of Western civilization. It provided the moral justification for war, conquest of indigenous peoples, exploitation of the land.
When the West enters the Enlightenment, the ideology of mastery does not fade. Rather it gets retooled for a secular age. Now, Western man’s reason sets him above Nature and above those deemed irrational and, therefore, closer to nature. His scientific tools become means to an end: they allow him to order the chaos of Nature and harness it to his will. The Industrial Revolution provides the material conditions for turning this ideology into a global reality. Mother Nature, as Naomi Klein says, becomes the Mother Load: an exploitable object to be made profitable by the master’s hand.
The long struggle of indigenous people and the environmental movements of the 20th and 21st centuries have shown us how this old ideology, and the resulting hierarchy, have led to planetary catastrophe. These struggles remind us that we are part of an interconnected web of life and, if there is any hope for human survival, we must see ourselves as intricately and intimately bound to nature rather than above and against it. We must live as stewards not masters.