The most enthusiastic builders of "dominance" hierarchies are the levellers

We can deny it if we want, but we all know that when the chips are down and the anarchists have formed the anarchists' association, the first thing they do is elect a governing committee.

The first quality I noticed about leftist groups when I started university in the mid-sixties as a raw green Catholic boy was the steep perpendicular nature of their organization. Often it was a small overwhelming group at the top headed by an articulate loudmouth charismatic type, and then a sheer drop to the faithful who cowered under the force of the higher-up personalities. Issuing from this structure were the well-known oft-heard slogans about freedom and equality. I saw hypocrisy immediately as the outstanding virtue of this class of persons.

I have had this irresistible feeling since my first political awakenings that human society was essentially hierarchical. Much later, undergoing another awakening while reading and studying Edmund Burke's speeches and writings, I understood that this idea is a fundamental tenet of philosophical conservatism, and further that any attempt to change the hierarchical nature of society would end in disaster. It was Burke's prescient warning that the social destruction of the levelling French Revolution would end in a dictatorship.

The French Revolution is the paradigm of the vast majority of revolutions that followed, all meant to introduce an era freedom and equality. They all ended the same way, the Russian and Chinese revolutions being most exemplary of what Denis Dutton calls a dominance hierarchy, which is a perversion of the conservative understanding of the natural framework of society.

Denis Dutton, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch and editor of The Arts and Letter Daily website, has written an entertaining and informative article on human society and hierarchies. It may not have been his intention to confirm someone in their deepest conservative feelings. And it may not please him. It has nevertheless had that effect in my case. A highly recommended piece. Go to: Hard-wired for ups and downs Prof. Dutons's website: http://denisdutton.com/

PS Just love the opening quote above.