Actually, I have nothing against hierarchy. It works reasonably well in the places where it is necessary and, above all, in fairly small groups united by a common goal. The army is a classic example of a hierarchical organization, though I suspect its effectiveness does not extend beyond the company level. I am thinking here of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, with its famous scene “eine Kolonne marschiert,” in which the writer questions whether a person can really command a battle. Admiral Nelson is credited with the saying “The best admiral is the one who knows how not to give orders.” Nelson’s paradox and Tolstoy’s description are examples of the work of other orders—higher than simple hierarchy—within a system based on very rigid hierarchy. The Battle of Trafalgar and some of Nelson’s other victories were almost impossible to replicate: if you recreated their initial conditions and tried to manage everything yourself, you would fail. Yet Nelson succeeded, apparently because he knew this simple secret. The same held for the “general battles” of the 19th century, engagements sprawling across vast territories like Waterloo—despite a commander’s inability to control everything directly, the way a player can in a computer game, the process never descended into chaos. It was a self-organizing process, with the hierarchical principle operating at certain levels while larger and smaller formations interacted at others.
I will repeat: I am deliberately talking about the army—an ideal type of hierarchical structure. In peacetime, hierarchy flourishes here, but the moment the army is called upon for its actual purpose, other orders come into play.