Obedience against conscience requires a single monopolistic source of authority without rivals

Evidence

The meaning of correction is unambiguous: the readiness to act against one’s own better judgment, and against the voice of one’s conscience, is not just the function of authoritative command, but the result of exposure to a single-minded, unequivocal and monopolistic source of authority. Such readiness is most likely to appear inside an organization which brooks no opposition and tolerates no autonomy, and in which linear hierarchy of subordination knows no exception: an organization in which no two members are equal in power. (Most armies, penitentiary institutions, totalitarian parties and movements, certain sects or boarding schools come close to this ideal type.) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 468

Categorization

• DEFINE: Specifies the mechanism: it is not command as such but monopoly of authority that makes conscience-negating obedience possible.
• XREF: connects to: Rational self-interest alone suffices for evil to operate unchallenged. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 592; Forced obedience to absolute power is worse than the state of nature — John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, 170

Related

• Rational self-interest alone suffices for evil to operate unchallenged. (similarity 0.80)
• Forced obedience to absolute power is worse than the state of nature (similarity 0.78)