From the authority
Von der Authority ( 1873 ) is an article written by Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) that was directed against so-called “ anti-authoritarian socialism ” from the Bakunin area . The article deals with the relationship between autonomy and authority in social coexistence.
Origin and publication history
The approximately four page long article was written between October 1872 and March 1873. In the historical-critical commentary of the Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe (MEGA) on this article one learns that it is only available in Italian in an Italian magazine (“ Almanacco Repubblicano per l'anno 1874 "). The article is printed in volume 18 of the Marx-Engels-Werke (MEW) (pp. 305–308).
content
Engels begins by addressing the demand of "some socialists " (which addresses the anarchists around Bakunin at the time) and by putting their ideas of a society without authority up for debate. Starting from a brief analysis of the current capitalist mode of production, Engels asks the question whether a post-capitalist society based on its civilizational-technical level is even possible without any authority:
“If we examine the economic - industrial and agricultural - conditions which form the basis of contemporary civil society, we find that they tend to replace isolated activity more and more with the combined activity of individuals. […] Everywhere the combined activity, the complication of interdependent processes, takes the place of the independent activity of individuals. But whoever says combined activity means organization; is organization now possible without authority?
Let us assume that a social revolution has dethroned the capitalists , whose authority now directs the production and circulation of wealth. Let us assume, in order to take the standpoint of the anti-authoritarians entirely , that land and labor instruments have become the collective property of the workers who use them. Will authority then be gone, or will it just have changed shape? Let's watch. "
Friedrich Engels deduces from the following that in the social production and reproduction of life, people must also subordinate themselves to authoritarian principles of order, and not just to autonomous ones. Authority arises where it is necessary to ensure a smooth process. He justifies this need for authority on the one hand with the division of labor , which has intensified more and more in the course of the development of societies ( industrialization ) and reached its climax in capitalism. In order to be able to continue to produce the wealth of goods that capitalism has produced in a socialist society, very specific forms of metabolism with the environment (hence concrete work) must be entered into, as in capitalism. Engels illustrates this compulsion by working in a cotton mill (one could also imagine the production process in a modern factory ) or in the case of the railroad: “What would happen to the first outgoing train if the authority of the railroad employees over the travelers were abolished? But the need for an authority, and a commanding authority, is most clearly evident in a ship on the high seas. Here, in the moment of danger, everyone's life depends on everyone obeying the will of an individual immediately and absolutely. "
“So we have seen that on the one hand a certain authority transferred in whatever way and on the other hand a certain subordination are things that impose themselves on us independently of all social organization, together with the material conditions under which we produce and the products circulate to let.
On the other hand, we have seen that the material conditions of production and circulation are inevitably expanded by large-scale industry and agriculture, and that there is a tendency to expand the field of this authority more and more. It is therefore absurd to speak of the principle of authority as an absolutely bad principle and of the principle of autonomy as an absolutely good principle. Authority and autonomy are relative things, the areas of application of which vary in different phases of social development. If the autonomists were content to say that the social organization of the future will limit authority solely to those limits in which the conditions of production make it inevitable, one could come to an understanding ... "
Engels criticizes the anti- authoritarians' demand that “the authoritarian political state should be abolished in one fell swoop” “before the social conditions that gave rise to it are destroyed”, that is, the demand “that the first act of the social revolution should be Abolition of authority. "
“Have these gentlemen never seen a revolution ? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act by which part of the population imposes its will on the other part by means of rifles , bayonets and cannons , that is, with the most authoritarian means possible; and the victorious party, if it does not want to have fought in vain, must give endurance to this rule by the horror which its weapons instill in the reactionaries . Would the Paris Commune have lasted for just a single day if it had not used this authority of the armed people against the bourgeoisie ? "
In the end, Engels comes to the conclusion:
“So one of two things: either the anti-authoritarians don't know what they are saying, and in this case they only sow confusion; or they know, and in which case they are betraying the movement of the proletariat. In one case as in the other, they serve the reaction. "
Web links
- Friedrich Engels: Von der Autorität (1873) on mlwerke.de (from: MEW 18, pp. 305–308)