Mark Twain Two Reigns of Terror Quote never gets old. People are blind to all the normalized terror around them that happens soley because one class seeks to maintain its dominance over the class they exploit to make thier lifestyles possible.
Friedrich Engels, 1872, On authority
Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is. It is the act by which one part of the population imposes its will on the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannons — by the most authoritarian means possible; and the victors, if they do not want to have fought in vain, must maintain this rule by means of the terror which their arms inspire in the reactionaries. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if the communards had not used the authority of the armed people against the bourgeoisie? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach them for not having used it enough?
Therefore, we must conclude one of two things: either the anti-authoritarians don’t know what they’re talking about, in which case they are only sowing confusion; or they do know, in which case they are betraying the proletarian movement. In either case, they serve reaction.
On authority is used to justify the fact that many communist movements of the past turned into brutal dictatorships and that “it’s fine actually that mao starved half of China because you can’t have a revolution without being authoritarian”.
The actual paper is short and kind of stupid. What Engels was arguing in that short essay with a ridiculously outsized influence was that he was technically correct (the best kind) that anarchists are silly because any type of government someone could propose inevitably involves one person imposing their will on another like your quote says.
Really what Engels (who was a prominent communist thinker) was doing was fucking up any attempts at communist organization because now 1/3 of communists think that brutal authoritarianism is based and necessary for a revolution.
Engels conflates authority with basically everything: necessity, organization, processes, violence, self-defense, etc.
Yes, Engels does a pretty good job of explaining why “authoritarian” complaints are usually explained purely by vibes.
He mostly explained how he actually didn’t really have a proper grasp of what authority actually means. He conflated them with a lot of things without actually making sense. I’m surprised why “On authority” is so widely known.
To this day, nobody’s actually articulated any counterpoints to it, so yeah.
Just cause you chose to ignore the well-founded critique, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.
You may or may not be making a valid point, but you need to be clearer about who you are referring to and in which context.
the meme is referencing a quote from marx that is greatly useful for dunking on idealist leftists who believe that the revolution can simply be wished into existence without all the dirty work.
Seriously. I might not be a great “Marx Scholar” and I don’t think the revolution will just be a peaceful process “whished into existence” but I don’t think Marx was Dunkin g on anti authoritarians here and to presume the “dictatorship of the proletariat” is the long term free society of Marx ideals is utter garbage. Communism will be anti-authoritarian or it will not be.
Marx and Engels considered the mere act of revolution to be authoritarian. Advocating for a worker state is at some level authoritarian.
Jumping straight to statelessness is Anarchism, not Marxism, and has a much lower success rate at lasting any amount of time.
The thing is that anarchism fundamentally doesn’t scale. There’s a reason we see central authority arise in every functioning society regardless of its political system. It’s the same reason complex animals evolve things like nervous systems and brains. Large organism need a way to coordinate actions towards a common purpose, and a human society is no different. This is why we see anarchist style societies at small scales, and then as they grow they develop central coordination mechanisms. The fact that anarchist can’t wrap their heads around this simple concept is frankly depressing.
Anarchists tend to fall for idealism, and see only Anarchism as “good” and therefore acceptable. That’s really the key point, they feel like they must unify means and ends, and that the microscopic chance that one day Anarchism may be established is worth fighting for.
It’s idealism to the core and puts the individual over the well-being of the group.
Wat?
we have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror. but the royal terrorists, the terrorists by the grace of god and the law, are in practice brutal, disdainful, and mean, in theory cowardly, secretive, and deceitful, and in both respects disreputable.
What does that have to do with “anti-authoritarians”. Sounds a bit like too much Engels to me.
Typical Stalinism/Maoism: Anyone who opposes my implementation of Marxism is an enemy of the proletariat and can be persecuted to any extent. These people agree with the mainstream idea that communism can’t be implemented democratically, but come to the conclusion that democracy must be abolished.
This meme is an open dogwhistle to tankies and thankfully meaningless to anyone who hasn’t fallen into or interacted with this small subsection of the far-left.
