On Authority
Dell’Autorità
Engels’s short polemic against the anarchists, written in Italian in 1872 during the split with Bakunin in the International: modern industry, the railway and the ship cannot run without subordination to a common will, and a revolution is “the most authoritarian thing there is”. Lenin made it a key text of The State and Revolution.
- Edition
- Translated for the Compendium from the Italian text published in the Almanacco Repubblicano per l’anno 1874 (Lodi, 1873), as transcribed from the Editori Riuniti edition.
- Source
- marxists.org (Italian)
Start reading 9 min audiobook
Quiz
Test your reading. The short quiz draws 7 questions at random from 13; score 80% for a silver medal. The full quiz asks all 13; a perfect score earns gold.
Contents
- On Authority 9 min 18
Against the anarchists who condemn every act as “authoritarian”, Engels argues that modern industry replaces isolated work by combined action, and combined action needs organisation and subordination. A spinning mill, a railway and a ship at sea could not run without a will that settles questions for all, whoever owns them. Authority and autonomy are relative to the stage of production. The state will die out, but a revolution is “the most authoritarian thing there is”, and the Commune fell for using its authority too little.