Authority = State = an Absolute Evil! (was Re: what to do)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>From Gordon to Carrol:
>I use the term State to denote all the institutions of power
>in a community (so it includes private formations like
>corporations or The Family where these are confirmed by other
>State organs).  Usually, the government would be an organ of
>the State, the publicly legitimated organ of overt and final
>force.  I can conceive of _governance_ without State institutions,
>for example, a violent mob which temporarily gets control of
>a place or thing, but it seems to me that any type of permanent
>government, even if it began in a Stateless society, would be
>certain to create and gather State institutions around it,
>since the operations of the government would almost inevitably
>tend to favor the interests of some members of the community
>over the others, especially those participating directly and
>actively in the government -- everyone might be equal, but
>some would be more equal than others.  Thus, a class system
>would be created.  So, for me, being politically Left, that
>is, being of the party of freedom and equality, means opposing
>and seeking the abolition of both the State and the government.

Engels wrote in a letter of January 24, 1872, to Theodor Cuno:

*****   In this society [of the Bakuninist ideal] there will above all be
no _authority_, for authority = state = an absolute evil.  (Indeed, how
these people propose to run a factory, operate a railway or steer a ship
without having in the last resort one deciding will, without single
management, they of course do not tell us.)  The authority of the majority
over the minority also ceases.  Every individual and every community is
autonomous; but as to how a society, even of only two people, is possible
unless each gives up some of his autonomy, Bakunin again maintains silence.
*****

"The authority of the majority over the minority also ceases" = the
practical end of democracy and beginning of atomism (unless you imagine
that there will be no dissenting voice, no disagreement, no conflict of
desires in an ideal anarchist society).  There may be freedom, but there
can't be equality (except of the Hobbesian kind in the state of nature) in
an atomistic universe.  Interestingly, Plato agrees with Gordon: democracy
= the rule of a violent mob.

Do-it-yourself entrepreneurism (Ted's Plan B) may be fun for some
(worker-ownership -- even of producer cooperatives -- under capitalism is
basically self-exploitation in niche markets, though; well, no matter,
anarchism is a wet dream of the petty producers anyhow); meanwhile, capital
is happy to take advantage of anarchist abstention and continues to rule
undemocratically on behalf of the minority.

Yoshie