> As for the authority of war, revolution, and the state, Engels wrote
> famously:
Famously, perhaps. But also incorrectly.
> "But the anti-authoritarians demand that the authoritarian political state be
> abolished at one stroke, even before the social conditions that gave birth to
> it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social
> revolution shall be the abolition of authority. Have these gentlemen ever
> seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing
> there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will
> upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets, and cannon-- authoritarian
> means, if such there be at all;
Engels' apology for authority is well known and there have been countless essays about his erroneous use of the term here. It's not authoritarian to remedy what is unjustly authoritarian. The Right likes to go on about the "authoritarianism" of workers or unions or community activists who attempt to make corporations more democratically accountable, i.e. to make them less autocratic and authoritarian. Doing this can only be called "authoritarian" by someone who has a unique definition of the term. If the working class were to go on the offensive to root out wage slavery, the State, capitalism, etc. , they would not br acting "authoritarian." They would be remedying the problems of authoritarianism.
The imagery of rifles, bayonet, and cannon - things that we cannot predict would actually ever be used in a revolutionary situation - is unwarranted. This is all like saying that if someone attacks you and you manage to stab him in sef-defense, you are "authoritarian."
In short, it's not authoritarian to remedy the problem of unjustified authority. That is exactly the opposite of authoritarianism.
> Therefore, either one of two things: either the anti-authoritarians don't
> know what they are talking about, in which case they are creating nothing but
> confusion, or they do know, and in that case they are betraying the movement
> of the proletariat. In either case they serve the reaction."
>
> (from Engels, "On Authority", 1874)
Either one of 2 things, indeed: either Engels doesn't understand what unjustified authority ("auhtoritarianism") is, in which case he creates nothing but confusion, or he does know what it is, in which case his ideas here are slanderous lies.
If Engels *were* in his own roundabout way providing an apology for authority then we can see how the figures of power that used Engels' ideas - take, say, Lenin - were able to justify their own authoritarianism and thus act over their countries with a freer hand. ("You think that by sending the Cheka out to hunt down these people that I am authoritarian? Of course I am! That's what Revolution is!" etc.)
Brian