war and the state (was milton, etc.)

Joe R. Golowka joeg at ieee.org
Thu Aug 22 22:23:38 PDT 2002


Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> At 8:09 PM -0700 8/21/02, Brian O. Sheppard x349393 wrote:
>
>> Engels' apology for authority is well known and there have been countless
>> essays about his erroneous use of the term here. It's not
<snip>
>
> It seems you are not so much opposing what Engels says as quibbling with
> his use of the word "authoritarian," since you don't oppose the use of
> force in self-defense or to "root out wage slavery."

Actually, Engels is playing with semantics and equating two very different things (something which Marxists do frequently, most often with the state). There's a huge difference between hierarchical authority and a rebellion by those on the bottom of the hierarchy against the controll of those on the top of that hierarchy. Hierarchical authority is a type of social relationship whereby one group of people (usually a minority of the population) has power over others. Examples include capitalism (bosses&capitalists have power over workers), patriarchy (men have power over women), white supremacy (whites have power over blacks) and the state (a ruling elite has power over the majority of the population).

This instiutionalized subordination (authority) is vastly different from when the dominated refuse to obey the rulers and use force to defend themselves from the ruler's coercision. For example, take rape - a specific instance of patriarchy (which is a form of hierarchical authority). If the dominated - the rape victim - uses pepper spray to deter her attacker that is a very, very different thing from the authority the rapist exerts while dominating his victim. To equate the two, as Engels does, is semantic bullshit.

Joe



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