To mark the Nov. 28, 1820 birthday of the revolutionary Frederick Engels, Fight Back News Service is circulating one of his writings – On Authority. On Authority

A number of Socialists have latterly launched a regular crusade against what they call the principle of authority. It suffices to tell them that this or that act is authoritarian for it to be condemned. This summary mode of procedure is being abused to such an extent that it has become necessary to look into the matter somewhat more closely.

Authority, in the sense in which the word is used here, means: the imposition of the will of another upon ours; on the other hand, authority presupposes subordination. Now, since these two words sound bad, and the relationship which they represent is disagreeable to the subordinated party, the question is to ascertain whether there is any way of dispensing with it, whether — given the conditions of present-day society — we could not create another social system, in which this authority would be given no scope any longer, and would consequently have to disappear.

On examining the economic, industrial and agricultural conditions which form the basis of present-day bourgeois society, we find that they tend more and more to replace isolated action by combined action of individuals. Modern industry, with its big factories and mills, where hundreds of workers supervise complicated machines driven by steam, has superseded the small workshops of the separate producers; the carriages and wagons of the highways have become substituted by railway trains, just as the small schooners and sailing feluccas have been by steam-boats. Even agriculture falls increasingly under the dominion of the machine and of steam, which slowly but relentlessly put in the place of the small proprietors’ big capitalists, who with the aid of hired workers cultivate vast stretches of land.

Everywhere combined action, the complication of processes dependent upon each other, displaces independent action by individuals. But whoever mentions combined action speaks of organization; now, is it possible to have organization without authority?

Supposing a social revolution dethroned the capitalists, who now exercise their authority over the production and circulation of wealth. Supposing, to adopt entirely the point of view of the anti-authoritarians, that the land and the instruments of labor had become the collective property of the workers who use them. Will authority have disappeared, or will it only have changed its form? Let us see.

Let us take by way if example a cotton spinning mill. The cotton must pass through at least six successive operations before it is reduced to the state of thread, and these operations take place for the most part in different rooms. Furthermore, keeping the machines going requires an engineer to look after the steam engine, mechanics to make the current repairs, and many other laborer’s whose business it is to transfer the products from one room to another, and so forth. All these workers, men, women and children, are obliged to begin and finish their work at the hours fixed by the authority of the steam, which cares nothing for individual autonomy. The workers must, therefore, first come to an understanding on the hours of work; and these hours, once they are fixed, must be observed by all, without any exception. Thereafter particular questions arise in each room and at every moment concerning the mode of production, distribution of material, etc., which must be settled by decision of a delegate placed at the head of each branch of labor or, if possible, by a majority vote, the will of the single individual will always have to subordinate itself, which means that questions are settled in an authoritarian way. The automatic machinery of the big factory is much more despotic than the small capitalists who employ workers ever have been. At least with regard to the hours of work one may write upon the portals of these factories: Lasciate ogni autonomia, voi che entrate! [Leave, ye that enter in, all autonomy behind!]

If man, by dint of his knowledge and inventive genius, has subdued the forces of nature, the latter avenge themselves upon him by subjecting him, in so far as he employs them, to a veritable despotism independent of all social organization. Wanting to abolish authority in large-scale industry is tantamount to wanting to abolish industry itself, to destroy the power loom in order to return to the spinning wheel.

Let us take another example — the railway. Here too the co-operation of an infinite number of individuals is absolutely necessary, and this co-operation must be practiced during precisely fixed hours so that no accidents may happen. Here, too, the first condition of the job is a dominant will that settles all subordinate questions, whether this will is represented by a single delegate or a committee charged with the execution of the resolutions of the majority of persona interested. In either case there is a very pronounced authority. Moreover, what would happen to the first train dispatched if the authority of the railway employees over the Hon. passengers were abolished?

But the necessity of authority, and of imperious authority at that, will nowhere be found more evident than on board a ship on the high seas. There, in time of danger, the lives of all depend on the instantaneous and absolute obedience of all to the will of one.

When I submitted arguments like these to the most rabid anti-authoritarians, the only answer they were able to give me was the following: Yes, that's true, but there it is not the case of authority which we confer on our delegates, but of a commission entrusted! These gentlemen think that when they have changed the names of things they have changed the things themselves. This is how these profound thinkers mock at the whole world.

We have thus seen that, on the one hand, a certain authority, no matter how delegated, and, on the other hand, a certain subordination, are things which, independently of all social organization, are imposed upon us together with the material conditions under which we produce and make products circulate.

We have seen, besides, that the material conditions of production and circulation inevitably develop with large-scale industry and large-scale agriculture, and increasingly tend to enlarge the scope of this authority. Hence it is absurd to speak of the principle of authority as being absolutely evil, and of the principle of autonomy as being absolutely good. Authority and autonomy are relative things whose spheres vary with the various phases of the development of society. If the autonomists confined themselves to saying that the social organization of the future would restrict authority solely to the limits within which the conditions of production render it inevitable, we could understand each other; but they are blind to all facts that make the thing necessary and they passionately fight the world.

Why do the anti-authoritarians not confine themselves to crying out against political authority, the state? All Socialists are agreed that the political state, and with it political authority, will disappear as a result of the coming social revolution, that is, that public functions will lose their political character and will be transformed into the simple administrative functions of watching over the true interests of society. But the anti-authoritarians demand that the 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; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough?

Therefore, either one of two things: either the anti-authoritarians don't know what they're 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.

#UnitedStates #PeoplesStruggles #Socialism #FrederickEngels

November 28 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of one of the greatest revolutionaries of all times, Fredrick Engels. Born the son of a factory owner in Barmen, Germany, Engels, along with his comrade and friend Karl Marx, made immense contributions to the struggle for emancipation of the working class. In the U.S. today, monopoly capitalism has revealed itself a corrupt and criminal system that is unable to meet the needs of the vast majority of people. It rewards the wealthy with fabulous profits and unimaginable riches. As a result, there is renewed interest in socialism.

What has made scientific socialism, the socialist theory elaborated by Engels – along with Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Mao – so powerful is both its truth and as a result, its practicality – it is a science that lays bare the laws that guide the development of society and nature. The better a doctor understands disease, the better a doctor is able to treat it. The better a revolutionary understands the enemy and the system that serves it, the sooner the revolutionary can break the power of the class enemy and bring the system of exploitation to an end.

In the words of VI Lenin, “The services rendered by Marx and Engels to the working class may be expressed in a few words thus: they taught the working class to know itself and be conscious of itself, and they substituted science for dreams.”

In pathbreaking works such as The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State; Socialism: Utopian and Scientific and Anti-Dühring, along with The Dialectics of Nature, which was published after his passing, Engels laid out the fundamental principles of dialectical and historical materialism. These vital works should be studied today by every communist who wants to know the world with the purpose of changing it.

In Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Engels offered the following summation of historical materialism, stating, “The materialist conception of history starts from the proposition that the production of the means to support human life and, next to production, the exchange of things produced, is the basis of all social structure; that in every society that has appeared in history, the manner in which wealth is distributed and society divided into classes or orders is dependent upon what is produced, how it is produced, and how the products are exchanged. From this point of view, the final causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men's brains, not in men's better insights into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange. They are to be sought, not in the philosophy, but in the economics of each particular epoch.”

To apply this to today’s conditions: the capitalist mode of production and exchange in the U.S. has reached a period of decline and crisis, and this has an impact on the political and ideological superstructure that interplays with this moribund economic base. Every contradiction of imperialism, or monopoly capitalism, is intensifying, and the result is a great upsurge in the struggle between progress and reaction, socialism and capitalism, between the oppressed and oppressor. The power of that upsurge was seen over the past year, as cities across the U.S. were on fire with struggle against police terror, racist discrimination and national oppression.

Engels’ method was to seek truth from facts. Be it investigating the peasant rebellions of the 1400s, the origins of the family, or the nature of the state, Engels always tried to ground himself in reality. But he never made the mistake of thinking what is, is what will always be. He saw the contradictions of capitalism as leading to a sharpening class struggle would inevitably lead towards the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, and the working class conquering political power, establishing socialism, and undertaking the journey to a society without classes – communism.

A tireless builder of revolutionary organization, Engels could constantly be found in the leadership of the socialist movement. From the League of the Just to the First and then Second Internationals, Engels demonstrated how to make revolutionary theory serve revolutionary practice. His entire life’s work was based on the understanding that you cannot be communist by yourself.

Engels coauthored with Marx the single most important piece of socialist literature ever, The Communist Manifesto. It would become one of the most widely translated books ever, and a frame of reference to a socialist movement that would rapidly grow following its publication in 1848.

The Manifesto concludes with the stirring declaration, “The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.” From the Manila to Minneapolis to Moscow – these words reverberate in world that cries out for change.

#UnitedStates #PeoplesStruggles #Socialism #FrederickEngels

To mark the Nov. 28, 1820 birthday of the revolutionary Frederick Engels, Fight Back News Service is circulating the one of his writings – On Authority. On Authority

A number of Socialists have latterly launched a regular crusade against what they call the principle of authority. It suffices to tell them that this or that act is authoritarian for it to be condemned. This summary mode of procedure is being abused to such an extent that it has become necessary to look into the matter somewhat more closely.

Authority, in the sense in which the word is used here, means: the imposition of the will of another upon ours; on the other hand, authority presupposes subordination. Now, since these two words sound bad, and the relationship which they represent is disagreeable to the subordinated party, the question is to ascertain whether there is any way of dispensing with it, whether — given the conditions of present-day society — we could not create another social system, in which this authority would be given no scope any longer, and would consequently have to disappear.

On examining the economic, industrial and agricultural conditions which form the basis of present-day bourgeois society, we find that they tend more and more to replace isolated action by combined action of individuals. Modern industry, with its big factories and mills, where hundreds of workers supervise complicated machines driven by steam, has superseded the small workshops of the separate producers; the carriages and wagons of the highways have become substituted by railway trains, just as the small schooners and sailing feluccas have been by steam-boats. Even agriculture falls increasingly under the dominion of the machine and of steam, which slowly but relentlessly put in the place of the small proprietors’ big capitalists, who with the aid of hired workers cultivate vast stretches of land.

Everywhere combined action, the complication of processes dependent upon each other, displaces independent action by individuals. But whoever mentions combined action speaks of organization; now, is it possible to have organization without authority?

Supposing a social revolution dethroned the capitalists, who now exercise their authority over the production and circulation of wealth. Supposing, to adopt entirely the point of view of the anti-authoritarians, that the land and the instruments of labor had become the collective property of the workers who use them. Will authority have disappeared, or will it only have changed its form? Let us see.

Let us take by way if example a cotton spinning mill. The cotton must pass through at least six successive operations before it is reduced to the state of thread, and these operations take place for the most part in different rooms. Furthermore, keeping the machines going requires an engineer to look after the steam engine, mechanics to make the current repairs, and many other laborer’s whose business it is to transfer the products from one room to another, and so forth. All these workers, men, women and children, are obliged to begin and finish their work at the hours fixed by the authority of the steam, which cares nothing for individual autonomy. The workers must, therefore, first come to an understanding on the hours of work; and these hours, once they are fixed, must be observed by all, without any exception. Thereafter particular questions arise in each room and at every moment concerning the mode of production, distribution of material, etc., which must be settled by decision of a delegate placed at the head of each branch of labor or, if possible, by a majority vote, the will of the single individual will always have to subordinate itself, which means that questions are settled in an authoritarian way. The automatic machinery of the big factory is much more despotic than the small capitalists who employ workers ever have been. At least with regard to the hours of work one may write upon the portals of these factories: Lasciate ogni autonomia, voi che entrate! [Leave, ye that enter in, all autonomy behind!]

If man, by dint of his knowledge and inventive genius, has subdued the forces of nature, the latter avenge themselves upon him by subjecting him, in so far as he employs them, to a veritable despotism independent of all social organization. Wanting to abolish authority in large-scale industry is tantamount to wanting to abolish industry itself, to destroy the power loom in order to return to the spinning wheel.

Let us take another example — the railway. Here too the co-operation of an infinite number of individuals is absolutely necessary, and this co-operation must be practiced during precisely fixed hours so that no accidents may happen. Here, too, the first condition of the job is a dominant will that settles all subordinate questions, whether this will is represented by a single delegate or a committee charged with the execution of the resolutions of the majority of persona interested. In either case there is a very pronounced authority. Moreover, what would happen to the first train dispatched if the authority of the railway employees over the Hon. passengers were abolished?

But the necessity of authority, and of imperious authority at that, will nowhere be found more evident than on board a ship on the high seas. There, in time of danger, the lives of all depend on the instantaneous and absolute obedience of all to the will of one.

When I submitted arguments like these to the most rabid anti-authoritarians, the only answer they were able to give me was the following: Yes, that's true, but there it is not the case of authority which we confer on our delegates, but of a commission entrusted! These gentlemen think that when they have changed the names of things they have changed the things themselves. This is how these profound thinkers mock at the whole world.

We have thus seen that, on the one hand, a certain authority, no matter how delegated, and, on the other hand, a certain subordination, are things which, independently of all social organization, are imposed upon us together with the material conditions under which we produce and make products circulate.

We have seen, besides, that the material conditions of production and circulation inevitably develop with large-scale industry and large-scale agriculture, and increasingly tend to enlarge the scope of this authority. Hence it is absurd to speak of the principle of authority as being absolutely evil, and of the principle of autonomy as being absolutely good. Authority and autonomy are relative things whose spheres vary with the various phases of the development of society. If the autonomists confined themselves to saying that the social organization of the future would restrict authority solely to the limits within which the conditions of production render it inevitable, we could understand each other; but they are blind to all facts that make the thing necessary and they passionately fight the world.

Why do the anti-authoritarians not confine themselves to crying out against political authority, the state? All Socialists are agreed that the political state, and with it political authority, will disappear as a result of the coming social revolution, that is, that public functions will lose their political character and will be transformed into the simple administrative functions of watching over the true interests of society. But the anti-authoritarians demand that the 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; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough?

Therefore, either one of two things: either the anti-authoritarians don't know what they're 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.

#UnitedStates #PeoplesStruggles #Marxism #Socialism #FrederickEngels #OnAuthority

London, U.K. – When thinking of London, one often thinks of Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, double-decker buses, and fish and chips. We might also think of its fabulous museums, concert halls and cultural life. One thing we might not think of is that Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin and even Josef Stalin all had an important relationship to the City of London. Across the city, one can find all sorts of interesting places related to the history of Marxism and the workers' movements.

Karl Marx lived many years in London, spending hours in the British Library writing Capital, organizing the British Workers and playing an important role in building the International Workingman's Association. While in London, I went to Dean Street in Soho and visited the apartment where Marx lived from 1851-1856. All one can see now is a blue plaque stating that Marx lived there, but one can stroll down the streets and get a feeling for the environment where Marx lived during some of his most productive years. Not far from Marx's home is the Red Lion Pub, which is where Marx and Engels discussed the ideas that resulted in the Communist Manifesto.

Visiting Highgate Cemetery, one can see Marx's grave. There is a massive statue of Marx of bearing the inscription “the philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point however is to change it.” Many important revolutionaries are buried alongside and around Marx, including Claudia Jones, the great African American communist leader; Saad Saadi Ali, an Iraqi communist; and Dr. Yusif Mohamed Dadoo, former leader of the South African Communist Party.

In addition to Marx and Engels, London has a lot of historical sites related to Lenin and the early history of the Bolshevik Party. In Islington, a historical working-class neighborhood in London, is located Lenin's former office while he was editor of Iskra from 1902-1903. It is now the Marx Memorial Library and Workers School, and contains a stunning wall mural painting and hundreds of Marxist books. One can visit the Crowns Pub next door, which is where Lenin and many Bolsheviks held important political discussions for the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, which resulted in the split between the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks.

London is absolutely worth visiting, not just for its architectural beauty and cultural life, but for its exciting socialist history. One can get a real feeling for the world that the founders of Marxism-Leninism lived in, the places they discussed their ideas, and the homes where they lived.

#LondonUK #London #Socialism #VILenin #KarlMarx #FrederickEngels #Stalin #HighgateCemetery