ללא מחבר No Author

On Authority

Works of Frederick Engels 1872

Written: 1872;
Published: 1874 in the Italian, Almanacco Republicano;
Source: Marx-Engels Reader, New York: W. W. Norton and Co., second edition, 1978 (first edition, 1972), pp 730-733.;
Translated: Robert C. Tucker;
Transcribed: by Mike Lepore.

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with its big factories and mills, where hundreds of workers supervise complicated machines driven by steam, has superseded the small workshops of the separate producers; the carriages and wagons of the highways have become substituted by railway trains, just as the small schooners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 organisation; now, is it possible to have organisation 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 labour 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 labourers 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 labour 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 organisation. 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 practised 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 organisation, 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 organisation 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.

From Marxists.org, here.

רוצחי משפחת פוגל עתידים לקבל תוספת שכר של 50% מהרשות

לאחר שהשלימו כמעט 10 שנות מאסר, השכר שמשלמת הרשות הפלסטינית לרוצחי משפחת פוגל עומד לעלות ב50%, מ-4,000 ל -6,000 ש”ח לחודש.

• מבט לתקשורת הפלסטינית
• כ”ז אדר תשפ”א – 13:35 11/03/2021

כחלק ממדיניות הרשות הפלסטינית לשלם תגמולים כספיים למחבלים מאז יום מעצרם, משלמת הרשות לרוצחי משפחת פוגל משכורות חודשיות. כחלק ממדיניות זו, עד כה, כבר שילמה הרשות לכל אחד מהרוצחים 338,400 ש”ח.

על פי חוק האסירים ואסירים משוחררים ותקנותיו, השכר שמשלמת הרשות למחבלים הכלואים עולה בהדרגה יחד עם תקופת ישיבתם בכלא.

כפי שחשף לאחרונה מכון “מבט לתקשורת פלסטינית”, בשנה האחרונה, למרות משבר הקורונה, הרשות הפלסטינית שילמה מעל חצי מיליארד ש”ח בתגמולים כספיים למחבלים הכלואים ולמחבלים המשוחררים.

בנוסף שילמה הרש”פ מאות מיליוני שקלים למחבלים פצועים ולמשפחות מחבלים הרוגים.

כאן המקום להזכיר, שלמרות שחלפו למעלה מחודשיים, טרם יושם החוק להקפאת כספים (חוק הקיזוז), שהתקבל ברוב עצום בכנסת, ששילמה הרשות הפלסטינית בזיקה לטרור מהכספים המועברים אליה על ידי מממשלת ישראל.

חוק הקיזוז נועד להעניש את הרשות בגין התגמולים שהיא משלמת למחבלים, ובכלל זה מחבלים כלואים, מחבלים משוחררים, מחבלים פצועים ובני משפחות של מחבלים הרוגים.

על פי החוק, בתום כל שנה, אמור שר הביטחון להגיש לאישור ועדת השרים לענייני ביטחון לאומי (הקבינט הביטחוני), דו”ח המפרט את תשלומי הרשות למחבלים בשנה החולפת והסכום ששילמה הרשות למחבלים מוקפא, מהמיסים שישראל גובה ומעבירה לרשות בהתאם להסכמי אוסלו.

בשנה האחרונה, חל עיכוב משמעותי ביישום החוק, ולמעשה לא התקבלה החלטה של הקבינט הביטחוני. העיכוב משדר מסר בעייתי מאוד ופוגע בהרתעה של מדינת ישראל.

מאת עו”ד מוריס הירש

Trigger-Warning Warning Instituted For Those Triggered By Trigger Warnings

The American Revolution Was a Mistake

I do not celebrate the fourth of July. This goes back to a term paper I wrote in graduate school. It was on colonial taxation in the British North American colonies in 1775. Not counting local taxation, I discovered that the total burden of British imperial taxation was about 1% of national income. It may have been as high as 2.5% in the southern colonies.

In 2008, Alvin Rabushka’s book of almost 1,000 pages appeared: Taxation in Colonial America (Princeton University Press). In a review published in the Business History Review, the reviewer summarizes the book’s findings.

Rabushka’s most original and impressive contribution is his measurement of tax rates and tax burdens. However, his estimate of comparative trans-Atlantic tax burdens may be a bit of moving target. At one point, he concludes that, in the period from 1764 to 1775, “the nearly two million white colonists in America paid on the order of about 1 percent of the annual taxes levied on the roughly 8.5 million residents of Britain, or one twenty-fifth, in per capita terms, not taking into account the higher average income and consumption in the colonies” (p. 729). Later, he writes that, on the eve of the Revolution, “British tax burdens were ten or more times heavier than those in the colonies” (p. 867). Other scholars may want to refine his estimates, based on other archival sources, different treatment of technical issues such as the adjustment of intercolonial and trans-Atlantic comparisons for exchange rates, or new estimates of comparative income and wealth. Nonetheless, no one is likely to challenge his most important finding: the huge tax gap between the American periphery and the core of the British Empire.

The colonists had a sweet deal in 1775. Great Britain was the second freest nation on earth. Switzerland was probably the most free nation, but I would be hard-pressed to identify any other nation in 1775 that was ahead of Great Britain. And in Great Britain’s Empire, the colonists were by far the freest.

I will say it, loud and clear: the freest society on earth in 1775 was British North America, with the exception of the slave system. Anyone who was not a slave had incomparable freedom.

Jefferson wrote these words in the Declaration of Independence:

The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.

I can think of no more misleading political assessment uttered by any leader in the history of the United States. No words having such great impact historically in this nation were less true. No political bogeymen invoked by any political sect as “the liar of the century” ever said anything as verifiably false as these words.

The Continental Congress declared independence on July 2, 1776. Some members signed the Declaration on July 4. The public in general believed the leaders at the Continental Congress. They did not understand what they were about to give up. They could not see what price in blood and treasure and debt they would soon pay. And they did not foresee the tax burden in the new nation after 1783.

In an article on taxation in that era, Rabushka gets to the point.

Historians have written that taxes in the new American nation rose and remained considerably higher, perhaps three times higher, than they were under British rule. More money was required for national defense than previously needed to defend the frontier from Indians and the French, and the new nation faced other expenses.

So, as a result of the American Revolution, the tax burden tripled.

The debt burden soared as soon as the Revolution began. Monetary inflation wiped out the currency system. Price controls in 1777 produced the debacle of Valley Forge. Percy Greaves, a disciple of Ludwig von Mises and for 17 years an attendee at his seminar, wrote this in 1972.

Our Continental Congress first authorized the printing of Continental notes in 1775. The Congress was warned against printing more and more of them. In a 1776 pamphlet, Pelatiah Webster, America’s first economist, told his fellow men that Continental currency might soon become worthless unless something was done to curb the further printing and issuance of this paper money.

The people and the Congress refused to listen to his wise advice. With more and more paper money in circulation, consumers kept bidding up prices. Pork rose from 4¢ to 8¢ a pound. Beef soared from about 4¢ to 100 a pound. As one historian tells us, “By November, 1777, commodity prices were 480% above the prewar average.”

The situation became so bad in Pennsylvania that the people and legislature of this state decided to try “a period of price control, limited to domestic commodities essential for the use of the army.” It was thought that this would reduce the cost of feeding and supplying our Continental Army. It was expected to reduce the burden of war.

The prices of uncontrolled, imported goods then went sky high, and it was almost impossible to buy any of the domestic commodities needed for the Army. The controls were quite arbitrary. Many farmers refused to sell their goods at the prescribed prices. Few would take the paper Continentals. Some, with large families to feed and clothe, sold their farm products stealthily to the British in return for gold. For it was only with gold that they could buy the necessities of life which they could not produce for themselves.

On December 5, 1777, the Army’s Quartermaster-General, refusing to pay more than the government-set prices, issued a statement from his Reading, Pennsylvania headquarters saying, “If the farmers do not like the prices allowed them for this produce let them choose men of more learning and understanding the next election.”

This was the winter of Valley Forge, the very nadir of American history. On December 23, 1777, George Washington wrote to the President of the Congress, “that, notwithstanding it is a standing order, and often repeated, that the troops shall always have two days’ provisions by them, that they might be ready at any sudden call; yet an opportunity has scarcely ever offered, of taking an advantage of the enemy, that has not been either totally obstructed, or greatly impeded, on this account…. we have no less than two thousand eight hundred and ninety-eight men now in camp unfit for duty, because they are barefoot and otherwise naked…. I am now convinced beyond a doubt, that, unless some great and capital change suddenly takes place, this army must inevitably be reduced to one or other of these three things: starve, dissolve, or disperse in order to obtain subsistence in the best manner they can.”

Only after the price control law was repealed in 1778 could the army buy goods again. But the hyperinflation of the continentals and state-issued currencies replaced the pre-Revolution system of silver currency: Spanish pieces of eight.

The proponents of independence invoked British tyranny in North America. There was no British tyranny, and surely not in North America.

In 1872, Frederick Engels wrote an article, “On Authority.” He criticized anarchists, whom he called anti-authoritarians. His description of the authoritarian character of all armed revolutions should remind us of the costs of 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.

After the American Revolution, 46,000 American loyalists fled to Canada. They were not willing to swear allegiance to the new colonial governments. The retained their loyalty to the nation that had delivered to them the greatest liberty on earth. They had not committed treason.

The revolutionaries are not remembered as treasonous. John Harrington told us why sometime around 1600. “Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason? Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”

The victors write the history books.

What would libertarians — even conservatives — give today in order to return to an era in which the central government extracted 1% of the nation’s wealth? Where there was no income tax?

Would they describe such a society as tyrannical?

That the largest signature on the Declaration of Independence was signed by the richest smuggler in North America was no coincidence. He was hopping mad. Parliament in 1773 had cut the tax on tea imported by the British East India Company, so the cost of British tea went lower than the smugglers’ cost on non-British tea. This had cost Hancock a pretty penny. The Tea Party had stopped the unloading of the tea by throwing privately owned tea off a privately owned ship — a ship in competition with Hancock’s ships. The Boston Tea Party was in fact a well-organized protest against lower prices stemming from lower taxes.

So, once again, I shall not celebrate the fourth of July.

From Lewrockwell.com, here.