The first use of authoritarian is in 1852, in the writings of AJ Davis apparently. Here’s the quote:
1856 A. J. Davis Penetralia 129 Does any one believe that the Book is essential to Salvation? Yes; there are many externalists and authoritarians who think so.
Authoritarian was also increasing in usage well before the cold war, beginning around 1910 or so. An example from Nationalism and Culture by Rudolf Rocker, written in 1933:
Nietzsche also had a profound conception of this truth, although his inner disharmony and his constant oscillation between outlived authoritarian concepts and truly libertarian ideas all his life prevented him from drawing the natural deductions from it.
That’s a thoroughly modern use of the word authoritarian, written almost 15 years before the start of the cold war. Authoritarian is used to describe those who support hierarchial systems of government. That’s the short and sweet of it, perhaps not a perfect dictionary definition but it illustrates the distinctive bit. Auth-left ideologies get equivocated with fascism because there’s an undeniable ideological throughline between the two, no matter how much they hate each other.
"The working class […] cannot be left wandering all over Russia. They must be thrown here and there, appointed, commanded, just like soldiers […] Compulsion of labour will reach the highest degree of intensity during the transition from capitalism to socialism […] Deserters from labour ought to be formed into punitive battalions or put into concentration camps.’
Trotsky wrote that. It may not be 1:1 but the similarities between his ideas and those.of fascists are pretty obvious.
All of this, written before the cold war. Tell me again how authoritarian is a made up word that serves only to slander “communists”?
On Authority is one of my absolute favourites because it’s so ludicrously bourgeois. “Oh, you Anarchists”, quoth Engels, “All you amount to is saying that a stone falls down when let go, and that having to hold it up so that it doesn’t fall down, to have to bow to that authority, is oppressive”.
Maybe, Friedrich, your workers don’t mind dealing with the necessities and physical processes of yarn and cloth manufacture, what they mind is not being able to fire your ass for saying excessively over-reductive shit like that.
On Authority is one of my absolute favourites because it’s so ludicrously bourgeois
Are you really saying “Engels was bourgeois, therefore the argument he’s making is bourgeois”? lol
“All you amount to is saying that a stone falls down when let go, and that having to hold it up so that it doesn’t fall down, to have to bow to that authority, is oppressive”.
Tell me how you haven’t read it even more. Because he’s actually concluding:
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.
Read the paragraphs directly before: Engels refers to “arguments as these”, so we can safely assume that the example he gives there is representative. What’s his example? Safety in railway operations.
That, indeed, is not a job for a delegate, a person chosen by council to represent the council in a bigger council, a political position which comes with no authority, but one of a safety commissioner, a person who was entrusted with, granted authority, by a council to enact necessary safety procedures for the common good. The railway safety commissioner would be choosen by the railway workers. Someone they trust to be a stickler to details and procedure.
Both, btw, are recallable on the spot should they abuse their positions, or turn out to not be suitable for other reasons.
This is not a mere “changing of names”, the tasks are completely different in character and the levels of authority could not be any more different. What Engels seems to be incapable of conceiving is that an e.g. city council doesn’t have authority over a neighbourhood council. That the delegates the neighbourhood councils choose come together in a city council and then precisely not dictate to the neighbourhood councils what they’re supposed to do. That’s your brain on hierarchy.
So, yes, Engels concludes that he’s right. And thereby proves that he either a) didn’t understand what the anti-auths were telling him or b) didn’t care, as authoritarians are prone to do when challenged on the necessity of there being rulers.
As to “labour cannot be organised without hierarchy” in general: It’s long been proven false. There’s a gazillion of examples in which it has done. There are, right now, armies out there operating without hierarchy that are fighting both Cartels and ISIS, very successfully so. If armies can be organised like that, surely it does work for ice cream factories. Stick to materialism, please, your idealist claim doesn’t become true by repeating it.
That, indeed, is not a job for a delegate, a person chosen by council to represent the council in a bigger council, a political position which comes with no authority, but one of a safety commissioner, a person who was entrusted with, granted authority, by a council to enact necessary safety procedures for the common good.
granted authority
authority
?
This is not a mere “changing of names”, the tasks are completely different in character and the levels of authority could not be any more different. What Engels seems to be incapable of conceiving is that an e.g. city council doesn’t have authority over a neighbourhood council. That the delegates the neighbourhood councils choose come together in a city council and then precisely not dictate to the neighbourhood councils what they’re supposed to do. That’s your brain on hierarchy.
So how can you organize anything if noone tells anyone what to do? People just suddenly know? How is that supposed to work? Who decides the level of authority? Another authority?
a) didn’t understand what the anti-auths were telling him
Literally changing the name of “authority” to “granted authority”. You only changed the name of things. Engels is making the argument on the materiality of authority. That even if the authority is granted, it’s an authority. He is referring to whatever makes the organization happen as authority (even when granted).
And says that without this (authority) organization is impossible. Which makes sense.
b) authoritarians are prone to do when challenged on the necessity of there being rulers.
So how can you organize anything if noone tells anyone what to do? People just suddenly know?
You talk to other people and agree on a plan of action? Have you ever, in your life, interacted with people?
That even if the authority is granted, it’s an authority.
One example doesn’t even grant any authority: A delegate has no authority.
If you OTOH now try to pull semantics and say “but by being convinced by other people of a joint plan of action, they have authority over you”, or “A delegate has the authority to do as they’re told by their council” then you’re doing the “holding up a stone thing”: You make authority such a broad term that not just organisation, but physics itself is impossible without it. Or, in different words: It’s playing dumb. You hear what Anarchists are saying, including their definitions of authority, of distinguishing power-to against power-over, and say “but the stone has authority over you that’s silly”!
You talk to other people and agree on a plan of action? Have you ever, in your life, interacted with people?
Yes but than the plan of action takes form of authority. Which is the point that Engels makes.
One example doesn’t even grant any authority: A delegate has no authority.
Then noone is required to take the delegate serious. The delegate enjoys no authority and there’s no organization happening as everybody is free to do whatever th fuck they want.
holding up a stone thing”: You make authority such a broad term that not just organisation, but physics itself is impossible without it.
Only when you take it in in bad faith, because we’re talking about people and not inanimate objects (stones). The definition of anarchists is just another social construct that basically describes authority…
Yes but than the plan of action takes form of authority. Which is the point that Engels makes.
It is an extension to the libertarian notion of authority that Engels makes.
Suppose you and your comrades are are at a party conference in another city, and, in a wild bout of anti-authoritarianism, you’re talking among yourselves which restaurant to go to instead of following party orders. Maybe it’s just an oversight, the responsible buerocrat didn’t do their job. Anyway the obstacle is not insurmountable, the choice is not very contentious, some people have preference, one’s a vegan, but in the end you all agree that Mexican is a perfectly fine choice.
Then, out of nowhere, a KGB agent appears saying “Now it would be a shame if someone changed their mind about eating Mexican and would need to be sent to Gulag, would it, after all, we can’t have a decision without subsequent imposition of authority”.
Then noone is required to take the delegate serious.
The delegate is taken just as serious as the council they represent. They are, after all, the representative of that council. If you ignore what the delegate says, you’re ignoring what the council says. But the authority is that of the council, not of the delegate.
The definition of anarchists
Council communists have a compatible definition, btw. It’s only Bolsheviks and their descendants who disagree because they can’t stand workers actually having a say in things, see the Trotsky quote before. That is authoritarianism. You can’t declare it away by playing semantic games.
Wasn’t sure if that was a legitimate question or just another example.of the usage of authoritarian. But if it was a question, I’ll leave this video. It’s an anarchist critique of on authority. Short answer, yes. It is possible to have organization without an authoritarian structure
05:22 Acknowledges that argument that Engels is making is that “anything is authoritarian”
05:28 Acknowledges that Engels has a very broad definition of “authority”
06:20 Builds a strawman by giving a context “Engels existed around the time of the industrial revolution”, reading the paragraph about steam boats, etc. and is
0740 using it to suddenly drastically narrows the definition of Engels down to mean “technological development is authoritarian”.
10:15 At 10:45 correctly explains the point that Engels is making and copes hard with the fact that Engels indeed questions the entire political theoretical understanding of authority lol
12:00 correctly understands that the point is that “Anti-Authoritarians want to change society” and if Engels can prove that organization without authority is impossible, it will mean that he will be able to show this deep contradiction
13:55 He builds another strawman by claiming that Engel’s argument is “Steam is an authority” and not the actual argument that the organization of labour inheretly requires authority and in a society without capitalism the production process would take authorties place (i.e Steam)
14:50 Another strawman where he claims that “hunger would be authority” in an ancient hunting times, instead of the organization of how the hunt would take place
This is so dumb i don’t want to continue and its so long wtf
Pure ideology, that video was such a waste of time
The entire point of the video is Engles misunderstood what constitutes “authority” in a libertarian framework. He created an overly broad conception of authority and proceeded to (poorly) attack that. If you’re going to critique an ideology you should at the very least have an understanding of what the core concept your criticizing means. Engles made some shit up, put that in the mouths of anarchists and acted like a little piss baby about it. How on earth did you get 15 minutes into the video and not pick up on that very obvious point?
Pure ideology? You’re hilarious. Like y’all haven’t been sucking at the teat of Marx well past the point of his half baked ideas being useful. It never occured to you geniuses that maybe there was a bit more at play than capitalism and anachronistic conceptions of class warfare? Marx’s ideas of power and complex systems are overly simplistic at best, and Engles is a bourgeois pig that somehow deluded your big “scientific socialist” brains into thinking he was one of the good ones. But go ahead and tell me how childish authoritarian conceptions of authority are righ and how I’m a big dumb guy for thinking otherwise
The entire point of the video is Engles misunderstood what constitutes “authority” in a libertarian framework.
He’s not misunderstanding what constitutes authority. He is giving a broad definition and proves the existence of authority after abolition of capitalism by referring to the organization of labour.
minutes into the video and not pick up on that very obvious point?
Because the “obvious points” are made with strawmen (see comments above)
Pure ideology? You’re hilarious. Like y’all haven’t been sucking at the teat of Marx well past the point of his half baked ideas being useful. It never occured to you geniuses that maybe there was a bit more at play than capitalism and anachronistic conceptions of class warfare? Marx’s ideas of power and complex systems are overly simplistic at best, and Engles is a bourgeois pig that somehow deluded your big “scientific socialist” brains into thinking he was one of the good ones. But go ahead and tell me how childish authoritarian conceptions of authority are righ and how I’m a big dumb guy for thinking otherwise
He’s proving the existence of authority (with a definition thats wide/encompasses the libertarian framework).
He’s not using that definition anywhere in his article.
If you know think about going for the “but Engel’s definition is broader, therefore, his argument is still valid” boy oh boy I suggest you study logic. That’s not how widening and narrowing works.
Say, cooks. They say: “These things are fruits, and with them we can make fruit salads”. Botanists say “These things are fruit, our category is wider, it includes tomatoes, therefore, you can make fruit salad with tomatoes”.
Thank you for the detailed background on that. People often resort to No True Scotsman claims to disavow bad elements from the group they support, or better yet toss them to their rivals. But honestly the more an entity is pulled away from center along the authoritarian/liberal axis, the less meaningful any left/right distinction becomes.
I just wanted to clarify, I’m not an authoritarian. I’m an anarchist. And the left/right distinction still does matter very much along the authoritarian/libertarian axis. I don’t think much of auth-left ideologies but I hold them in much better regard than fascists. There are similarities, but they are no where near the same. And liberalism is a center right authoritarian ideology
The first use of authoritarian is in 1852, in the writings of AJ Davis apparently. Here’s the quote:
Authoritarian was also increasing in usage well before the cold war, beginning around 1910 or so. An example from Nationalism and Culture by Rudolf Rocker, written in 1933:
That’s a thoroughly modern use of the word authoritarian, written almost 15 years before the start of the cold war. Authoritarian is used to describe those who support hierarchial systems of government. That’s the short and sweet of it, perhaps not a perfect dictionary definition but it illustrates the distinctive bit. Auth-left ideologies get equivocated with fascism because there’s an undeniable ideological throughline between the two, no matter how much they hate each other.
Trotsky wrote that. It may not be 1:1 but the similarities between his ideas and those.of fascists are pretty obvious.
All of this, written before the cold war. Tell me again how authoritarian is a made up word that serves only to slander “communists”?
Is it possible to have organisation without authority?
On Authority - F. Engels, 1872
Thank you for sharing this….I really enjoyed it.
First time I read it I couldn’t believe how short and easy read it is, and what a powerful argument Engels is making
On Authority is one of my absolute favourites because it’s so ludicrously bourgeois. “Oh, you Anarchists”, quoth Engels, “All you amount to is saying that a stone falls down when let go, and that having to hold it up so that it doesn’t fall down, to have to bow to that authority, is oppressive”.
Maybe, Friedrich, your workers don’t mind dealing with the necessities and physical processes of yarn and cloth manufacture, what they mind is not being able to fire your ass for saying excessively over-reductive shit like that.
Are you really saying “Engels was bourgeois, therefore the argument he’s making is bourgeois”? lol
Tell me how you haven’t read it even more. Because he’s actually concluding:
Read the paragraphs directly before: Engels refers to “arguments as these”, so we can safely assume that the example he gives there is representative. What’s his example? Safety in railway operations.
That, indeed, is not a job for a delegate, a person chosen by council to represent the council in a bigger council, a political position which comes with no authority, but one of a safety commissioner, a person who was entrusted with, granted authority, by a council to enact necessary safety procedures for the common good. The railway safety commissioner would be choosen by the railway workers. Someone they trust to be a stickler to details and procedure.
Both, btw, are recallable on the spot should they abuse their positions, or turn out to not be suitable for other reasons.
This is not a mere “changing of names”, the tasks are completely different in character and the levels of authority could not be any more different. What Engels seems to be incapable of conceiving is that an e.g. city council doesn’t have authority over a neighbourhood council. That the delegates the neighbourhood councils choose come together in a city council and then precisely not dictate to the neighbourhood councils what they’re supposed to do. That’s your brain on hierarchy.
So, yes, Engels concludes that he’s right. And thereby proves that he either a) didn’t understand what the anti-auths were telling him or b) didn’t care, as authoritarians are prone to do when challenged on the necessity of there being rulers.
As to “labour cannot be organised without hierarchy” in general: It’s long been proven false. There’s a gazillion of examples in which it has done. There are, right now, armies out there operating without hierarchy that are fighting both Cartels and ISIS, very successfully so. If armies can be organised like that, surely it does work for ice cream factories. Stick to materialism, please, your idealist claim doesn’t become true by repeating it.
?
So how can you organize anything if noone tells anyone what to do? People just suddenly know? How is that supposed to work? Who decides the level of authority? Another authority?
Literally changing the name of “authority” to “granted authority”. You only changed the name of things. Engels is making the argument on the materiality of authority. That even if the authority is granted, it’s an authority. He is referring to whatever makes the organization happen as authority (even when granted).
And says that without this (authority) organization is impossible. Which makes sense.
pls expand
Just now walking in now, and, oh, this is still going on? Christ these memes are a PITA.
You talk to other people and agree on a plan of action? Have you ever, in your life, interacted with people?
One example doesn’t even grant any authority: A delegate has no authority.
If you OTOH now try to pull semantics and say “but by being convinced by other people of a joint plan of action, they have authority over you”, or “A delegate has the authority to do as they’re told by their council” then you’re doing the “holding up a stone thing”: You make authority such a broad term that not just organisation, but physics itself is impossible without it. Or, in different words: It’s playing dumb. You hear what Anarchists are saying, including their definitions of authority, of distinguishing power-to against power-over, and say “but the stone has authority over you that’s silly”!
Yes but than the plan of action takes form of authority. Which is the point that Engels makes.
Then noone is required to take the delegate serious. The delegate enjoys no authority and there’s no organization happening as everybody is free to do whatever th fuck they want.
Only when you take it in in bad faith, because we’re talking about people and not inanimate objects (stones). The definition of anarchists is just another social construct that basically describes authority…
It is an extension to the libertarian notion of authority that Engels makes.
Suppose you and your comrades are are at a party conference in another city, and, in a wild bout of anti-authoritarianism, you’re talking among yourselves which restaurant to go to instead of following party orders. Maybe it’s just an oversight, the responsible buerocrat didn’t do their job. Anyway the obstacle is not insurmountable, the choice is not very contentious, some people have preference, one’s a vegan, but in the end you all agree that Mexican is a perfectly fine choice.
Then, out of nowhere, a KGB agent appears saying “Now it would be a shame if someone changed their mind about eating Mexican and would need to be sent to Gulag, would it, after all, we can’t have a decision without subsequent imposition of authority”.
The delegate is taken just as serious as the council they represent. They are, after all, the representative of that council. If you ignore what the delegate says, you’re ignoring what the council says. But the authority is that of the council, not of the delegate.
Council communists have a compatible definition, btw. It’s only Bolsheviks and their descendants who disagree because they can’t stand workers actually having a say in things, see the Trotsky quote before. That is authoritarianism. You can’t declare it away by playing semantic games.
Wasn’t sure if that was a legitimate question or just another example.of the usage of authoritarian. But if it was a question, I’ll leave this video. It’s an anarchist critique of on authority. Short answer, yes. It is possible to have organization without an authoritarian structure
This is so dumb i don’t want to continue and its so long wtf Pure ideology, that video was such a waste of time
The entire point of the video is Engles misunderstood what constitutes “authority” in a libertarian framework. He created an overly broad conception of authority and proceeded to (poorly) attack that. If you’re going to critique an ideology you should at the very least have an understanding of what the core concept your criticizing means. Engles made some shit up, put that in the mouths of anarchists and acted like a little piss baby about it. How on earth did you get 15 minutes into the video and not pick up on that very obvious point?
Pure ideology? You’re hilarious. Like y’all haven’t been sucking at the teat of Marx well past the point of his half baked ideas being useful. It never occured to you geniuses that maybe there was a bit more at play than capitalism and anachronistic conceptions of class warfare? Marx’s ideas of power and complex systems are overly simplistic at best, and Engles is a bourgeois pig that somehow deluded your big “scientific socialist” brains into thinking he was one of the good ones. But go ahead and tell me how childish authoritarian conceptions of authority are righ and how I’m a big dumb guy for thinking otherwise
He’s not misunderstanding what constitutes authority. He is giving a broad definition and proves the existence of authority after abolition of capitalism by referring to the organization of labour.
Because the “obvious points” are made with strawmen (see comments above)
What no theory does to a mf
in a libertarian framework.
Can you read?
He’s proving the existence of authority (with a definition thats wide/encompasses the libertarian framework).
Are you dense?
He’s not using that definition anywhere in his article.
If you know think about going for the “but Engel’s definition is broader, therefore, his argument is still valid” boy oh boy I suggest you study logic. That’s not how widening and narrowing works.
Say, cooks. They say: “These things are fruits, and with them we can make fruit salads”. Botanists say “These things are fruit, our category is wider, it includes tomatoes, therefore, you can make fruit salad with tomatoes”.
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Thank you for the detailed background on that. People often resort to No True Scotsman claims to disavow bad elements from the group they support, or better yet toss them to their rivals. But honestly the more an entity is pulled away from center along the authoritarian/liberal axis, the less meaningful any left/right distinction becomes.
I just wanted to clarify, I’m not an authoritarian. I’m an anarchist. And the left/right distinction still does matter very much along the authoritarian/libertarian axis. I don’t think much of auth-left ideologies but I hold them in much better regard than fascists. There are similarities, but they are no where near the same. And liberalism is a center right authoritarian ideology