On Authority

An important work by Engels criticizing anarchism. At the repeated request of Enrico Bignami, the editor of the Italian newspaper La Plebe (The People), Engels completed it between October 1872 and March 1873. Engels sent the article to Bignami in November 1872. It was lost when Bignami’s arrest forced a delay in the publication of the Almanacco Republicano (Republican Almanac) for the year 1873. When Bignami was released, he asked Engels to send a copy of the article or to write another one. Engels soon sent this article on March 8, 1873. Since the manuscript was not preserved, it is impossible to determine whether the article sent the second time was identical in content and wording to the article sent the first time. The article was translated into Italian and published in the Almanacco Republicano for the year 1874, published in December 1873. On June 14, 1894, the article was published again in Italian in La Battaglia (The Battle), No. 15, under the title Dell’Autorità. The Chinese translation appeared in La Jeunesse (The Youth), No. 13, December 1923, signed by the translator 抱兮 (Bao Xi).

After the defeat of the Paris Commune Revolution, the European workers’ movement fell into a low ebb, and the First International suffered a frantic siege by reactionary forces in various countries. Under such circumstances, Bakunin’s anarchist conception of state became prevalent, and found itself a large number of proponents in Italy, especially among intellectuals, as a result of which, the work of First International in Italy was greatly hindered. Therefore, criticizing Bakunin’s anarchism had become an urgent task facing the Italian workers’ movement at that time. At the same time, at the request of E. Bignami who was the editor of the journal La Plebe, Engels wrote this polemical article to criticize Bakunin’s anarchist thoughts.

In On Authority, Engels first analyzed the essence of authority and the necessity of establishing and maintaining authority in social activities. He pointed out: “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,” i.e., from the perspective of the relationship between subject and object, authority is in essence the relationship of subordinating and being subordinated between the object of authority and the subject of authority. Meanwhile, he also believes that the characteristics of modern economic relations determined the inevitability of the emergence of authority. Because in modern economic relations, the combined action of people had become a historical trend, and authority is an important condition to ensure the orderly development of combined action. In addition, Engels also pointed out that the existence of authority is also necessary after the conquest of power by the proletariat. It can be said that authority is needed for the development of economic relations in capitalist society, and it is also needed for the fortification and development of proletarian power and the maintenance of social order in socialist society. Next, Engels clarified the dialectical relationship between authority and autonomy. In his view, “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.” In other words, the relationship between authority and autonomy is dialectically unified, and authority and autonomy can only exist and function to a certain extent, and they show different importance at different stages of social development. Finally, in response to the fallacy of the anarchists’ demand for the abolition of all authority in spite of objective conditions, Engels pointed out the significance of the proletarian party’s mastery and utilization of authoritarian means. He held: “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.”

On Authority is an important work by Engels demonstrating the necessity of authority and elaborating the part played by authority in social life by applying the materialist conception of history. It revealed the essence of anarchism, powerfully criticized the words and deeds of the anarchists, armed the then working class and provided a guarantee for the maintenance of authority in the proletarian revolution.