Well, that text…have you ever tried to read critiques to such? If so, why do you come do a different conclusion, then that Engels renders the term authority useless? In his definition, authority is is justified because it can mean everything. Mutual aid is authority, plants living in symbioses is authority, plants producing oxygen is authority over humans…sure, you can use that definition, but by doing so you simply sneak around a critique against authority by stating it’s inevitable, so the issue can’t be authority itself.

Serious question: which critiques of authority have your read, to which you disagree to such a great amount, that you feel compelled to go with Engels analysis here, that is in short: everything is authority, and because it is inevitable to exist, it invalidates the critique against, without actually engaging with the actual brought up arguments of those that critique authority.

Thanks, i had read some Engels previously but this one really disappointed me. The questions/critics are good, but the logic is flawed.

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

Well that’s precisely what autonomy/anarchism is about. But because we rely on principles of voluntary association, rule by the majority in a specific collective (if it so wishes to be organized) is not a problem, just like specific delegations of power to a coordinator with an established mandate. If you don’t agree with the organization of a specific collective, you can always find other collectives to live/organize with.

We anarchists understand the value of delegating power in specific sets of circumstances. When i’m farming, i consciously/explicitly delegate some trust to more knowledgeable comrades to guide me in the process (and learn something). When as a collective we decide to organize an event, we consciously/explicitly delegate some trust to specific groups of people to handle various aspects of that (communication, logistics, food). Because it’s a transparent and consented process, and because this trust can be revoked at any time (there’s no higher power over me that’ll ruin my life if i decide i should do something else than farming), we do not understand this delegation to be a form of authority.

To answer to the three problems posed by Engels:

• a cotton mill, or any other factory can be organized in a self-organized manner as proved by the experiences of revolutionary Spain (or VIOME in Greece for a more recent example) ; the staff holds a general assembly (a soviet, if you will) and decides on how to organize things, including who to entrust with specific concerns when that is required by the circumstances (usually, not a single person is named responsible, because every single person can fail)
• train systems may also be run in a self-organized manner (see revolutionary Spain) ; time-sensitiveness is less of a problem nowadays because we have instant communication devices, and rail switching has been mostly automated, but in general individuals may commit to specific timetables if they so wish for the sake of the community (public service) ; if a person does not see interest in this, they may leave the task for someone else who finds interest in it
• in times of crisis on a ship (as in other circumstances), having few identified people making the decisions can be a life-saver (because time is of the essence and reaching consensus can take time) ; however, who is placed in charge in such extraordinary circumstances should also be decided in advance as a collective, otherwise conflicts for power may emerge

Individual consent is a foundational basis for anarchist understanding of collective organization. Dictatorship of the majority is usually considered an anti-pattern, though it is a perfectly fine method of organizing if it is consented by everyone involved. Consensus is hard to reach, but consensus-building as a process in and of itself reinforces trust/solidarity as a collective. Forcing ourselves to take time to address concerns upfront usually enables to prevent further issues/conflicts by developing mutual understanding and trying to build common ground.

In the end of the consensus-building process, disagreements may still happen. In this case, both sides should weigh the pros and cons, and decide which is more important, between their participation in the collective, and their individual opinions. All situations are perfectly fine:

• a dissenting person compromises on their ideas/principles, because they consider their action within the collective is more important in that specific context
• a dissenting person vetoes a collective decision because they can’t compromise on certain principles ; in which case, both sides will ponder whether they may or may not compromise on it, leading to either side leaving the collective (potentially forking it), or expelling other people from the collective

In all cases, personal autonomy is respected. If you don’t agree with the operating principles of a commune, you’re free to take your chances elsewhere that will better suit you, and no higher authority will hold you back. In a capitalist society, leaving your job would mean uncertainty about material survival in the coming days/months. In a dictatorship of the proletariat, leaving your job would mean uncertainty about surviving interrogation by the political police following your “counter-revolutionary acts”. There is no equivalent situation in a free commune.

Back to Engels, i was also disappointed by this sentence:

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.

This is a strawman argument. Most anarchists are not primitivists, so reducing anti-authoritarianism to primitivism makes no sense. But even if that were the case, what’s wrong with primitivism? It’s not exactly my thing, but in our times, the dangers of industrial society for all life on this planet have been long proved. Simply dismissing primitivism like that without expanding/criticizing on it as a potentially-viable alternative way of life is depressing.

Finally, Engels argues anti-authoritarians “serve the reaction”. History has proved otherwise. Thanks for an interesting (if bad faith) read :)

I’ve seen it linked here and there, but i don’t speak german unfortunately. I don’t know who runs it but i don’t think it would be harmful to have more anarchist/antifascist instances, since discussions are federated :)

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Correction: all those labels I quoted had meaning. Meaning in language is determined by usage, not by fiat. (If you don’t agree, I’d ask you to point me to the authority you recognize for language meaning…) In usage outside of very specific technical contexts they have all lost meaning because grandstanders and ignoramuses love to reach for the worst word they used when dismissively labelling someone with whom they disagree.

Why reach for “authoritarian right-winger”, after all, when “YOU’RE A LITERAL NAZI!” packs a more solid punch (in their minds)? Why reach for “authoritarian left-winger” when you could screech “TANKIE!” at the top of your lungs?

Terms which become epithets follow this inevitable downhill path: term of the art → symbolic term → epithet → “person with whom I mildly or greatly disagree, along with an annotation of my tribal involvement”.

The word originally referred to communists that supported the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in their suppression of “[…] the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and later the Prague Spring of 1968 […]”^[1] . As I do not really have much information about the former, I will focus on the latter instead:

Alexander Dubček succeeded Antonín Novotný as the first secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in October 1967. His government had planned new political reforms, a so-called “Socialism with a human face”: social/cultural/political democratization, decentralization and liberalization. After political negotiations did not resolve the disagreements other states of the Warsaw Pact had with these plans, the member states resorted to a military intervention: On 21. August 1968, soldiers from members of the Warshaw Pact invaded and occupied Czechoslovakia, without any prior request from the Czechoslovakian government (this is where the term stems from, as the Warsaw Pact rolled in with tanks). Dubček and other officials were arrested. Few days later, they signed the Moscow Protocol that repealed most of the enacted reforms.^[2]

The antisocialist elements in Czechoslovakia actually covered up the demand for so-called neutrality and Czechoslovakia’s withdrawal from the socialist community with talking about the right of nations to self-determination.

However, the implementation of such “self-determination,” in other words, Czechoslovakia’s detachment from the socialist community, would have come into conflict with its own vital interests and would have been detrimental to the other socialist states.

Such “self-determination,” as a result of which NATO troops would have been able to come up to the Soviet border, while the community of European socialist countries would have been split, in effect encroaches upon the vital interests of the peoples of these countries and conflicts, as the very root of it, with the right of these people to socialist self-determination.

Discharging their internationalist duty toward the fraternal peoples of Czechoslovakia and defending their own socialist gains, the U.S.S.R. and the other socialist states had to act decisively and they did act against the antisocialist forces in Czechoslovakia.

– Leonid Brezhnev, 1968^[3]

This justification for a military intervention in a ‘brother-state’, now also known as the Brezhnev Doctrine, was supported by some members of the Communist Party of Great Britain – which were then called ‘Tankies’. That’s the historical origin at least.

Today, the word is mostly used as a negative descriptor for people who support, apologize or defend militaristic or authoritarian means of enforcing a communist or socialist system.

References

[1] Wikipedia contributors (2021, February 23). Tankie. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tankie&oldid=1008394377

[2] Karner, Stefan (2008). Der “Prager Frühling”. Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, B 20. Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, Bonn. https://www.bpb.de/geschichte/deutsche-geschichte/68er-bewegung/52007/prager-fruehling?p=all

[3] Brezhnev Doctrine (2019, July 22). In Wikisource. https://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Brezhnev_Doctrine&oldid=9467309

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White cishet men wanna feel oppressed soooooooo bad