State and Revolution,
Part 7b
Authority
On Authority and Political Indifferentism
Today we
have two short pamphlets, one by Engels, and one by Marx, one on “Authority”
and one on “Indifferentism”, compiled together in one document, attached, and downloadable
via the link below.
Says
Engels: 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 reactionaries.
This was
written in 1872 and published in 1874, in Italy. The “politically correct” of
the day were saying that all forms of “authority” were bad and must be done
away with. Engels corrects this “politically correct” error.
Marx,
writing in 1873, also published in Italy in 1874, addresses what he calls
“Political Indifferentism”. In this pamphlet Marx first quotes Proudhon and
readers can be deceived to think that Marx is approving of Proudhon. But this
is just polemic. Marx quotes Proudhon extensively, but only so as to thoroughly
contradict him.
This is a
very profound lesson of Karl Marx’s. What he is saying is that although, under
the bourgeois dictatorship, in the bourgeois democracy, whose choices are all bourgeois
choices, yet we cannot therefore say that we should have nothing to do with it,
and refuse to choose.
On the
contrary, we have to study it with more attention than anyone else, and then
make the tactically right choices in the interest of the working class.
In South
Africa in the early 21st century, clearly the communists are deeply
involved in the politics of the bourgeois state, and Marx would, according to
this text, say that such involvement is more than inevitable. It is deliberate
and it is right. The communists cannot remain indifferent to what the
bourgeoisie is doing.
- The above is to introduce the original reading-text: Engels, On Authority, 1872; Marx, Political Indifferentism, 1873.
