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 more 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.
