flâneur

On Authority

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Written: 1872; Published: 1874 in the Italian, Almanacco Republicano; Source: Marx-Engels Reader, New York: W. W. Norton and Co., second edition, 1978 (first edition, 1972), pp 730-733.; Translated: Robert C. Tucker; Transcribed: by Mike Lepore. A number of Socialists have latterly launched a regular crusade against what they call the principle of authority. It suffices to tell them that this or that act is authoritarian for it to be condemned. This summary mode of procedure is being abused to such an extent that it has become necessary to look into the matter somewhat more closely. 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. Now, since these two words sound bad, and the relationship which they represent is disagreeable to the subordinated party, the question is to ascertain whether there is any way of dispensing with it, whether — given the conditions of present-

Works of Frederick Engels 1872 Written: 1872; Published: 1874 in the Italian, Almanacco Republicano; Source: Marx-Engels Reader, New York: W. W. Norton and Co., second edition, 1978 (first edition, 1972), pp 730-733.; Translated: Robert C. Tucker; Transcribed: by Mike Lepore. A number of Socialists have latterly launched a regular crusade against what they call the principle of authority. It suffices to tell them that this or that act is authoritarian for it to be condemned. This summary mode of procedure is being abused to such an extent that it has become necessary to look into the…

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