The political compass is an attempt to reduce incredibly complicated political questions into two simple lines, and people accept it because it aligns with oversimplified narratives and cultural preconceptions.
"Liberty" and "authority" have little meaning beyond "good" and "bad." If authority is defined more rigorously, or if we use more neutral terms like "centralization" or public vs private, then it becomes a lot less clear that what we're talking about is contrary to "liberty." The private sector, and private individuals, can be just as restrictive of liberty.
Perhaps the clearest example of this is the American Civil War. The southerners were the champions of decentralization, they spoke constantly about how they were fighting for "liberty" against the supposed tyranny of the northerners - and the reason they wanted "states' rights" and decentralization is that they would be able to keep people enslaved. It was big, centralized government, that evil "authoritarian" force imposing it's authority that resulted in a greater degree of liberty. But that is not just some freak exception.
If someone can't go out at night without fear of being attacked, that person is no more "free" to go out than if they feared legal repercussions. Governments are, at their worst, no different from a criminal organization, and yet there is this tendency to assign special status to restrictions imposed by the law, rather than being on the same level as restrictions imposed by private individuals or organizations.
And again, we can see how "big government" or "authoritarianism" can increase liberty in the context of regulations, of pollution, of food safety, and of untested drugs. If I can trust regulators to stop a restaurant from serving anything unsafe, then I'm free to order anything off the menu, whereas if not, then everything's a gamble and I might feel restricted to foods I expect to be "safe," if I don't avoid the restaurant entirely.
There once was a time when states viewed things like murder as a personal dispute between families, and didn't generally get involved. This led to all kinds of generational feuds, with people killing each other over a long forgotten dispute between their great-grandfathers. Was that "liberty?" Is that something we should idealize and try to return to?
I'm sure there are people who will read this as me being "pro-authoritarian" and ignoring all the bad things done by states. But that's missing the point. The point is not that centralization or state power are always good, the point is that it's not automatically bad. Having a knee-jerk reaction against it is just oversimplifying complicated issues, and doing so in a way that lots of powerful people want you to do. Because the ruling class understands that they can wield private institutions and privatization just as they can wield public institutions.
You can't just blindly apply an idealist ideological framework of "anti-authoritarianism" to every problem and expect that to produce good results. You have to look at things on a case-by-case basis, applying class analysis.
A lot of what you're saying seems to be related to the concept of "negative liberty" and "positive liberty."
I'm not sure if the US south framed it as "states rights"/decentralization at the time. The confederacy was authoritarian. Slavery is authoritarian, and the Confederacy forced its member states to agree to never abolish slavery (removing states rights to abolish slavery).
Anyways, IDK if "authority is the opposite of liberty" or not, but I'm opposed authority (including capitalism which is inherently authoritarian). I think regulations, law enforcement, etc can be enforced by the community in a bottom-up approach, rather than a top-down one. Such things are handled that way in some autonomous areas, communes, and tribes.
They were very much about decentralization, even in terms of the structure of the military. Governors had control of their own armies and there were frequent problems with coordination because of it. There wasn't even a standardized size for railroad tracks so they often had to unload cargo and transfer it.
Even the term "Confederacy" was a nod to the decentralized system of the Articles of Confederation. Of course, the fact that decentralization is often wildly impractical sometimes forced them to deviate from their ideological preferences (the exact same thing that had happened with the Articles of Confederation).
Again, I think you're using "authoritarian" to just mean "bad."
Is it more or less authoritarian to live under a central authority that outlaws slavery? Obviously, the answer is less. But that would mean that a central authority being present can be less authoritarian than a decentralized system. That seems like a completely nonsensical statement to me, but I guess that's the language I'm forced to use if you insist on the language of "authoritarianism."
Applying this in the context of capitalism is even more problematic. Are minimum wage laws authoritarian? They are the product of a central authority telling people what they can and can't do. On the other hand, if they result in the average person having more money in their pocket, that would give them more freedom to act as they please. Once again, it seems possible that the imposition of authority on the market reduces overall "authoritarianism."
But if impositions by a central authority are not inherently authoritarian, if authority can be anti-authoritarian, then why do we need to limit ourselves to looking at a few scattered examples in remote, low population tribes with material conditions that are vastly different from our own? Why can't we look at policies imposed by a central authority that have reduced authoritarianism?
I guess "hierarchical" may be more apt than "authoritarian" for what I was trying to say.
Depends if they were mandated by an authority or by the people, and how they are enforced.
Ignoring semantics. Yeah, you can look at these policies. I think most of the policies were borne out of threatening authority though. I also think many of those authorities around the world are feeling less threatened, and many of the good policies are being weakened or rolled back.
I am anti-authoritarian and anti-hierarchy, because 1) it creates a single point of failure 2) it's easier to corrupt a few people than many or everybody 3) the people most interested in practicing corruption are the people who seek power 4) corruption is often rewarded.
Those are valid concerns, however, that ignores all the examples I've presented. If centralization is always bad and decentralization is always good, then how are there so many cases (or any cases at all) where a centralized government produces better results? Shouldn't that be impossible, even theoretically?
The fact is that decentralized systems have flaws too. They have a lot of problems operating at large scales, with collective action problems, and they can often lead to unnecessary redundancy. Like I said, your concerns about centralized systems are valid, but there are cases where even a corrupt or imperfect central government can solve problems that decentralized systems struggle with. That's why I argue that you have to look at things by a case-by-case basis.
Public transit is yet another example of this. A centralized government can recognize that ease of transit can promote economic growth and by extension tax revenue, and so it can afford to invest in public transit and it will pay for itself. A decentralized system will always struggle to do that. Maybe a private company runs it and recoups expenses by ticket sales, but that makes it less accessible and reduces the economic benefits. Or maybe people contribute out of the kindness of their hearts or something, but then the most generous will wind up with the least money/time/resources.
How am I supposed to accept that decentralization is always the correct answer when I'm surrounded by counterexamples with no explanation? It really seems like it's based more on ideological preconceptions than real life examples and evidence.
Hmm, this is mostly a semantic argument on what authority is. I don't necessarily disagree with most of it, up until he starts getting prescriptive. I do disagree with "transitional governments" that never seem to relinquish their authority though. I do think it's possible to tear down the state and replace it with more bottom-up/accountable structures that are radically different fairly quickly.
Engels is very obviously not making a semantic argument. He explicitly addresses that dodge himself: changing the name does not change the thing. If a delegate, committee, workers’ council, commune, or assembly can make binding decisions, enforce them, discipline obstruction, coordinate labour, and compel compliance where necessary, then authority still exists. Calling it a “commission,” “community enforcement,” or “bottom-up structure” does not abolish authority. It just obscures what is actually happening.
The deeper problem is that you are treating all authority as if it were identical. It is not. The real question is: authority by which class, over whom, and for what purpose? Bourgeois authority exists to preserve exploitation. Proletarian authority exists to suppress the exploiters, defend the revolution, and reorganize society on a collective basis. Those are not the same thing.
And yes, bureaucratic degeneration is possible. Marxists have never needed fairy tales about that. Socialist construction can generate bureaucracy, ossification, careerism, and detachment from the masses. But that is not an argument for abandoning authority altogether. In the current hostile world, that idea is absurd. Socialist countries exist under siege: sanctions, sabotage, subversion, military encirclement, espionage, capital flight, ideological warfare, and constant pressure from imperialism. Under those conditions, the notion that a socialist society could simply dissolve all organized authority and still survive is not radical, it is politically unserious. It would be suicide.
You are also collapsing state and government into one thing, which is a common mistake. The state is a specific instrument of class rule: special bodies of armed men, prisons, courts, coercive institutions arising from irreconcilable class antagonisms. Government, more broadly, is administration, coordination, planning, and the management of social life. Under communism, as classes disappear, the state withers away because there is no longer one class suppressing another. But administration does not disappear. Coordination does not disappear. Collective decision-making does not disappear. Government in that broader administrative sense remains, even when the state as an organ of class domination has been abolished.
Modern production makes this even clearer.
Take a modern computer chip. It is not made by autonomous individuals spontaneously harmonizing their activity. It is designed through coordinated labour by multiple digital design teams, analogue design teams, verification teams, software toolchains, and engineering managers, often across firms such as design companies and manufacturers. Then it goes to fabrication, where entirely different teams handle masks, wafer processing, testing, packaging, logistics, maintenance, quality control, and cleanroom operations. All of this also depends on cleaners, technicians, utility workers, transport, and upstream material supply. If everyone simply acted according to their own immediate preference with no binding coordination, you would not get advanced semiconductors. You would get breakdown, waste, delay, and failure.
Take also a nuclear power plant. Here the anti-authoritarian fantasy becomes openly ridiculous. A nuclear plant cannot be run on the basis that nobody has decisive authority, nobody can issue binding orders, and everything is handled through loose voluntary consensus at the point of crisis. That would be suicidal not only for the workers inside the plant, but for everyone living anywhere near it. Safety procedures, emergency response, maintenance schedules, chain of command, and operational discipline are not optional bourgeois prejudices. They are material necessities.
Most importantly (as any ideology that does not account for the sick and disabled is not serious or worth consideration) take modern pharmaceuticals and disability aids. Drugs and medical devices are researched, tested, manufactured, transported, and monitored through highly coordinated labour across laboratories, trial systems, factories, supply chains, hospitals, and inspection bodies. Even in a society without profit motive, mistakes, contamination, negligence, and accidents would still be possible. So you would still need rigorous standards, quality control, testing protocols, and regulatory oversight to ensure safety and efficacy. That is authority. Necessary authority. Social authority in the service of human need.
So no, this is not a dispute about words. Engels’ point is material from beginning to end. Complex social production and revolutionary struggle require authority, discipline, and subordination of particular wills to collective necessity. The only real question is whether that authority serves capital or the working masses.
So when you say society can be reorganized into more “bottom-up/accountable structures” quickly, that still does not escape Engels’ argument. Those structures, if they are real, would still have to make binding decisions, suppress counter-revolution, coordinate production, allocate resources, maintain infrastructure, and enforce standards. In other words, they would still exercise authority. The issue is not whether authority exists. The issue is whether the proletariat is willing to wield it consciously, or whether it disarms itself while imperialism and the bourgeoisie do not.
There's a funny sketch about this.