I. (General introduction)
What is the state? It is, at its simplest, the collective mechanisms of class rule — it is the régime, ancien or otherwise: the highest, largest and most enveloping set of processes and organised power within a society. Those that live within its reach are forced — for the idea of a non-compulsory state is oxymoronic — to abide by its dictates; if they will not, they must either leave the state’s territories, surrender to its power and face whatever consequences result therefrom, or otherwise overthrow the state and institute their own.
A state’s legitimacy is a simple matter: it stands beyond legitimisation. The state, by its very existence, defines legitimacy and right. It is the measure, the standard, to which everything else is compared. Liberal ideology has in the past mostly posited social contract theories (Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau), and more contemporaneously utilitarian justifications (Bentham, Mill, Popper), as to why the state exists — and indeed why it should exist. These ideological posturings are evidently bourgeois in origin, and reflect the socioeconomic structures that gave rise to them: they begin from the premise of the free, atomic, rational individual. In the precapitalist era, states were justified by divine law: the Crown, indeed the very person of the monarch, who was the sole and absolute location of sovereignty within the state system, was an agent of God, and as such his commands were of equal weight with those of the Church, if not above them (see praemunire). Under caesaropapism, there can be no distinction between secular and divine authority on earth. Once again, the era’s ideology reflected its socioeconomy: its starting premise was the collective human community under God; common ownership, common fealty, common faith. In the ancient world, the pinnacle of political philosophy was to be found amongst the Greeks, and here the question of legitimate power did not even occur. Far from positing a “might makes right” doctrine, the realism of the period simply admitted to a law of nature that the weak suffer what they must, and the strong do what they will (Thucydides). The starting premise of such thought was the undeniable power of men over men, supremely realised in the literal ownership of living human bodies upon which the entire society depended. In every epoch, therefore, we see the historical confirmation of the proposition that the material precedes the ideal, and in fact gives rise to and even determines it. …
The following maxims are taken from Mao Zedong’s famous “Problems of War and Strategy”, an excerpt from his concluding speech at the Sixth Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, held in 1938. Mao argued that the Party must maintain its independence and initiative in the ongoing war against Japan, above all else by possessing its own military power distinct from that of the rest of the anti-Japanese bloc. …
In studying philosophy, and more broadly the history of human thought, there are times when you are gripped by a new idea, or a new way of conveying an idea, which leaves you in a state of amazed wonder. Put bluntly, these are occasions which leave you thinking, wow. We could call these wow moments, or wow ideas, much like the famous wow! signal. …
First thesis. Premise: the universe is purely physical. All apparently non-physical properties are either reducible to physical properties or are eliminable from the schema. There are no “nomological danglers”.¹
Second thesis. Scepticism about the status of moral properties resulting from first thesis. Diverse attribution of moral properties by different speakers (natural phenomena, non-natural phenomena, divine command, ergon for a telos, etc.).² Moral properties as metaphysically and epistemologically queer.³ Denial that moral properties are mind-independent; denial that moral properties obtain. Moral properties eliminated from the schema: anti-realism.
Third thesis. Scepticism about the status of moral judgements resulting from second thesis. Moral judgements as radically relative between speakers.⁴ Moral judgements as metaphysically and epistemologically queer.⁵ Denial that moral judgements are truth-apt. Essential character of moral judgements not of the form “X is Y,” but “X !!,” ‘where the shape and thickness of the exclamation marks show, by a suitable convention, that a special sort of moral disapproval is the feeling which is being expressed’.⁶ …
[…] in speaking of the state “withering away,” and the even more graphic and colorful “dying down of itself,” Engels refers quite clearly and definitely to the period after “the state has taken possession of the means of production in the name of the whole of society,” that is, after the socialist revolution. We all know that the political form of the “state” at that time is the most complete democracy. But it never enters the head of any of the opportunists, who shamelessly distort Marxism, that Engels is consequently speaking here of democracy “dying down of itself,” or “withering away.” This seems very strange at first sight. …
- A completed physics would represent a total and finished description and explanation of reality; would represent the only complete description (the only actual description). There can be no “nomological danglers” (Smart, Feigl).
- All non-physical facts can be either reduced to purely physical facts (the non-physical element was a superstition), or they can be eliminated from the schema (the fact was a superstition in toto).
- Three formulations: (1) An exhaustive list of all scientific facts is an exhaustive list of all facts. (2) To possess every physical fact is to possess all facts. …
A lot of anarchists will, in responding to Engels’ On Authority, say that his points are all good and well, but that that’s not what they mean when they talk about authority — this is a rebuke (“rebuke,” rather) so common and orthodox it can be found in Bakunin. This supposed response is laughable, as, firstly, Engels directly ridicules it in the text itself (one would be inclined to think they never even bothered to properly read it at all…):
“When I submitted arguments like these to the most rabid anti-authoritarians, the only answer they were able to give me was the following: Yes, that’s true, but there it is not the case of authority which we confer on our delegates, but of a commission entrusted! These gentlemen think that when they have changed the names of things they have changed the things themselves. …
Anyone who has encountered any or read any of their theory will know that Marxists regularly talk of ‘revisionism,’ and often this term is used rather freely and in such a way that someone new to Marxism might be left rather confused as to just what it is, and to why, precisely, it must be fought. This is an important matter to clarify, for the contesting of the degeneration of communist ideology is at the very forefront of the tasks of our movement. Every ideological struggle is a material struggle. However, the purpose of this article is not explanation, but exposé —example. The particular exemplar to be addressed is the latest (22/09/19; date of writing) statement of the Executive Committee of the Communist Party of Britain titled Statement on Brexit and the next general election, which the reader should take the time to read themselves before this article (it is less than 500 words long). The statement, from beginning to end, is a revisionist declaration; it abandons genuine class analysis and class politics for bourgeois ideals, bourgeois demands, and bourgeois results. …
PDF version (with footnotes).
A note on revisions
On the Democratic Question was originally published, under the title On Democracy, on 13/09/2019, and was subsequently subject to a substantial re-write, published 24/11/2019. A third edit, primarily on stylistic matters like formatting, particularly for citations and the bibliography, as well as some minor alterations throughout to improve the text’s clarity, was made on 26/06/2020. …
It’s all too common to see people on the left call someone — whether it be a major politician or simply a random person they don’t like and who’s politics they disagree with — fascistic, or even an outright fascist. Likewise, it is easy to find a plethora of examples on social media of people calling certain governments, militaries, political movements and so on, fascist (such as in this delightfully vile thread on r/anarchism).
This is dangerous, and wrong. Fascism is not a word to be thrown around lightly, a term to blindly apply, blasé-like, to things which we do not like, things which you may considerer ‘authoritarian,’ nationalistic, and so on. Fascism is a very specific form of far-right politics based around a broad alliance of economic and social classes spearheaded by the petite-bourgeoisie and labour aristocracy to both dethrone the haute bourgeois industrialists and the major banks, who they identify as being responsible for the periodic crises in capitalism that regularly cast down entire sections of the petty bourgeoisie into the mass of proletarians, and to check the advance of and then curtail, fight, and destroy the working-class movement that seeks to overthrow capitalism altogether, petite- and haute-bourgeois varieties alike. …
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