https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htmEngels’ On Authority is razor-sharp essay of pure scientific fact—1,386 words—that dismantles anarchist utopianism with upmost efficiency. It takes 5 minutes to read and leaves no room for debate: society itself, revolution, all basic social functions, etc., require some form of authority. This is not an opinion; it is observable fact.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/london-anarchist-federation-the-problems-with-on-authorityYet here we have some terminally online anarchist penning a 52,391-word monstrosity in response. That’s 37 times longer than Engels’ original piece. The anarchist spends 79 hours' worth of handwriting time (LMAO) crafting this screed. The sheer volume of this "refutation" is itself proof of its intellectual bankruptcy. The Ratio of Copium to Substance is vast, as with all anarchist refutation of socialist theory. Endless semantic quibbling, ("But what is authority, really?") endless circular logic, along with citing hundred other liberals culminates in a pathetic monument to ideological impotence—a 50,000-word confession that anarchism cannot refute Marxism on substance, so it must drown the debate in verbosity. Engels needed just 1,386 words to prove authority’s necessity because material reality speaks for itself—factories need managers, trains need schedules, and revolutions need discipline. The anarchist’s bloated treatise, by contrast, is what happens when unsounded petty-bourgeois individualism tries to deny the objective laws of social organization: an embarrassing tantrum disguised as scholarship, its very length an admission of defeat.