First of all, he ridicules the muddled ideas of the Proudhonists, who call themselves “anti-authoritarians”, i.e., repudiating all authority, all subordination, all power. Take a factory, a railway, a ship on the high seas, said Engels: is it not clear that not one of these complex technical establishments, based on the use of machinery and the systematic co-operation of many people, could function without a certain amount of subordination and, consequently, without a certain amount of authority or power?
