Engels argued that large-scale industry (or, indeed, any form of organisation) meant that "authority" was required. He stated that factories should have "Lasciate ogni autonomia, voi che entrate" ("Leave, ye that enter in, all autonomy behind") written above their doors. Indeed, that is the basis of capitalism, with the wage worker being paid to obey. This obedience, Engels argued, was necessary even under socialism, as applying the "forces of nature" meant "a veritable despotism independent of all social organisation." This meant that "[w]anting to abolish authority in large-scale industry is tantamount to wanting to abolish industry itself." [Op. Cit., p. 731]
The best answer to Engels claims can be found in the class struggle. Given that Engels was a capitalist (i.e. an owner of a factory), he may have not been aware of the effectiveness of "working to rule" when practised by workers. This basically involves doing exactly what the boss tells you to do, regardless of the consequences as regards efficiency, production and so on. Quite simply, workers' refusing to practice autonomy can be an extremely effective and powerful weapon in the class struggle.
This weapon has long been used by workers and advocated by anarchists, syndicalists and wobblies. For example, the IWW booklet How to fire your boss argues that "[w]orkers often violate orders, resort to their own techniques of doing things, and disregard lines of authority simply to meet the goals of the company. There is often a tacit understanding, even by the managers whose job it is to enforce the rules, that these shortcuts must be taken in order to meet production quotas on time." They argue, correctly, that "if each of these rules and regulations were followed to the letter" then "[c]onfusion would result — production and morale would plummet. And best of all, the workers can't get in trouble with the tactic because they are, after all, 'just following the rules.'"
The British anarcho-syndicalists of the Direct Action Movement agree and even quote an industrial expert on the situation:
"If managers' orders were completely obeyed, confusion would result and production and morale would be lowered. In order to achieve the goals of the organisation workers must often violate orders, resort to their own techniques of doing things, and disregard lines of authority. Without this kind of systematic sabotage much work could not be done. This unsolicited sabotage in the form of disobedience and subterfuge is especially necessary to enable large bureaucracies to function effectively." [Social Psychology of Industry by J.A.C. Brown, quoted in Direct Action in Industry]
Another weapon of workers' resistance is what has been called "Working without enthusiasm" and is related to the "work to rule." This tactic aims at "slowing production" in order to win gains from management:
"Even the simplest repetitive job demands a certain minimum of initiative and in this case it is failing to show any non-obligatory initiative . . . [This] leads to a fall in production — above all in quality. The worker carries out every operation minimally; the moment there is a hitch of any kind he [or she] abandons all responsibility and hands over to the next man [or woman] above him [or her] in the hierarchy; he works mechanically, not checking the finished object, not troubling to regulate his machine. In short he gets away with as much as he can, but never actually does anything positively illegal." [Pierre Dubois, Sabotage in Industry, p. 51]
The practice of "working to rule" and "working without enthusiasm" shows how out of touch Engels (like any capitalist) is with the realities of shop floor life. These forms of direct action is extremely effective because the workers refuse to act autonomously in industry, to work out the problems they face during the working day themselves, and instead place all the decisions on the authority required, according to Engels, to run the factory. The factory itself quickly grinds to a halt. What keeps it going is not the "imperious" will of authority, but rather the autonomous activity of workers thinking and acting for themselves to solve the numerous problems they face during the working day.
As Cornelius Castoriadis argues:
"Resistance to exploitation expresses itself in a drop in productivity as well as exertion on the workers' part . . . At the same time it is expressed in the disappearance of the minimum collective and spontaneous management and organisation of work that the workers normally and of necessity puts out. No modern factory could function for twenty-four hours without this spontaneous organisation of work that groups of workers, independent of the official business management, carry out by filling in the gaps of official production directives, by preparing for the unforeseen and for regular breakdowns of equipment, by compensating for management's mistakes, etc.
"Under 'normal' conditions of exploitation, workers are torn between the need to organise themselves in this way in order to carry out their work — otherwise there are repercussions for them — and their natural desire to do their work, on the one hand, and, on the other, the awareness that by doing so they only are serving the boss's interests. Added to those conflicting concerns are the continual efforts of factory's management apparatus to 'direct' all aspects of the workers' activity, which often results only in preventing them from organising themselves." [Political and Social Writings, vol. 2, p. 68]
Needless to say, co-operation and co-ordination is required in any collective activity. Anarchists do not deny this fact of nature, but the example Engels considered as irrefutable simply shows the fallacy of his argument. If large-scale industry was run along the lines argued by Engels, it would quickly grind to halt.
Ironically, the example of Russia under Lenin and Trotsky reinforces this fact. "Administrative centralisation" was enforced on the railway workers which, in turn, "led more to ignorance of distance and the inability to respond properly to local circumstances . . . 'I have no instructions' became all the more effective as a defensive and self-protective rationalisation as party officials vested with unilateral power insisted all their orders be strictly obeyed. Cheka ruthlessness instilled fear, but repression . . . only impaired the exercise of initiative that daily operations required." [William G. Rosenberg, "The Social Background to Tsektran," Party, State, and Society in the Russian Civil War, Diane P. Koenker, William G. Rosenberg and Ronald Grigor Suny (eds.), p. 369] Without the autonomy required to manage local problems, the operation of the railways was seriously harmed and, unsurprisingly, a few months after Trotsky subjected to railway workers to the "militarisation of labour" in September 1920, there was a "disastrous collapse of the railway network in the winter of 1920-1." [Jonathan Aves, Workers against Lenin, p. 102]
As the experience of workers' in struggle shows, it is the abolition of autonomy which means the abolition of large-scale industry, not its exercise. This can be seen from various forms of direct action such as "working to rule" as well as Trotsky's attempts to impose the "militarisation of labour" on the Russian workers. The conscious decision by workers to not exercise their autonomy brings industry grinding to a halt and are effective tools in the class struggle. As any worker know, it is only their ability to make decisions autonomously that keeps industry going.
Rather than abolishing authority making large-scale industry impossible, it is the abolishing of autonomy which quickly achieves this. The issue is how do we organise industry so that this essential autonomy is respected and co-operation between workers achieved based on it. For anarchists, this is done by self-managed workers associations in which hierarchical authority is replaced by collective self-discipline (as discussed in section 12 of the appendix on "What happened during the Russian Revolution?").