What is meant by "the withering away of the state"?
Why should it ever happen?
What does "the state" even mean here? No more courts? No more police force? Army? idgi
>What does "the state" even mean here? Go read
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/>No more courts?Yeah
>No more police force? Yeah
>Army? Yeah
>What is meant by "the withering away of the state"?>Why should it ever happen?https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ >“The whole talk about the state should be dropped, especially since the Commune, which was no longer a state in the proper sense of the word. The “people’s state” has been thrown in our faces by the anarchists too long, although Marx’s book against Proudhon and later The Communist Manifesto directly declare that with the introduction of the socialist order of society the state will of itself dissolve and disappear. As, therefore, the “state” is only a transitory institution which is used in the struggle, in the revolution, in order to hold down [niederzuhalten] one’s adversaries by force, it is pure nonsense to talk of a “free people’s state”; so long as the proletariat still uses the state, it does not use it in the interests of freedom but in order to hold down its adversaries, and as soon as it becomes possible to speak of freedom, the state as such ceases to exist. We would therefore propose to replace the word “state” everywhere by the word Gemeinwesen [community], a good old German word, which can very well represent the French word commune.” - Friedrich Engels to August Bebel; London, March 18-28, 1875
>>2440719because the purpose of a state is to uphold class rule through violence
no classes = no need for a state
violence will be done differently under communism
>>2440719>This says that the state will just become an apparatus of economic planning. It doesn't say WHY tough.Marxists believe that "politics" as such generally exists because of conflicts between classes, and the state emerges from this and becomes a machine for one class to repress another. The state must ultimately take a side. But if there's no sustained, general antagonism between people then their conflicts don't necessarily become political. Conflicts will still exist, but they will be mostly the problems of those people directly involved, and not social problems that require the state to intervene. Marxists then believe that there's a process to move from class society to classlessness, and therefore statelessness in more and more domains other than managing production. Engels put it: "The government of persons is replaced by the administration of things and the direction of the processes of production."
But that process is where all the controversies arise and nobody has found a perfect model.
>>2440749>I'm not sure there would be communists eitherOf course there would be. It’s communism.
>There would be no political dominationThere would.
>>2440752>Of course there would be. It’s communism. No more political struggle for communism = no more communists. No party or ideology needed to advocate for it or build it. It's obsolete. Political labels have no purpose. People become free individuals. Even Marxism itself would probably be replaced by something more advanced than Marxism.
>There would.Why would there be political domination in a community in which there are no hostile classes to repress? "Politics" as we know it would cease to exist. The idea that there must be a ruling class or coercive state force is not eternal or natural. It arises in societies divided by class antagonisms. Well I picture it as kind of like a Chinese sci-fi movie but I admit that I'm utopian.
>>2440761>No more political struggle for communism = no more communistsCommunists do not need political struggle to exist.
>No party or ideology The ideology would remain. There is no reason for it to be obsolete.
>Political labels have no purpose.Ignorance shelters none. Political labels will continue to be used well beyond the abolishment of capitalism.
>Even Marxism itself would probably be replaced by something more advanced than MarxismI do not see that.
>Why would there be political domination in a community in which there are no hostile classes to repress I actually retract my statement here. I meant to refer to ideological pressure.
>>2440742i think it's also because they're operating on the flawed assumption that the state magically withers away, as if simply because capitalism has ceased to exist, the state would too, the problem is you can't abolish capitalism without abolishing the state, and you can't abolish the state without abolishing capitalism, thus they have to be simultaneous, this has been proven by the fact that all proletarian revolutions up until this point have simply degenerated into a social democracy, either because capitalism wasn't developed enough, or because of a programmatic error, you must immediately replace the mode of production simultaneous to a political revolution, is the lesson of the 21st century
>>2440695The state arises from the irreconcilability of social classes in a class society, where one class oppresses another to maintain its domination. This state entity, which is separate from society, represses and creates methods of pacifying the masses through the contradictions between private property owners and those without property, and against other property owners.
The state begins to wither when the conditions of the contradictions create the state begins to disappear. This is achieved with the dictatorship of the proletariat, which, by socializing the economy and abolishing private property, the anarchy of production, social classes, money, and other contradictions, is no longer a separate organization of workers to maintain the dictatorship of the proletariat in full communism and with global socialist hegemony.
Let's begin with a quote from this process:
<By increasingly transforming the great majority of the population into proletarians, the capitalist mode of production creates the force which, under penalty of its own destruction, is compelled to accomplish this revolution. By increasingly driving towards the transformation of the vast socialized means of production into state property, it itself points the way to the accomplishment of this revolution. The proletariat seizes state power and to begin with transforms the means of production into state property. But it thus puts an end to itself as proletariat, it thus puts an end to all class differences and class antagonisms, and thus also to the state as state. Moving in class antagonisms, society up to now had need of the state, that is, an organization of the exploiting class at each period for the maintenance of its external conditions of production, that is, particularly for the forcible holding down of the exploited class in the conditions of oppression (slavery, villeinage or serfdom, wage-labour) given by the existing mode of production. The state was the official representative of the whole of society, its concentration in a visible body, but it was so only in so far as it was the state of that class which in its time represented the whole of society: in antiquity, the state of the slave-owning citizens, in the Middle Ages of the feudal nobility, in our time, of the bourgeoisie. When ultimately it becomes the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself superfluous. As soon as there is no social class to be held in subjection any longer, as soon as class domination and the struggle for individual existence based on the anarchy of production existing up to now are eliminated together with the collisions and excesses arising from them, there is nothing more to repress, nothing necessitating a special repressive force, a state. The first act in which the state really comes forward as the representative of the whole of society – the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society – is at the same time its last independent act as a state. The interference of the state power in social relations becomes superfluous in one sphere after another, and then dies away of itself. The government of persons is replaced by the administration of things and the direction of the processes of production. The state is not "abolished", it withers away. It is by this that one must evaluate the phrase "a free people's state" with respect both to its temporary agitational justification and to its ultimate scientific inadequacy, and it is by this that we must also evaluate the demand of the so called anarchists that the state should be abolished overnight.
<Frederick Engels, 1877, Anti-DühringHerr Eugen Dühring's Revolution in Science, Part III: Socialism, Chapter 2: Theoretical.
http://www.marx2mao.com/M&E/AD78iii.html marx's conception of the "whithering" away of the state is very similar to benito ᴉuᴉlossnW's idea of totalitarianism:
>"Everything within the State, nothing against the State, nothing outside the State"https://bibliotecafascista.blogspot.com/2012/03/speech-of-ascension-may-26-1927.html?m=1where as marx writes in the manifesto, the political character of the state only exists as long as there is class antagonism, but if the state has a total claim over society, there cannot be those within or without, and so all is subsumed within its collective existence:
>When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class. In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htmso to marx, the state simply transforms itself from politics toward administration, yet is indefinitely retained nonetheless. marx is not libertarian.
>>2440695>What is meant by "the withering away of the state"?Nothing. It's a hand wave because Marx
failed refused to consider the state question sufficiently.
>Why should it ever happen?Well the idea is that communism is supposed to be stateless, but Marxists generally think you need a state for lower-phase communism (or some call it socialism) but it's very much a case of:
1. Establish a dictatorship of the proletariat
2. ???
3.
Profit! Communism!
>What does "the state" even mean here? No more courts? No more police force? Army? idgiMarx and Engels couldn't even agree with themselves about what a state is. Meanwhile anarchists never had a problem defining one.
>>2440765>I do not see that.I don't know but I think it follows that Marxism will eventually die out. Mao thought so.
<All individual and all specific things have their births, development, and deaths. Every person must die, because he was born. Man must die, and Chang San [i.e., any Tom, Dick or Harry] being a man, Chang San must die. None can see Confucius who lived 2,000 years ago, because he had to die. Mankind is born, and therefore mankind must also die. The earth was born, and so the earth must also die. Nonetheless, when we say that mankind will die and the earth will die, it is different from what Christians say about the end of the world. When we talk about the death of mankind and the death of the earth, we mean that something more advanced than mankind will come to replace it, and this is a higher stage in the development of things. I saw that Marxism also has its birth, its development and its death. This may seem to be absurd. But since Marx said that all things which happen have their death, how can we say that this is not applicable to Marxism itself? To say that it won’t die is metaphysics. Naturally, the death of Marxism means that something higher than Marxism will come to replace it.https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-9/mswv9_28.htm more on marxist totalitarianism:
>Yet what is here already very plainly expressed is the idea of the future conversion of political rule over men into an administration of things and a direction of processes of production – that is to say, the “abolition of the state”, about which recently there has been so much noise.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ch01.htmthis is a supplement to marx's comments in the manifesto, that the conversion of the state from a political, to an economic entity entails the erection of an "administration of things" (which to engels signifies its "abolition", whilst if course, preserving its power). the notion of an administration of things was allegedly first advocated by utopian socialist henri de saint-simon. we can, without exaggeration therefore, see that the marxist concept of the state is as a business, which forcibly de-politicises citizens and treats them only as economic units. looks like things are going to plan!
>>2441008>but I think it follows that Marxism will eventually die outThere’s no reason for it to die out.
>Mao thought so.Of course he would
>Mankind is born, and therefore mankind must also die. The earth was born, and so the earth must also dieOf course he said this
>To say that it won’t die is metaphysicsAnd yet they presume it will at the same time.
>>2440992The process of the withering away of the state is quite easy to understand if you understand the state as a special separate entity from society for one class to oppress another and sustain the domination of a ruling social class through the irreconcilability of the antagonisms of a class society. This is why the trajectory of the abolition of the state would see the formation of popular councils and dual power to overthrow the exploiting classes of capitalist society and install the proletarian democracy of the dictatorship of the proletariat that will already equalize the salaries of union workers and government officials with the average salary of workers to avoid betrayals in not wanting to fight to win together. With the dictatorship of the proletariat consolidating power in a country, the expropriation and disarmament of counterrevolutionaries, capitalists, landowners, financial market speculators, and agents dependent on the maintenance of capitalism will be carried out to socialize the economy as quickly as possible so that the socialist state becomes self-sufficient, with a society that possesses technological, food, energy, financial, etc. sovereignty, and with control of all means of production so as not to depend on market profit. With this, communism in its low stage is achieved, but the state will exist to protect collective public property against sabotage and maintain the political domination of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Here, the withering of the state will only come with global socialist hegemony to eliminate the contradictions of the imperialist threat. Workers will have to have discipline and be educated to organize collective property to serve the needs of workers in economic planning. The contradictions between city and countryside, between manual labor and skilled intellectual labor, need to be resolved. There must be a surplus. in what is produced for the workers to receive fully each according to their abilities and needs rather than according to the work, where only after all this occurs that the withering away of the dictatorship of the proletariat will be realized where there will no longer be this separation with the armed workers organizing themselves collectively.
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