Definig "The State"

[Acostak3]

How do you define the state and how does it differ from government (if at all)? When do you think a state was first introduced to society (I've heard both the peace of Westphalia 1648, and ancient Sumeria)?

Edit: the title should be "defining "the state"

[Savage]

According to Karl Marx,
‘’the form in which the individuals of a ruling class assert their common interests.’’

[Widerstand]

Most Marxists (MLs, Stalinists, Maoists, I believe Trots too) define the state as a neutral instrument of class rule. Whatever class is in control of it can impose it's will on society. In classical Marxist theory the seizure of state power by the working class will lead to an end of class society.

Anarchists and certain other tendencies (post-structuralist influenced thinkers and post-operaists like John Holloway) often seem to have a more complex idea of the state, namely they see it as interwoven with capitalism and inseparable from, and some in fact (all Anarchists) see fighting the state as a primary task.

Left Communists are somewhere "in the middle", I'm sure they can explain this better.

[Die Neue Zeit]

The state is first and foremost the sum of the repressive instruments for the rule of minority classes – and a very private and not public one according to Kantian reasoning.

This thread should be in Learning, btw.

[Rafiq]

The State is just a fancy word for governments we don't like ;)

[syndicat]

Anarchists and certain other tendencies (post-structuralist influenced thinkers and post-operaists like John Holloway) often seem to have a more complex idea of the state, namely they see it as interwoven with capitalism and inseparable from, and some in fact (all Anarchists) see fighting the state as a primary task.



it's a common Marxist strawman to say that anarchists see fighting the state as the primary task. the majority of anarchists historically based their conception of the process of change on the self-organization of the oppressed and exploited, and thus the class struggle is of primary importance.

where many on the libertarian left do differ from Marxism is in seeing the state (especially the modern state) as generating a bureaucratic class that has its own interests, and also that the state is not reducible to simply the power of the currently dominant class but is a distinct problem, a distinct authoritarian institution in its own right.

as I see it, the state is a hierarchical, top-down institution (or set of institutions) which has tended to grow much larger in response to the needs of capitalism as capitalism matured into late or corporate capitalism.

the state isn't simply the elected leaders who govern in representative government systems. it includes the apparatus of the police, military, prisons, judiciary, the various regulatory bureaucracies, and social service agencies.

the concentration of decision-making authority and expertise into the hands of a relative few in the state hierarchy empowers a bureaucratic class in the state apparatus. this is one of the ways that the state is a class institution, that is, an institution whose function is to defend an economic arrangement in which a certain class is dominant. but the state must also defend other systems or structures of oppression that are linked with the class system, such as systematic inequality faced by women (e.g. making divorce or abortion illegal), or forms of structural racism (in the USA for example).

in addition to defending the system of oppression and exploitation, centered around a dominant or ruling class, the state has another dimension. to be able to govern it has to maintain some semblance of popular legitimacy. this is the point to elections. to the degree the system lacks legitimacy in the eyes of the populace, it will be subject to severe social disruption and strife.

during periods of upheaval and working class insurgency, the state has in the past been the means to broker or offer concessions to the working class. in the years after World War 2 for example this got institutionalized as the welfare state in the various first world countries. the state then becomes the channel for the social wage...that portion of consumption the working class receives through various state programs.

Engels suggested that the state first emerged when stable class systems began to emerge, based on settled agriculture, where ownership and control of the land and the product of labor could be controlled by an elite. A ruling, exploiting class needs a state to protect them against the potential of the masses to rise up and seize their wealth.

because anarchists see the state as inherently a class institution, that is, an institution configured to defend the interests of a dominating, exploiting class, "workers state" would be a self-contradiction. A state's separation from direct mass control and its bureaucratic hierarchies make it infeasible for the masses to govern through such an institution.

[HEAD ICE]

How do you define the state and how does it differ from government (if at all)? When do you think a state was first introduced to society (I've heard both the peace of Westphalia 1648, and ancient Sumeria)?

Edit: the title should be "defining "the state"

Engels:


The state is, therefore, by no means a power forced on society from without; just as little is it 'the reality of the ethical idea', 'the image and reality of reason', as Hegel maintains. Rather, it is a product of society at a certain stage of development; it is the admission that this society has become entangled in an insoluble contradiction with itself, that it has split into irreconcilable antagonisms which it is powerless to dispel. But in order that these antagonisms, these classes with conflicting economic interests, might not consume themselves and society in fruitless struggle, it became necessary to have a power, seemingly standing above society, that would alleviate the conflict and keep it within the bounds of 'order'; and this power, arisen out of society but placing itself above it, and alienating itself more and more from it, is the state.

[blake 3:17]

Most Marxists (MLs, Stalinists, Maoists, I believe Trots too) define the state as a neutral instrument of class rule. Whatever class is in control of it can impose it's will on society. In classical Marxist theory the seizure of state power by the working class will lead to an end of class society.

As I understand Engel's theory of the State is that it is the product of conflicting classes. Within the Marxist Left there is a broad variance in position on the nature of the State and how we engage with State institutions and how we rely on State institutions and law.

The thinking above is often associated with EuroCommunist/reformist thought -- for actual revolutionaries we're constantly in the muck and murk of it.

[ExUnoDisceOmnes]

Lenin compiled Engel's definition of the state very very clearly here:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch01.htm#s1