The withering away of the state

[Stalin Ate My Homework]

How will this happen?

As I understand it the withering away will happen when the means of production and political power are firmly in the hands of the proletariat with the bourgoisie ceasing to exist as a class.

But will this mean that the state's influence is merely reduced to a very low level of utility? Or does it mean the literal dismantling of the state apparatus?

Will there be a time when the socialist leaders decide the state is no longer needed and say job done and pack their bags?

Or is 'the withering away of the state' not to be taken literally with the true definition being a society with minimal state interference?

[thesadmafioso]

It's not a matter of literal decrees being made on the actual process of the state being dismantled or of socialist leaders deciding upon a set date of disintegration, it is much more fluid and without definition than that.

As socialism continues to along the dialectical course to communism, roles preformed by the state will simply no longer need to be carried out by actual institutions. Those behind such labor will continue on in their positions, just without the oversight of a physical proletarian state. Once society has reached the stage of communism, there will merely be no function of production which is not handled directly by the masses. Thus, the state will of withered away.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Withering away is an historically unfortunate phrase to have entered terminology.

It's so vague that it could be interpreted in almost any way, literally.

I don't believe the state will magically 'wither away'. Implying so gives the impression that the lower stage of communism can be, effectively, 'State Socialism', using the full state apparatus to repress any perceived enemies. We've seen how that ended up.

For me, the state will die in a few definite processes:

Firstly, the national security apparatus will be defeated and the bourgeois executive, legislative and judicial sections will be replaced by workers' councils and more accountable national bodies that are strictly answerable to the local soviets.

Secondly, after an appropriate consolidation in the previous period, probably when enough of the world has been revolutionised to the point that an autonomous trading bloc can be formed, fiat currency can be abolished and, depending on the possibilities, either a move to 'free access' communism straight away, or the introduction of alternative measurements of currency such as vouchers, can be introduced.

[Stalin Ate My Homework]

Thanks for the responses which clear it up to quite a large extent. As El_Granma said it really could be interpreted in many ways. Lenin's state and revolution is probably the best published attempt at explaining the term i've seen so far but if anyone can reccomend a better text on the issue it'd like to know of it.

[Thirsty Crow]

The term originally applies to a process by which actual political content of workers' government gives way to the "administration over things".
In other words, only when global socialism, meaning a global mode of production based on planned production for use (conditioning the abolition of capital as a social relation, as well as money and the most restrictive manifestations of social division of labour) is stabilized accros the globe, there won't be any social basis for the overt political character of government, and thus administration over people, in general, gives way to administration over things (e.g. allocation of useful goods and means of production).

Needless to say, it is not even possible to imagine such a development in social-economic conditions which require that a specific social group, which functions as a manifestation of the social division of labour (social domination of mental labour), monopolizes the organizational functions of the whole society.

But yeah, El Granma correctly notices how the term is pretty unfortunate since it can be understood to mean almost anything (thus the Stalinist conception of the growing role of the state in the process of the withering away of the state or, in other words, the building of communism).

[The Idler]

From spopen


Engels did not say that the state would wither away. The original text
is in German, and he wrote, 'Der Staat wird nicht abgeschafft, er
stirbt ab'. 'stirbt ab' is best translated as 'die out' or 'die off',
which gives a rather different idea than the gradualness implied by
'wither'.

[ZeroNowhere]

^ I believe that he had used the word 'disappear' elsewhere as well.

In any case, this (http://libcom.org/library/karl-marx-state) may help. It's a very good article on Marx's theory of the state, and quite easy to understand.

[Nehru]

^
From the article:

"...the proletariat as a whole would assert its class interests over an alien class (by abolishing private property, expropriating the capitalists and socializing the means of production, disbanding the standing army, etc.)...."

Even a small city would have millions of workers. If they organize, wouldn't that automatically create a 'class' or 'party' that represents their interests? So how can the proletariat as a whole do anything?