Why is the state so bad?

[Jesus Saves Gretzky Scores]

One of my questions on the quest for my political beliefs, is why is the state really bad? One of the biggest ones I can think of is the history of governments, which seems like a good argument. Are there any other really good reasons against it?

[TheGodlessUtopian]

The socialist state or the capitalist state?

[Rooster]

A state arises from a class society. Communist want to get rid of classes. Therefore, communists want to get rid of the state.

[Anarcho-Brocialist]

The state, even if it bears the adjective workersis looked down upon because the workers no longer control the production, the state does. In Capitalism, the state works for those who possess clout, by protecting property rights and decree laws in favor of the bourgeoisie, imperialism, and it doesn't operate for the whole of society.

[Jesus Saves Gretzky Scores]

A state arises from a class society. Communist want to get rid of classes. Therefore, communists want to get rid of the state.

Thanks, but can you elaborate a little bit more on why?

[Jesus Saves Gretzky Scores]

The state, even if it bears the adjective workersis looked down upon because the workers no longer control the production, the state does. In Capitalism, the state works for those who possess clout, by protecting property rights and decree laws in favor of the bourgeoisie, imperialism, and it doesn't operate for the whole of society.

What did you mean in the first sentence?

[Jesus Saves Gretzky Scores]

The socialist state or the capitalist state?

Both, I suppose. I was being general, but I didn't think about how it could be different in two different societies.

[Rooster]

Thanks, but can you elaborate a little bit more on why?

Classes come about through the relation to production. They evolve, strengthen and disappear through changes in productive forces and revolution, etc with a class or classes coming to the top and dominating society. Now we are in a position where only two classes remain and with the next revolution, no classes should remain. This means that there would be no other classes for a class to dominate and hence no need for a state.

[Raúl Duke]

It depends on how you define the state...

Sometimes, there's a bit of semantics at play.

Usually, anarchists, when referring to "the state," they're referring to a societal "apparatus" that allows for an elite-class political rule. Whether it's the capitalist state, which despite it's democratic pretensions is rigged in usually favor of the rule of the bourgeoisie or the so-called socialist one, in which an alleged, usually self-described "vanguard" of the working class is in control. Assuming that the vanguard is really made up of members of the working class (instead of, say, intellectuals/intelligentsia/whatever), the state in its very nature by being framed in a way that grants unequal political power to that vanguard in relation to the rest of the working class will only lead to the working-class vanguard's corruption towards a different kind of elite due to the material conditions inherent by having such unequal political power position in society (especially when said vanguard controlled "worker's state" also controls the means of production, like the case of the state-socialist Soviet bloc).

However, sometimes the term state is used differently. Some Marxists have stated similar kinds of social organization that anarcho-communists support and yet still call it a "state." It's always good to ask further elaboration when people talk about the state (like what is meant by "worker's state) because it can mean many things to different people.

[A Marxist Historian]

Thanks, but can you elaborate a little bit more on why?

What is the state? Essentially, it's an armed body of men (these days sometimes women), whose task is to protect the position and rule of the dominant class in society. Police, prisons, the army. Everything else in the state is just the people who decide how the nitty-gritty of the state, the people carrying guns, should do that.

So, if you are a socialist and want to see the workers not the capitalists rule, a workers state is a good thing and any other kind of a state is a bad thing. Pretty self-explanatory once you understand what the state really is.

-M.H.-

[Misanthrope]

It is an institution which has a monopoly on the justified use of force, funded by taxation which is, in essence, theft. The state is a violent agent of bourgeois interests. you could go on.. and on..

[Jesus Saves Gretzky Scores]

It depends on how you define the state...

Sometimes, there's a bit of semantics at play.

Usually, anarchists, when referring to "the state," they're referring to a societal "apparatus" that allows for an elite-class political rule. Whether it's the capitalist state, which despite it's democratic pretensions is rigged in usually favor of the rule of the bourgeoisie or the so-called socialist one, in which an alleged, usually self-described "vanguard" of the working class is in control. Assuming that the vanguard is really made up of members of the working class (instead of, say, intellectuals/intelligentsia/whatever), the state in its very nature by being framed in a way that grants unequal political power to that vanguard in relation to the rest of the working class will only lead to the working-class vanguard's corruption towards a different kind of elite due to the material conditions inherent by having such unequal political power position in society (especially when said vanguard controlled "worker's state" also controls the means of production, like the case of the state-socialist Soviet bloc).

However, sometimes the term state is used differently. Some Marxists have stated similar kinds of social organization that anarcho-communists support and yet still call it a "state." It's always good to ask further elaboration when people talk about the state (like what is meant by "worker's state) because it can mean many things to different people.

I'm still in the learning phase, as you can see, so I wasn't sure about so many versions. Thanks!

[Jesus Saves Gretzky Scores]

I'm rewatching a documentary on North Korea. Boy is this one reason to hate the state.

[Raúl Duke]

Usually, I don't focus on the state much.

I always ask "Who controls the means of production?"
In the Marxist conception, the state is super-structural (it arises out of the relations of production, the mode of production). What matters, in the end, is who controls the economy.

Whether you want to call it a state or not, the common goal of all revolutionary leftists is that the working class is in control of the means of production. The main difference between leftists is what kind of social organization should society have to establish and maintain working class control of the means of production. To put these differences in simplistic terms, Marxists-Leninists contend that the anarchist's forms of social organization are too weak or inadequate to sustain working class control (whether from imperialists, latent "counter-revolutionaries," etc). Anarchists contend that Leninist forms of social organizations do not give power to the working class but instead creates a new elite to rule over the working class through the state and state-controlled economy. This is the main controversy, although there are other points of differences between leftists.

[Lolumad273]

I believe ProvenSocialist hit the nail on the head.

Imagine if McDonald's workers decided to take the means of production from their employers. They'd be labeled terrorists and the police would haul them off in the most brutal way possible. The State is designed to enforce property rights. They allow wages, but throw "robbers" in jail for taking back what has been stolen from them.

[theblackmask]

The main reason the state is bad is because it is coercive....and essentially a prison. There has never been a state that is willing to let people leave.

"The nation-state is not a social contract between the governed and the governors; it is a prison in which the governed are, and always were, forced by laws, born of religion, to obey on pain of violence."

[#FF0000]

Basically, the state in any class society is there to serve the interests of the ruling class. It's, of course, not as simple as straight-up collusion. There's a lot of give-and-take, obviously, as the state acts like an arbiter between labor and capital to keep the show running, you know?

Plus yeah, all of history makes a good case against groups with power and armies.

[Ilya rá Ilúvë]

There is a very simple way of proving why the state is unnecessary. Laws are broken into four basic categories; laws protecting private property, laws protecting the government, essential social maxims, and others. Obviously, the first group would collapse upon the introduction of communism. The second one does not show why we need the state at all, it merely propagates it. It does, however, show an argument against the state. Something that can imprison and kill people who disagree with it? Third, things such as laws against murder, were in place and working literally hundreds of thousands of years before written law. This is coupled with the fact that most such crimes are committed for reasons that would be obsolete in a communist society. Kropotkin frequently tells how people living in the Russian countryside went whole generations without encountering a written law or police man, and yet, they weren't killing each other. They understood they would become an outcast if they committed these social transgressions, and refrained. Lastly, the 'other' laws, such as traffic rules and other such things, can be easily regulated by a combination the committees who would produce such things and the overarching morality of free communism, that of basic mutual aid.
For more information, I recommend, well, all of Kropotkin's pamphlets really, but "Law and Authority" most of all, as it is most relevant.
Hope some of this helps! :D

[Jesus Saves Gretzky Scores]

I believe ProvenSocialist hit the nail on the head.

Imagine if McDonald's workers decided to take the means of production from their employers. They'd be labeled terrorists and the police would haul them off in the most brutal way possible. The State is designed to enforce property rights. They allow wages, but throw "robbers" in jail for taking back what has been stolen from them.

Damn, that was a good way to put it. Thanks!

[Magón]

It's a racket, among other things people have said here. One clear indication it's a racket, among others, is voting for those who "represent" you on this or that agenda. No matter who you vote for in the State, you lose because they never represented you in the first place.

[Lolumad273]

No problem TheMza! Glad I could help

[Ostrinski]

The state is neither holy nor base. It just is. The function of the state as an organ of the government in any society is relative to the nature of class struggle within it. So it can only exist in relation to the class antagonisms that necessitate its existence, as if you look at the history of human civilization, you see that the state comes into being only at that point where productive methods have developed enough to facilitate the creation of a surplus and by extension facilitate the divergence of humans into different social roles and labor division. These are the conditions that split humans into classes and create the need for a state.

So in short, where there are multiple classes there is class antagonism and therefore a state to harbor the interests of the ruling class.

The purest expression of class interest is the conquest of political power (the wielding of state power).