State vs Collective control

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

The thread on Derrick Jensen in S&E got me thinking; what are the essential differences, if any, between collective control of the means of production by the workers, and the ultra-democratic use of State structures by proletarians as an organ of class rule?

I suppose one difference could be that a proletarian State still exists in a class society (at least on a global scale, assuming uneven sociopolitical progression in geographical terms), only with the proletariat in control. But this seems a little shallow, and apparently only applies in the situation where classlessness does not apply to the entire world.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that when proletarians (or in the case of a global classless society, everyone) are in effective control of how production is organised, what laws to make and enforce (I'm assuming that things like murder will still be prohibited and transgressors punished/rehabilitated, which looks and smells a lot like Law to me), and so on and so forth, how is that materially different from a State of some kind?

[Jimmie Higgins]

Well in some ways I don't think there is a meaningful difference. For Marxists who want true worker's power and call the organization of this after a revolution "a state" and anarchists who want worker's power but say it will be through "associations" or "networks" it's largely a semantic argument with some ideological differences playing into the argument but materially, these things wouldn't essentially be that different.

I guess the sort of distinction to me is that the ultra-democratic vehicle of workers weather it calls itself a state or not, implies that in society there is still some kind of difference in relations in the population that needs to be negotiated. The need to protect or expand working class hegemony implies that there is some kind of possible (negative) alternative - some other potential class relations that society could be organized around. So worker's creating ways to protect their power is "a state" in my view, but as this becomes less of an issue, then these structures of working class rule are no longer needed.

Lenin talked about winning Democracy and then "overcoming Democracy" by which he meant the end of classes and the need of specifically exerting the rule of one class over society. With abundance and no classes, democracy might be used when needed or in a ad-hoc way ("all those who want to do this, say so") but most things could just be done in a universal and rational way.

One thing I've always wondered about and I don't know if there's anything written about it is the need, during the initial transformation of society by workers, for democracy not just to ensure working class rule over the rest of society, but to negotiate and prioritize things within the class. I think taking for granted that everyone is on the same page about supporting worker's power after a revolution, there will still be inter-class disagreements about how to achieve the transition and how to do housing or infrastructure or where to prioritize production and so on. I think Trotsky talked about workers creating their political parties based around these various issues. But this too would probably become less and less of an issue as more abundance is reached and socialist-relations are normalized: you want these kinds of communities over here while others want different kinds of communities over there... well let's build both because we have the ability and means to do so.