"the state withers away"

[Monty Cantsin]

"The proletariat seizes from state power and turns the means of production into state property to begin with. But thereby it abolishes itself as the proletariat, abolishes all class distinctions and class antagonisms, and abolishes also the state as state. Society thus far, operating amid class antagonisms, needed the state, that is, an organization of the particular exploiting class, for the maintenance of its external conditions of production, and, therefore, especially, for the purpose of forcibly keeping the exploited class in the conditions of oppression determined by the given mode of production (slavery, serfdom or bondage, wage-labor). The state was the official representative of society as a whole, its concentration in a visible corporation. But it was this only insofar as it was the state of that class which itself represented, for its own time, society as a whole: in ancient times, the state of slave-owning citizens; in the Middle Ages, of the feudal nobility; in our own time, of the bourgeoisie. When at last it becomes the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself unnecessary. As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection, as soon as class rule, and the individual struggle for existence based upon the present anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from this struggle, are removed, nothing more remains to be held in subjection — nothing necessitating a special coercive force, a state. The first act by 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 also its last independent act as a state. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies down of itself. The government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The state is not 'abolished'. It withers away. This gives the measure of the value of the phrase 'a free people's state', both as to its justifiable use for a long time from an agitational point of view, and as to its ultimate scientific insufficiency; and also of the so-called anarchists' demand that the state be abolished overnight." for Herr Eugen Duhring's Revolution in Science [Anti-Duhring], pp.301-03, third German edition.


i just wont to know, to most of you what does this argument mean? agree/ disagree?

[Monty Cantsin]

i just thought i should put forth a better question.
"The proletariat seizes from state power and turns the means of production into state property to begin with. But thereby it abolishes itself as the proletariat, abolishes all class distinctions and class antagonisms, and abolishes also the state as state"

After this stage is complete why then would you want the “state” or semi sate to “wither away”?

[redstar2000]

State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies down of itself.

This did not seem unreasonable in the 19th century...it was known in both medicine and biology that organs that "lose their function" for one reason or another, "wither away" or "atrophy".

Where I think Marx and Engels "missed the boat" on this one is that they failed to take into account the effect state power would have on the people who actually wielded it.

Regardless of your "good intentions", having political and economic power over others is seductive in and of itself...both in material and in psychological terms. Surrounded by people who try to gain your favor, you almost inevitably begin to succumb to flattery...to believe the "larger than life" picture that people paint of you.

In fact, your own "picture of the world" grows distorted as time passes; no one wants to be the one to tell you an "unpleasant truth"...while the "pleasing lie" is on everyone's lips.

Early successes--such as they are--serve to enhance your power without any effort on your part. People "spontaneously" expect you to decide...and to make the right decision. When you become sufficiently powerful, every decision that you make is "right"...even when it's wrong.

What you initially accepted as a "public trust" becomes, over time, an absolute right..."no one" could truly replace you or offer a reasonable alternative to your personal rule. You've become "a man of the ages" and "history's darling".

All of your underlings in the new state apparatus imitate this, of course, though on a greatly diminished scale.

Over time, a "new class" rises, beginning as "public servants" and ending as "public masters". A littler while later, they drop the pretenses and openly restore capitalism.

Consequently, rational communists have concluded that after the bourgeois state apparatus has been destroyed, no new state apparatus must be allowed to "take root". Revolutionary society must have no "political center of gravity"...no place where a new ruling class could begin to form. There will certainly be some people who will "want" to rise "to the top"...but there will be no "top" for them to rise to.

That seems to be a necessary precaution.

http://anarchist-action.org/forums/images/smiles/redstar.gif

The RedStar2000 Papers (http://www.anarchist-action.org/marxists/redstar2000/)
A site about communist ideas

[Valkyrie]

"The idea touted by Leninists was that the State would fade away after years of the harshest dictatorship -- originally claimed to be only as much as was necessary to save the infant Soviet Republic but which lasted for seventy years until the people got fed up with it. All that faded away was people rash enough to want to go forward to free socialism. The prospect of 'withering away of the State' after years of strengthening it is illogical. Leninists justify this by saying the State is only that part of the State apparatus which favours the capitalist class by suppressing the working class. This might fade away (though it did not do so in the years of State Communism). What cannot fade away is the rest of the State apparatus, unless the State is destroyed root and branch. " Albert Meltzer, Anarchism For And Against. http://www.spunk.org/library/writers/meltz...r/sp001500.html (http://www.spunk.org/library/writers/meltzer/sp001500.html)


"The prospect of withering away of the State after years of strenghtening it is illogical."

This statement is true, and this is where the distrust comes in. Nothing can "wither away" when it is at the same time being built-up and deified.