State without Politics

[cassiane]

This thought form in my mind while reading posts here. Is it possible for state to have no politics? What do you think will happen to those people living in that state?

[ckaihatsu]

This thought form in my mind while reading posts here. Is it possible for state to have no politics? What do you think will happen to those people living in that state?


From your wording it sounds like you're thinking of a 'state' as being one of the U.S.'s fifty internal states:





11. One of the more or less internally autonomous territorial and political units composing a federation under a sovereign government: the 48 contiguous states of the Union.




http://www.thefreedictionary.com/state


However, revolutionaries invariably use 'the state' to mean this:





8.
a. The supreme public power within a sovereign political entity.
b. The sphere of supreme civil power within a given polity: matters of state.




http://www.thefreedictionary.com/state


So if you're asking if one of the U.S.'s 50 constituent states could conceivably, at some point, not have any politics, I'd say you're beginning with a misinterpretation of what 'the state' consistently means in the context of political theory.

Regardless, though, the more general answer is that politics is endemic to any social situation in which a relatively fixed material infrastructure must be determined in an ongoing way by all stakeholders concerned.





My understanding is that politics and/or democracy is simply what happens when there's *scarcity* involved, and so democracy can be *supplanted* just by ensuring that everything needed is supplied in abundance


I'm of the position that politics will *always* exist, and certainly into a potential post-revolution socialist / communist society, because material decisions will always have to be made over physical infrastructure (public streets, for example) that is used by people in a common, generic way.





7. (Government, Politics & Diplomacy) (functioning as plural)

a. the policy-formulating aspects of government as distinguished from the administrative, or legal
b. the civil functions of government as distinguished from the military




http://www.thefreedictionary.com/politics


A post-capitalist society would, by definition, be determining policy over matters of mass production, on fully-public implements and equipment -- this confers the necessity for a decision-making process of some sort over such, which implies *politics* of some sort.

[exeexe]

The answer is no. Lets just take an example, and remember one example is enough to proof why the answer is no:
Lets say you want to have zero politics on global warming. Ok you do nothing what happens? There will be more global warming. OK lets say you do something, there will be less global warming. So no matter what you do your actions or inactions will have consequences. To say that, that is nonpolitics is like closing your eyes and deny what is right in front of you.

[RedMaterialist]

This thought form in my mind while reading posts here. Is it possible for state to have no politics? What do you think will happen to those people living in that state?

No. A state exists as an armed power of one class for the purpose of imposing force on another class. The relations between these two classes is politics. Only when the last exploiting class, the capitalist class, has been destroyed by the last suppressing class, the working class, will the state and politics disappear. When there is no class left to suppress or exploit, then the state becomes unnecessary and, therefore, politics is unnecessary.

People will no longer live in a "state," rather they will live in a human society.

[ComradeOm]

Is it possible for state to have no politics? What do you think will happen to those people living in that state?Yes. The end of class eliminates the need for politics and ideology (which are products of class divisions). What is left is an administrative machine - more akin to an electricity board than a 'state' as we know it.


People will no longer live in a "state," rather they will live in a human society.Because they currently don't "live in a human society"?

[ckaihatsu]

[T]he end of class eliminates the need for politics and ideology


[9] culture and critique framework

http://s6.postimg.org/z9anap3al/9_culture_and_critique_framework.jpg (http://postimg.org/image/z9anap3al/)





What is left is an administrative machine - more akin to an electricity board than a 'state' as we know it.


Yup.

[RedMaterialist]

Yes. The end of class eliminates the need for politics and ideology (which are products of class divisions). What is left is an administrative machine - more akin to an electricity board than a 'state' as we know it.

Because they currently don't "live in a human society"?

That is correct. We live in an economic system based on exploitation. Even the capitalists admit we no longer live in a "society." Margaret Thatcher once said that society is dead. She was right, she helped kill it.

[cassiane]

From your wording it sounds like you're thinking of a 'state' as being one of the U.S.'s fifty internal states:


No! I'm not thinking of that.

[ComradeOm]

That is correct. We live in an economic system based on exploitation. Even the capitalists admit we no longer live in a "society." Margaret Thatcher once said that society is dead. She was right, she helped kill it.Which leads to yet more questions. Why are you taking your lead from Thatcher when countless others, including plenty of modern Conservatives, would very much disagree with her? Why can society not contain exploitative systems (or why are you conflating society and modes of production)? Yet you say that Thatcher 'helped kill society', so presumably there was 'society' (with accompanying exploitation) before 1979?