How do you describe the state?

[flaming bolshevik]

This is a stupid question I know but how do you describe the state?

[Sinister Intents]

This is a stupid question I know but how do you describe the state?

There are no stupid questions ;)

The state is an organ of class rule simply put. The state suppresses and oppresses a producing class (the proletariat). A good reading on the state is: The State: It's historic role. (http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-the-state-its-historic-role)

[Brotto Rühle]

A much better read would be David Adam's Karl Marx and The State (https://libcom.org/library/karl-marx-state).

[Sinister Intents]

A much better read would be David Adam's Karl Marx and The State (https://libcom.org/library/karl-marx-state).

What makes it better? I've not read it, so I probably will

[Brotto Rühle]

What makes it better? I've not read it, so I probably will
The fact that it isn't idealist drivel.

[Sinister Intents]

The fact that it isn't idealist drivel.

How? How is Kropotkin idealist in that piece of literature? I've read it twice. This whole idealist thing is more just a throw around word, you're idealist as well.

[Brutus]

There are no stupid questions ;)

The state is an organ of class rule simply put. The state suppresses and oppresses a producing class (the proletariat). A good reading on the state is: The State: It's historic role. (http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-the-state-its-historic-role)

No. Scientific communism- opposed to your anarchist communism- sees the state as the organisation of the ruling class, an instrument of oppression and violence. The ruling class can also be the producing class, so your statement that "The state suppresses and oppresses a producing class" is false. One cannot abolish the state without abolishing the social relations that make a state necessary. The state is not an object that can just be gotten rid of, but a relationship between social classes- the class that rules and the class that is ruled. In order to abolish the state, one must abolish classes. This is ignored by you anarchists who reject the proletarian dictatorship, screaming outcries about centralisation, authoritarianism and the state.

[RedMaterialist]

An armed force for the suppression of a specific class of people. As in, the capitalist state suppresses the working class; the dictatorship of the proletariat suppresses the capitalist class. With this difference: once the capitalist class is suppressed out of existence then class society will end and, with the end of class suppression, the state will wither away and die.

[Sabot Cat]

No. Scientific communism- opposed to your anarchist communism- sees the state as the organisation of the ruling class, an instrument of oppression and violence. The ruling class can also be the producing class, so your statement that "The state suppresses and oppresses a producing class" is false. One cannot abolish the state without abolishing the social relations that make a state necessary. The state is not an object that can just be gotten rid of, but a relationship between social classes- the class that rules and the class that is ruled. In order to abolish the state, one must abolish classes.

Yes, because every ostensibly proletarian dictatorship in history has done this so well. :rolleyes:

If your communism is so "scientific", surely you can demonstrate the point that we need the state to abolish classes? Why not abolish both, at once? And is there an observable instances of the state not being used to re-establish class relations following a proletarian revolution in all of history? I think you're forgetting that once people attain power, they loathe to give it up, and are not likely to abolish the state they control or let it die.

Now, I humbly withdrawal all of the critiques herein if by "state" you mean "decentralized hub for working class interests in their respective revolutionary unions and democratized workplaces" and not something like the Soviet Union or the People's Republic of China.

[Rosso]

The state is just an accepted idea by a majority of people. Its existence relays on the fact that the most people accept the idea without questioning it's purposes. In the end, the state is just a structure that in any case will defense the capitalist class with their exploiting corporations. With their education system they keep the masses stupid with claims that the state exist to guarantee my safety and freedom… That, we see when the cops are hitting people who come up for their rights.

Therefore the state has to be destroyed as soon as possible. The revolution is bound to fail when people immediately rebuild new hierarchies when they just destroyed the old ones. We have seen what happened in Russia. The revolution only gave birth to a new Tsar empire, only this time it was a 'red' one. Anarchist attempts on the contrary showed more success (Free zone Ukraine and parts of Spain during the Civil War).

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Yes, because every ostensibly proletarian dictatorship in history has done this so well. :rolleyes:

If your communism is so "scientific", surely you can demonstrate the point that we need the state to abolish classes? Why not abolish both, at once? And is there an observable instances of the state not being used to re-establish class relations following a proletarian revolution in all of history? I think you're forgetting that once people attain power, they loathe to give it up, and are not likely to abolish the state they control or let it die.

I think you're forgetting that we Marxists do not share this delusion that "power corrupts", we do not view some disembodied "power" as the chief determinant of history but the relations of production. "Power" changes as the class basis of society changes, and by raising it to the level of a timeless principle you have given up materialism.

What does it mean to abolish classes? The disappearance of class society requires the global socialisation of the means of production, which in turn can only happen through class violence of the proletariat organised as a ruling class, of which the state is the supreme expression. To claim otherwise is to claim that either the revolution can occur through peaceful means, which is horrifyingly naive, or that the state is not an expression of class dominance, which makes the state some supra-class bogeyman and makes the history of state forms completely incomprehensible. Why was a break between the apparatus of feudal France and bourgeois France necessary but not one between the various French republics and empires?

[exeexe]

A state is an organization who can exercise its political will within a bordered geographical area on the population living there through violent means. The state is run by at least one leader and gets its resources from robbing the population living there and/or by putting taxes on import/export trading activities, but in return the state protects the population from outside dangers.

In most cases the class of leaders are not strong enough to maintain their privileged position alone against the population and are therefore forced to hand out some privilege to parts of the population to achieve enough power to subdue the rest of the population. When these handing out of priveleges are managed incorrectly revolutions emerges. In a capitalist society the part of the population who benefits from handed out privilege by the state are the capitalists. The fact that revolutions occur when this is not managed correctly underline that the class of leaders and the class of people are opposing each other.

[Sabot Cat]

I think you're forgetting that we Marxists do not share this delusion that "power corrupts",

I think there are plenty of historical instances of people letting power get to their heads for this not to be considered a 'delusion'.


we do not view some disembodied "power" as the chief determinant of history but the relations of production. "Power" changes as the class basis of society changes, and by raising it to the level of a timeless principle you have given up materialism.


How have I risen it 'to the level of timeliness principle', as it were? I'll be more blunt then in addressing this point: the Bolsheviks were able to re-establish class relations because they possessed the military and industrial supplies necessary to ruthlessly crush their opposition and exploit the Russian proletariat, as in most cases wherein a vanguard seizes the armed force of a state.


What does it mean to abolish classes? The disappearance of class society requires the global socialisation of the means of production, which in turn can only happen through class violence of the proletariat organised as a ruling class, of which the state is the supreme expression.

I disagree; I don't see why it is a material necessity for the proletariat to organize themselves in the form of a state. As long as they have the physical supplies and spaces needed to protect against any further exploitation, whether it be through revolutionary unions or councils or what have you, it should be enough for a materialist.



To claim otherwise is to claim that either the revolution can occur through peaceful means, which is horrifyingly naive,

This is a false dichotomy. The proletariat does not have to form a state in order to prosecute a violent revolution.

Also, obligatory Karl Marx quote: “You know that the institutions, mores, and traditions of various countries must be taken into consideration, and we do not deny that there are countries — such as America, England, and if I were more familiar with your institutions, I would perhaps also add Holland — where the workers can attain their goal by peaceful means.”



or that the state is not an expression of class dominance, which makes the state some supra-class bogeyman and makes the history of state forms completely incomprehensible. Why was a break between the apparatus of feudal France and bourgeois France necessary but not one between the various French republics and empires?

The state is not just an expression of any class dominance: it's the symbolic manifestation of a certain group having exclusive control of the material necessary to force other people to do things, even at a numerical disadvantage. That is to say, the state is inherently bourgeois, because it requires a small group [government officials] having effective control of the means of production through their superior force. Any effort to make the state proletarian will fail, and has failed, for this very reason.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I think there are plenty of historical instances of people letting power get to their heads for this not to be considered a 'delusion'.

Then surely you can cite these "instances of people letting power get to their heads".


How have I risen it 'to the level of timeliness principle', as it were? I'll be more blunt then in addressing this point: the Bolsheviks were able to re-establish class relations because they possessed the military and industrial supplies necessary to ruthlessly crush their opposition and exploit the Russian proletariat, as in most cases wherein a vanguard seizes the armed force of a state.

The Bolsheviks couldn't re-establish class relations because these were never dis-established. Class is not something that can be abolished "in one country". Apparently you meant to say that the Bolsheviks re-established bourgeois rule - well, who were the bourgeoisie? What means of production did they own?

And what opposition did the Bolsheviks crush? Chaikovsky, Kolchak, Zhordania and so on? Good for them. It would have been better if they had done so sooner.


I disagree; I don't see why it is a material necessity for the proletariat to organize themselves in the form of a state. As long as they have the physical supplies and spaces needed to protect against any further exploitation, whether it be through revolutionary unions or councils or what have you, it should be enough for a materialist.

Wait, wait, wait, do you seriously mean to say that exploitation can be abolished in one locale? If so, the problem is more severe than I thought. The rest of the quoted paragraph is mostly composed of slogans - revolutionary unions revolutionary councils workers' control decentralised something something, alright, but how are these organs supposed to suppress the counterrevolution without central coordination and the formation of a special organ of class rule?


This is a false dichotomy. The proletariat does not have to form a state in order to prosecute a violent revolution.

Also, obligatory Karl Marx quote: “You know that the institutions, mores, and traditions of various countries must be taken into consideration, and we do not deny that there are countries — such as America, England, and if I were more familiar with your institutions, I would perhaps also add Holland — where the workers can attain their goal by peaceful means.”

(1) Marx was speaking in the name of the IWA, not in his own name; (2) he was talking about democratic demands; (3) Marx was not infallible; (4) Marx has been dead for over a century now, and anyone who calls for a peaceful revolution in light of the experience of Germany is either a hopeless romantic fool or something more sinister.


The state is not just an expression of any class dominance: it's the symbolic manifestation of a certain group having exclusive control of the material necessary to force other people to do things, even at a numerical disadvantage. That is to say, the state is inherently bourgeois, because it requires a small group [government officials] having effective control of the means of production through their superior force. Any effort to make the state proletarian will fail, and has failed, for this very reason.

What does it mean to say that the state is a "symbolic manifestation" of "a certain group having... control of the material necessary to force other people to do things"? Not to mention that the proletariat is not necessarily a numeric majority in any given society.

[Sabot Cat]

Then surely you can cite these "instances of people letting power get to their heads".

Easily identifiable examples for socialist revolutions: Chairman Mao or Secretary Stalin; for bourgeois ones, there's Lord Protector Cromwell and Emperor Napoleon. This is not the controvertible premise that you're acting like it is.


The Bolsheviks couldn't re-establish class relations because these were never dis-established. Class is not something that can be abolished "in one country". Apparently you meant to say that the Bolsheviks re-established bourgeois rule - well, who were the bourgeoisie? What means of production did they own?

And what opposition did the Bolsheviks crush? Chaikovsky, Kolchak, Zhordania and so on? Good for them. It would have been better if they had done so sooner.

I'm speaking of the anarchist and left-communist movements they curbed.


Wait, wait, wait, do you seriously mean to say that exploitation can be abolished in one locale? If so, the problem is more severe than I thought.

Do you seriously mean to suggest that exploitation can be ended all over the world, all at once? That's a more ridiculous premise; we have to start somewhere, and exploitation can at least be mitigated in one locale before expanding in a wave.


The rest of the quoted paragraph is mostly composed of slogans - revolutionary unions revolutionary councils workers' control decentralised something something, alright, but how are these organs supposed to suppress the counterrevolution without central coordination and the formation of a special organ of class rule?


They can suppress counterrevolution through solidarity with their comrades and maintenance of their control over the means of production; they can have coordination without creating a state.


(1) Marx was speaking in the name of the IWA, not in his own name; (2) he was talking about democratic demands; (3) Marx was not infallible; (4) Marx has been dead for over a century now, and anyone who calls for a peaceful revolution in light of the experience of Germany is either a hopeless romantic fool or something more sinister.


I agree with all points, I just wanted to note that there is range for differing opinions on that point.


What does it mean to say that the state is a "symbolic manifestation" of "a certain group having... control of the material necessary to force other people to do things"?

Just what it states.


Not to mention that the proletariat is not necessarily a numeric majority in any given society.

They often are, but you're not grasping the point here.

[Thirsty Crow]

I think you're forgetting that we Marxists do not share this delusion that "power corrupts", we do not view some disembodied "power" as the chief determinant of history but the relations of production. "Power" changes as the class basis of society changes, and by raising it to the level of a timeless principle you have given up materialism.

You can't disconnect power dynamics from the relations of production as they form a whole, so to speak, in social life. When you say that relations of production are the main determinant of history you're effectively saying that power dynamics in production are such a thing.

And it seems intuitively contra materialism as an explanatory framework to claim that a change in the social position and function cannot possibly alter the beliefs and mental states of individuals and/or groups in general. Of course that you're right insofar as the standard narrative about absolute power and absolute corruption are 1) moral arguments in themselves and 2) based on an untenable generalization, but you're following Lenin it would seem in bending the stick way too far.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Easily identifiable examples for socialist revolutions: Chairman Mao or Secretary Stalin; for bourgeois ones, there's Lord Protector Cromwell and Emperor Napoleon. This is not the controvertible premise that you're acting like it is.

So, how did power (and note that talking about "power" in the abstract is already a bit naff) "go to the head" of Mao, or Stalin, or any of the people you've listed?


I'm speaking of the anarchist and left-communist movements they curbed.

What "left-communist movements"? The only "Left Communists" in Bolshevik Russia were the Kommunist group, consisting of Bukharin, Smirnov and others - all members of the Bolshevik party. Not to mention that the Bolsheviks cooperated with urban anarchists like Zheleznyak - often against rural, peasant-based anarchists like Makhno.


Do you seriously mean to suggest that exploitation can be ended all over the world, all at once? That's a more ridiculous premise; we have to start somewhere, and exploitation can at least be mitigated in one locale before expanding in a wave.

No, I never meant to suggest that. But as long as capitalism as a global system exists, exploitation has not been abolished, and can't be abolished, and "mitigation" happens under capitalism as well.


They can suppress counterrevolution through solidarity with their comrades and maintenance of their control over the means of production; they can have coordination without creating a state.

How do you suppress counterrevolution "through solidarity"? That's a vague slogan, not a programme. To us Leninists the answer is clear - you have the counterrevolutionaries shot. But that requires a state.

Also, what do you mean by "their control over the means of production"?


I agree with all points, I just wanted to note that there is range for differing opinions on that point.

Sure, but not every opinion is worthwhile. It is obvious that peaceful roads "to socialism" haven't worked, won't work, and can't work.


Just what it states.

How is the state "a symbol"?


They often are, but you're not grasping the point here.

They rarely are, but in any case - what was the point? That the state is a minority dictatorship? How does that follow?


You can't disconnect power dynamics from the relations of production as they form a whole, so to speak, in social life. When you say that relations of production are the main determinant of history you're effectively saying that power dynamics in production are such a thing.

And it seems intuitively contra materialism as an explanatory framework to claim that a change in the social position and function cannot possibly alter the beliefs and mental states of individuals and/or groups in general. Of course that you're right insofar as the standard narrative about absolute power and absolute corruption are 1) moral arguments in themselves and 2) based on an untenable generalization, but you're following Lenin it would seem in bending the stick way too far.

Sure, but note that I was talking about "disembodied 'power'", "power" without qualifications, which applies equally to the relations of power between the bourgeoisie and their labourers (which are, I think, secondary to the functional roles of the same in the production process), and to all sorts of "power", from the "power" of the Emperor of the French and the "power" of the parent over children etc.

[ckaihatsu]

Why not abolish both [class and state], at once?


A.s.a.p.

[Sabot Cat]

So, how did power (and note that talking about "power" in the abstract is already a bit naff) "go to the head" of Mao, or Stalin, or any of the people you've listed?

They took a movement about liberating the proletariat, or their nation's people, and turned it into an instrument for ultimate self-advancement.


What "left-communist movements"? The only "Left Communists" in Bolshevik Russia were the Kommunist group, consisting of Bukharin, Smirnov and others - all members of the Bolshevik party. Not to mention that the Bolsheviks cooperated with urban anarchists like Zheleznyak - often against rural, peasant-based anarchists like Makhno.

I refer to anarchists like Makhno and the sailors who prosecuted the Kronstadt rebellion.


No, I never meant to suggest that. But as long as capitalism as a global system exists, exploitation has not been abolished, and can't be abolished, and "mitigation" happens under capitalism as well.


I don't disagree with you that proletarian liberation needs to be global, but there's a definite difference between workers having control of the means of production in a certain locale and not.


How do you suppress counterrevolution "through solidarity"? That's a vague slogan, not a programme. To us Leninists the answer is clear - you have the counterrevolutionaries shot. But that requires a state.


Is "a state" the same as "a gun" to you? Counterrevolutionaries can be shot just fine without a government, but here's the thing: who decides who is a counterrevolutionary and who isn't? Can I define it as Ukrainians? Ethnic Vietnamese and Chinese? Can it be anyone I happen to disagree with? Anyone I dislike?


Also, what do you mean by "their control over the means of production"?


Again, just what it states.


Sure, but not every opinion is worthwhile. It is obvious that peaceful roads "to socialism" haven't worked, won't work, and can't work.

I don't think workers should fire the first shot, though. Just the last.


How is the state "a symbol"?


It is the symbolic representation of class relations between government officials and others, or those class relations themselves.


They rarely are, but in any case - what was the point? That the state is a minority dictatorship? How does that follow?

How are they 'rarely are'? How do you define it?

Furthermore, my point is that the state is not and cannot be a vehicle for working class interests, simply because of how it operates.

[Thirsty Crow]

What "left-communist movements"? The only "Left Communists" in Bolshevik Russia were the Kommunist group, consisting of Bukharin, Smirnov and others - all members of the Bolshevik party. Not to mention that the Bolsheviks cooperated with urban anarchists like Zheleznyak - often against rural, peasant-based anarchists like Makhno.

The Workers' Group of the Communist Party led by Miasnikov, for instance, who received such kind words from Trotsky, along the lines of being a morbid deviation.

[ckaihatsu]

[W]ho decides who is a counterrevolutionary and who isn't? Can I define it as Ukrainians? Ethnic Vietnamese and Chinese? Can it be anyone I happen to disagree with? Anyone I dislike?


This is why there needs to be a state, it would seem....

[Ele'ill]

a state is counterrevolutionary but who decides that, oh yeah a state does

[ckaihatsu]

a state is counterrevolutionary but who decides that, oh yeah a state does


You're conflating two different kinds of states here.

Your statement *should* read:





a [bourgeois] state is counterrevolutionary but who decides that. oh yeah a [workers] state does


Whether this would satisfy the anarchist position is another matter, of course....

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

The Workers' Group of the Communist Party led by Miasnikov, for instance, who received such kind words from Trotsky, along the lines of being a morbid deviation.

Miasnikov's group was founded much later, and to be honest I don't think they can be called "left communist" in any sense - much less so than the decists for example (and the decists were far from left communism).

Trotsky was furious because Miasnikov's work was quoted in the rags of Chernov and Martov; he would later refuse all cooperation with Ciliga because Ciliga wrote for Dan, so you can't fault him for being inconsistent.


They took a movement about liberating the proletariat, or their nation's people, and turned it into an instrument for ultimate self-advancement.

And, just as I suspected, the Great Man theory of history is replaced by the Evil Man theory of history, as if every historical figure acted for their personal advancement. Doubtlessly some did - the good Emperor of the French for example. But this was no case of "power corrupting", since the president and emperor-to-be Bonaparte came to power on the basis of a political programme that called for a populist personal dictatorship. But how did Stalin, Cromwell or Mao "advance themselves"? You are endowing statesmen with an almost heroic ability to orchestrate events in their favour, instead of being carried along by the stream of events.


I refer to anarchists like Makhno and the sailors who prosecuted the Kronstadt rebellion.

Makhno, at least, was an anarchist, although his conflict with the Bolsheviks was due to his disruption of the food dictatorship in the Ukraine, and some of the Red Army commanders that fought against him were themselves anarchists.

The mutineers were mainly Esers, populist "socialists" who had nothing to do with either anarchism or left communism. In any case, it was an armed mutiny, what would you have had the Bolsheviks do, let a key fortress, near White Finland, fall into the hands of hostile elements?


I don't disagree with you that proletarian liberation needs to be global, but there's a definite difference between workers having control of the means of production in a certain locale and not.

But, again, this raises the question of what "workers' control" means to you, because as I recall it you equate workers' control and even socialism with co-operatives and similar nonsense, which is not what I'm talking about.


Is "a state" the same as "a gun" to you? Counterrevolutionaries can be shot just fine without a government, but here's the thing: who decides who is a counterrevolutionary and who isn't? Can I define it as Ukrainians? Ethnic Vietnamese and Chinese? Can it be anyone I happen to disagree with? Anyone I dislike?

Individual counterrevolutionaries can be shot just fine without the state. To organise military expeditions, the seizure and execution of hostages, requisition, rationing, a food dictatorship and so on - all of this requires a state, in plain proletarian language.


I don't think workers should fire the first shot, though. Just the last.

Why not, is the lord God going to be angry with us? That's ridiculous - you're outright advocating that we allow the enemy to fire the first shot! And why? So that we appear blameless? Revolutions are not the time for moral wankery. If the Bolsheviks had, upon seizing power, shot the ministers of the Provisional Government, whatever junkers, Cossacks and black-hundreds they could find, as well as people like Dan, Chaikovsky, Gots and Avksentiyev, the civil war might have lasted a fraction of what it lasted.


It is the symbolic representation of class relations between government officials and others, or those class relations themselves.

I have no idea what you're talking about, and I have the impression that you don't, either. A state is a "symbolic representation of class relations between government officials and others"? What? What class are "government officials"? How is a state a "symbolic representation"? States are organs of class society, special bodies of armed men and their administrative organs, overseeing some form of class rule. I have no idea what this state-symbol is supposed to be, but it doesn't seem like anything sensible.


How are they 'rarely are'? How do you define it?

"It"? The proletariat? The proletariat is the class of wage-labourers, who participate in the process of production, do not own the means of production, are forced to sell their labour, and do not participate in the exploitation of other workers to a significant degree. So, not cops, not the petite bourgeoisie, managers, foremen and so on.


Furthermore, my point is that the state is not and cannot be a vehicle for working class interests, simply because of how it operates.

This was simply asserted.

[Sinister Intents]

This is why there needs to be a state, it would seem....

Worker's organizations can determine who is counterrevolutionary and who isn't, and keep checks and balances to ensure no one is calling someone they don't like counterrevolutionary. To elaborate they can ensure abuses are not made.


a state is counterrevolutionary but who decides that, oh yeah a state does

Exactly.


You're conflating two different kinds of states here.

Your statement *should* read:





Whether this would satisfy the anarchist position is another matter, of course....

Yeah I can agree, but it wouldn't be a state, it'd be freely associating organizations that give powers to the proletarians.

[ckaihatsu]

Worker's organizations can determine who is counterrevolutionary and who isn't, and keep checks and balances to ensure no one is calling someone they don't like counterrevolutionary.


I swear I see a *real* fuzzy line -- a severely blurred vertical line -- between the two here, 'workers organizations' and 'a workers state'. I guess it then boils down to decentralized-vs.-centralized, and I know where I am on that one.





Yeah I can agree, but it wouldn't be a state, it'd be freely associating organizations that give powers to the proletarians.


A 'shadow state', basically, then.... Very 'Fight Club'....

[Sinister Intents]

I swear I see a *real* fuzzy line -- a severely blurred vertical line -- between the two here, 'workers organizations' and 'a workers state'. I guess it then boils down to decentralized-vs.-centralized, and I know where I am on that one.

Very decentralized! Look what centralism has lead to in the past with the Soviet Union and China. A centralized form of governing is inherently top-down and creates a hierarchy, and within this hierarchy competition is created amongst workers. I want decentralized organizations, and you want centralization, which is fine. :)



A 'shadow state', basically, then.... Very 'Fight Club'....

No one talks about fight club *slaps*

Now listen here, it isn't a state because there would exist no monopoly on governance, power would be vested in the hands of all proletarians and all peoples regardless of former class associations. All classes must be eliminated with that which creates and foments classism and statism.

[Thirsty Crow]

Miasnikov's group was founded much later, and to be honest I don't think they can be called "left communist" in any sense - much less so than the decists for example (and the decists were far from left communism).This is really off topic, but there are more grounds for considering the Workers' Group a part of the historical left communist tradition than decists (the ICC even publishing a book on the Russian communist left, of course dealing with WG; as an example), but the commonality of political positions and approaches is rather undeniable (especially in relation to the Dutch and German communist left).


Trotsky was furious because Miasnikov's work was quoted in the rags of Chernov and Martov; he would later refuse all cooperation with Ciliga because Ciliga wrote for Dan, so you can't fault him for being inconsistent.
I'm not faulting him for anything, just making a side remark about the man's disastrous politics and sheer strategic stupidity (evident much later on though). Again as an off topic side remark.

To add some content to this post apart from off topic, the idea that class division can be abolished at one rather swift strike along with the state is a product of some confusion. It even presupposes the idea that socialism - a classless and stateless society, therefore a developed planned production of the necessities of life and production - is possible to "achieve" in an isolated territory. The likelihood of such developments even in countries such as the USA is near zero.
The abolition of class division is one and the same process with establishing and strengthening the new organization of production, social planning, and general decision making (the political aspect of it all). That's why expropriation, once the cops and the army are neutralized and political power is in the hands of the revolutionary proletariat, is only a first step. A necessary, vital one but only the beginning.

[Maraam]

Yeah I can agree, but it wouldn't be a state, it'd be freely associating organizations that give powers to the proletarians.

What differentiates said organizations from a state then? At what point does the free association of proletarians become a state? By setting up the dominance of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie, whether by socialising their assests domestically or setting up a militia to prevent international invasion, or by setting up security forces to set up prevent counterrevolutionaries, a state will be established. To claim it's not a state because it is dencentralized, or has less power invested in individual people rather than collectives relies on a definition of the state that is moralistic, by saying that by doing certain 'good' things it goes from being a state to a non-state, or at most it relies on arbitary designations of points at which there is 'too much' power and as such shifts from non-state to state.

[ckaihatsu]

Very decentralized! Look what centralism has lead to in the past with the Soviet Union and China. A centralized form of governing is inherently top-down and creates a hierarchy, and within this hierarchy competition is created amongst workers.


Whuh? Huh? (Smacking lips sleepily....) Just got out of a killer nap -- nothing like it.... D'you say something -- ?


= )


Okay, seriously, though, hierarchy does *not* have any endemic power to make people bad, so let's get out of our jammies now and join the grown-up world.





I want decentralized organizations, and you want centralization, which is fine. :)


Curses! In allowing a diversity of political opinion you have secretly enabled *decentralization* to flourish, thus undermining my own 'centralization' position...! But I'll get you *next* time, SI -- !


x D





No one talks about fight club *slaps*


(They never *told* me I'd be slapped at RevLeft.)





Now listen here, it isn't a state because there would exist no monopoly on governance, power would be vested in the hands of all proletarians and all peoples regardless of former class associations. All classes must be eliminated with that which creates and foments classism and statism.


I would absolutely click on that in a heartbeat except that without a 'monopoly on governance' you're going to have policy that's potentially broad-ranging and inconsistent. Chaos over policy = no overall policy, a patchwork-quilt of governance, etc. -- I'm far less flexible on this, the *political* aspect of it all.

[Sinister Intents]

Whuh? Huh? (Smacking lips sleepily....) Just got out of a killer nap -- nothing like it.... D'you say something -- ?


= )


Okay, seriously, though, hierarchy does *not* have any endemic power to make people bad, so let's get out of our jammies now and join the grown-up world.

I'm talking of artificial hierarchies :) not natural ones created through individual relations. I'm talking of hierarchies created through classism and statism.



Curses! In allowing a diversity of political opinion you have secretly enabled *decentralization* to flourish, thus undermining my own 'centralization' position...! But I'll get you *next* time, SI -- !


x D

Lol, indeed


(They never *told* me I'd be slapped at RevLeft.)

*Gets slapped back*




I would absolutely click on that in a heartbeat except that without a 'monopoly on governance' you're going to have policy that's potentially broad-ranging and inconsistent. Chaos over policy = no overall policy, a patchwork-quilt of governance, etc. -- I'm far less flexible on this, the *political* aspect of it all.

Could you elaborate a bit? Couldn't there not exist centralism in certain aspects and decentralism in other areas?

Edit: My reply post could have been significantly better, but tired so whatever

[Sabot Cat]

And, just as I suspected, the Great Man theory of history is replaced by the Evil Man theory of history, as if every historical figure acted for their personal advancement. Doubtlessly some did - the good Emperor of the French for example. But this was no case of "power corrupting", since the president and emperor-to-be Bonaparte came to power on the basis of a political programme that called for a populist personal dictatorship. But how did Stalin, Cromwell or Mao "advance themselves"? You are endowing statesmen with an almost heroic ability to orchestrate events in their favour, instead of being carried along by the stream of events.

I didn't suggest that they accomplished the revolutions themselves, or its degeneration: in fact, I was using them as examples to show how the structure of a state can destroy a revolution's gains. If I just thought that bad people caused bad states, I wouldn't be opposed to the state as a structure.


Makhno, at least, was an anarchist, although his conflict with the Bolsheviks was due to his disruption of the food dictatorship in the Ukraine, and some of the Red Army commanders that fought against him were themselves anarchists.

The mutineers were mainly Esers, populist "socialists" who had nothing to do with either anarchism or left communism. In any case, it was an armed mutiny, what would you have had the Bolsheviks do, let a key fortress, near White Finland, fall into the hands of hostile elements?


I would prefer to be in the sailors' hands than the Bolsheviks'.


But, again, this raises the question of what "workers' control" means to you, because as I recall it you equate workers' control and even socialism with co-operatives and similar nonsense, which is not what I'm talking about.


Workers' control is when workers can control their workplaces. Again, there is no hidden meaning to divine here.


Individual counterrevolutionaries can be shot just fine without the state. To organise military expeditions, the seizure and execution of hostages, requisition, rationing, a food dictatorship and so on - all of this requires a state, in plain proletarian language.


Why do we need all of this? What in the hell is a food dictatorship, and why is it desirable?


Why not, is the lord God going to be angry with us? That's ridiculous - you're outright advocating that we allow the enemy to fire the first shot! And why? So that we appear blameless? Revolutions are not the time for moral wankery.

There's a difference in legitimacy that matters to potential participants in the revolution; further, I think you're understating how effective non-violent methods can be. You don't have to shoot anyone to initiate a general strike, for instance.


If the Bolsheviks had, upon seizing power, shot the ministers of the Provisional Government, whatever junkers, Cossacks and black-hundreds they could find, as well as people like Dan, Chaikovsky, Gots and Avksentiyev, the civil war might have lasted a fraction of what it lasted.

This did not work for the French Revolution and their Committee of Public Safety, which led to the executors becoming a victim of their own guillotine in the Thermidorian Reaction. There wasn't even an ideological reason behind a lot of the people who wanted the Reign of Terror to end; many did so out of self-preservation, and I could see the same thing happening against the Bolsheviks if they had attempted to do something like this.


I have no idea what you're talking about, and I have the impression that you don't, either. A state is a "symbolic representation of class relations between government officials and others"? What? What class are "government officials"? How is a state a "symbolic representation"? States are organs of class society, special bodies of armed men and their administrative organs, overseeing some form of class rule. I have no idea what this state-symbol is supposed to be, but it doesn't seem like anything sensible.


I don't think demanding definitions is an effective counter-argument; my words are intelligible, the meaning clear by the general use.


"It"? The proletariat? The proletariat is the class of wage-labourers, who participate in the process of production, do not own the means of production, are forced to sell their labour, and do not participate in the exploitation of other workers to a significant degree. So, not cops, not the petite bourgeoisie, managers, foremen and so on.

That would still make up a majority in every country.


This was simply asserted.

It was a build-up of another statement, actually.

[ckaihatsu]

I'm talking of artificial hierarchies :) not natural ones created through individual relations. I'm talking of hierarchies created through classism and statism.


Once again it's like my finger can't find full black because of the blurriness of the line / distinction involved -- yes, *of course* any revolutionary leftist would be opposed to 'classism' and 'statism' (as long as this means opposition to *bourgeois* classism and statism).

But I still happen to be not-finding any distinction between [bourgeois] classism and ruling-class-ism -- what were we fighting over, anyway, so to speak.

I'm really not seeing what the objection to the workers' use of the state as a *strategy*, would be. In other words, it would be from the workers themselves, as the *political* manifestation of their collective interests against the bourgeois state -- this would be happening *while* workers are revolting en masse in their workplaces.

The point's already made been made here:





[T]he idea that class division can be abolished at one rather swift strike along with the state is a product of some confusion. It even presupposes the idea that socialism - a classless and stateless society, therefore a developed planned production of the necessities of life and production - is possible to "achieve" in an isolated territory. The likelihood of such developments even in countries such as the USA is near zero.
The abolition of class division is one and the same process with establishing and strengthening the new organization of production, social planning, and general decision making (the political aspect of it all). That's why expropriation, once the cops and the army are neutralized and political power is in the hands of the revolutionary proletariat, is only a first step. A necessary, vital one but only the beginning.


So perhaps we can say that once expropriation takes place the bourgeois era of reign would come to an end as a definite, precise mark on the timeline of history. This ending of class rule would negate the need for the state anymore -- as you're (vehemently) arguing about -- and so 'individual relations' would grow to fill in the void from the withering-away of the 'state' form of social organization.

Again, to-MA-to, to-MAH-to....





Could you elaborate a bit? Couldn't there not exist centralism in certain aspects and decentralism in other areas?


If we conceive of the earth's human population as being a finite quantity -- which it is -- then 'centralism', by strict definition, would apply to that *entire* population, with unwavering, consistent policy over that whole 'inter-integrated' (for lack of a better term) society.

I take the position that there should be centralism *as soon as possible*, meaning both in the 'vanguard' sense of it, for present conditions, and also in the 'post-capitalist' context, for economies of scale and standard-ness.





Edit: My reply post could have been significantly better, but tired so whatever


No prob -- it's been enough, certainly. Hey, get some sleep -- it's on me.


= )

[helot]

You're conflating two different kinds of states here.


[bourgeois state vs workers state]




Whether this would satisfy the anarchist position is another matter, of course....

It always depends on what exactly is meant by the term workers state. From what i've seen it ranges from taking control of the bourgeois state and attempting to turn it to new ends to a federation of workers councils.

Let's assume the workers state is a public force that's immediately identical to the proletariat organised as an armed power. It makes me wonder though, if by workers state we're on about this isn't there then a glaring difference between states that function to maintain that specific class society, and the state of the proletariat that functions to destroy it?

Of course both are organs for one class to suppress another in the general sense but im not convinced of its usefulness as it seems to ignore a fundamental distinction. Suppression in one instance is to restrain, hinder but reproduce the conditions of its existence while the suppression in the other is not to restrain, hinder or reproduce the conditions of its existence but to destroy them. It would seem wiser to use two different terms for social organs that have fundamentally different roles.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

This is really off topic, but there are more grounds for considering the Workers' Group a part of the historical left communist tradition than decists (the ICC even publishing a book on the Russian communist left, of course dealing with WG; as an example), but the commonality of political positions and approaches is rather undeniable (especially in relation to the Dutch and German communist left).

Well - it seems to me that the concession to the peasantry embodied in Miasnikov's slogan of "soviets of producers" is incompatible with the spirit, if not with the letter, of left communism, but broadly speaking I concede the point. Nonetheless, the suppression of the Workers' Group (or rather the suppressions of the WG, a series of measures whose half-heartedness seems to indicate that the CC had no clear idea of what it was doing), happened much later than the time frame I and Red Rose are discussing.


I'm not faulting him for anything, just making a side remark about the man's disastrous politics and sheer strategic stupidity (evident much later on though). Again as an off topic side remark.

I don't see how his comments demonstrate either - as opposed to the triumvirs as he was, he was opposed to various semi-syndicalist currents in the Party even more. Supporting these against the terrible trio would have been unprincipled, and would not have accomplished anything substantial.


I didn't suggest that they accomplished the revolutions themselves, or its degeneration: in fact, I was using them as examples to show how the structure of a state can destroy a revolution's gains. If I just thought that bad people caused bad states, I wouldn't be opposed to the state as a structure.

For some reason or another, I understood "Napoleon" as a reference to Napoleon III, instead of his more famous uncle. Napoleon I, however, did not destroy the gains of the French revolution, but secured and expanded them. Likewise Cromwell. Stalin and Mao need to be placed in the context of the material positions of the Soviet Union and China. And of course, the degeneration of the Russian revolution was accompanied by a reduction in both the numbers and the power of the state apparatus.


I would prefer to be in the sailors' hands than the Bolsheviks'.

Good for you, then, but the fact remains that the Kronstadt programme would have been disastrous for Russia, and that the presence of the mutineers directly endangered a key strategic location. Would you have rather been under the Finns than the Bolsheviks as well?


Workers' control is when workers can control their workplaces. Again, there is no hidden meaning to divine here.

Except, of course, what you said is ambiguous. What workers control what workplaces? From my previous exchanges with you I would guess that you think workers' control is when each petty group of workers owns "their own" means of production, which has pretty much nothing to do with socialism. So, yes, that can be implemented "in one country", hell, "in one rayon" or even "in one city". But it can't lead to the abolition of class society.


Why do we need all of this? What in the hell is a food dictatorship, and why is it desirable?

We need all this because that is how civil wars are conducted, particularly when either side has as its object nothing less than the complete extermination of the other. A food dictatorship is public control over the food supply, seizure of the surplus (or rather - seizure of whatever quantity of food is necessary to feed the cities and the armies), and so on. It is desirable because, well, the armies have to be fed, the enemy has to be starved and so on.


There's a difference in legitimacy that matters to potential participants in the revolution; further, I think you're understating how effective non-violent methods can be. You don't have to shoot anyone to initiate a general strike, for instance.

You can't smash the bourgeois state apparatus using just a general strike, either, and strikes are in no way non-violent, since there is always an implicit threat to strikebreakers. As for legitimacy, good grief, don't you think you're projecting? Most people care about winning, not "legitimacy" - when the Bavarian soviet government was filled with legitimate, non-violent, pie-in-the-sky radical sots-dems, no one cared about it but the Freikorps, when Levine instituted a communist government and started to carry out measures for the defence of soviet power (too late, unfortunately), the workers started to participate.


This did not work for the French Revolution and their Committee of Public Safety, which led to the executors becoming a victim of their own guillotine in the Thermidorian Reaction. There wasn't even an ideological reason behind a lot of the people who wanted the Reign of Terror to end; many did so out of self-preservation, and I could see the same thing happening against the Bolsheviks if they had attempted to do something like this.

Except, of course, the Bolsheviks did resort to terror later, and this turned out to be the correct policy. If you want a comparison with the French Revolution, I think a more appropriate one would be the revolt in the Vendee, where the republican forces struck a single blow against the royalists, pacifying the region for the remainder of the war (and probably saving lives in the long run).


I don't think demanding definitions is an effective counter-argument; my words are intelligible, the meaning clear by the general use.

Except I'm not demanding definitions, I'm demanding to know how the hell your claims make any sense. Symbols don't organise prisons, carry out wars and executions and so on. Actual bodies of armed men and the associated authorities do.


That would still make up a majority in every country.

In most of the neo-colonies the peasants and other strata that only exist due to the continued existence of backward elements of the economy are the majority.


It was a build-up of another statement, actually.

Yes, one that made no sense as it seemed to assume that government officials are a class.

[Kill all the fetuses!]

1. Federalist Anarchists should be lumped together with your average "libertarian" and ignored, because they have nothing to do with Communism, Socialism or Anarchism.

2. Whether Stalinists or Trotskyists (especially of dogmatic kind) have anything to do with Communism or Socialism is an open question for me.

3. The centralized state, a dictatorship of the proletariat is necessary. That's something that both Anarchists and Stalinists/Trotskyists can agree on. The question lies elsewhere. The question really is how democratic that centralized state ought to be.

Both your Stalinist state and ultra-democratic association of the proletariat are states. Both of them can be interpreted as the dictatorship of the proletariat and both of them can be centralized. The question (for me anyway) is not about which one is nicer, which one is more just, which one is more morally correct or whatever, the question is only one - which one can work better. I am utterly convinced, not least due to historic reasons, that the your average Stalinist state is doomed to failure as it always has.

So when 870 says "who will distribute food, who will shot reactionaries, who will defend the revolution, who will organize shit - only the State can do that!" he is missing the entire point. Yes, the State will have to organize that, the question is what kind of State. During the Spanish Social Revolution you didn't need your Stalinist State to do these things, because they were done by the democratic organization of the proletariat itself. And more efficiently at that as well, incomparably more efficiently. And the proletariat there was already moving towards centralization, establishing central bodies responsible for all the tasks that the State should be responsible, but they were moving towards democratic centralization. The Russian Soviets, before the Bolsheviks destroyed them, were doing the same.

And all you authoritarian revolutionaries, when you say that we of libertarian kind are being naive, that we are idiots for valuing democracy for the sake of democracy, again, you are missing the entire point. It's not that we (well, I) want democratically centralized State for the sake of it being democratic, we want it because it can work better, because it can further the revolution better, because it is the only way the revolution can succeed. There is no morality there, there is no ideas of justice or ethics, only and solely the cold logic of victory. So you can keep your straw-men of "idealism", "moralism" etc to yourself.

4. I am saying this, because in every such thread (and it is obvious in this one as well) you are talking past each other. "I don't like state", "you are an idiot, state is necessary" - all these comments are a result of you talking past one another.

The questions is what can work better - a democratically centralized State, the authoritarian Stalinist one or something of a mixture.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

So when 870 says "who will distribute food, who will shot reactionaries, who will defend the revolution, who will organize shit - only the State can do that!" he is missing the entire point. Yes, the State will have to organize that, the question is what kind of State. During the Spanish Social Revolution you didn't need your Stalinist State to do these things, because they were done by the democratic organization of the proletariat itself. And more efficiently at that as well, incomparably more efficiently. And the proletariat there was already moving towards centralization, establishing central bodies responsible for all the tasks that the State should be responsible, but they were moving towards democratic centralization. The Russian Soviets, before the Bolsheviks destroyed them, were doing the same.

I have no idea what a "Stalinist state" is, but I find it odd that you found one in 1918, when neither socialism in one country, popular fronts or peaceful coexistence were the policy of the proletarian state. As for the Spanish "free territory", indeed, that had no need for a state of any sort, because it was not revolutionary, it was an industrial appendage of the Popular Front government where "anti-fascist" capitalists continued to own their factories. As for the Soviets, how did the Bolsheviks "destroy" them? They ceased to function because the Soviet proletariat was decimated by the civil war.

[Brotto Rühle]

Yes, because every ostensibly proletarian dictatorship in history has done this so well. :rolleyes:

If your communism is so "scientific", surely you can demonstrate the point that we need the state to abolish classes? Why not abolish both, at once? And is there an observable instances of the state not being used to re-establish class relations following a proletarian revolution in all of history? I think you're forgetting that once people attain power, they loathe to give it up, and are not likely to abolish the state they control or let it die.

Now, I humbly withdrawal all of the critiques herein if by "state" you mean "decentralized hub for working class interests in their respective revolutionary unions and democratized workplaces" and not something like the Soviet Union or the People's Republic of China.
There has never been a proletarian dictatorship, besides the failed Paris Commune. Maybe you could argue for very briefly in 1918 Russia, but your point is invalid either way.

Someone should read that fucking article I posted.

[Kill all the fetuses!]

I have no idea what a "Stalinist state" is, but I find it odd that you found one in 1918, when neither socialism in one country, popular fronts or peaceful coexistence were the policy of the proletarian state. As for the Spanish "free territory", indeed, that had no need for a state of any sort, because it was not revolutionary, it was an industrial appendage of the Popular Front government where "anti-fascist" capitalists continued to own their factories. As for the Soviets, how did the Bolsheviks "destroy" them? They ceased to function because the Soviet proletariat was decimated by the civil war.

Firstly, the essence of the Spanish Revolution was in the rural areas, where capitalists either fled or were killed by the revolutionaries. It was more revolutionary than anything the could have happened in Russia.

No, they didn't cease to function, they were actively being dismantled by the Bolsheviks since the day one of them taking power. Lenin and the Bolsheviks couldn't allow any federalist organization that would hold vast amount of power over the industrial process and that's the reason why they needed to destroy them. It's odd you would try to deny that since the centralization is the basic aspect of Leninism as far as I understand anyway.

[ckaihatsu]

It always depends on what exactly is meant by the term workers state. From what i've seen it ranges from taking control of the bourgeois state and attempting to turn it to new ends to a federation of workers councils.

Let's assume the workers state is a public force that's immediately identical to the proletariat organised as an armed power. It makes me wonder though, if by workers state we're on about this isn't there then a glaring difference between states that function to maintain that specific class society, and the state of the proletariat that functions to destroy it?

Of course both are organs for one class to suppress another in the general sense but im not convinced of its usefulness as it seems to ignore a fundamental distinction. Suppression in one instance is to restrain, hinder but reproduce the conditions of its existence while the suppression in the other is not to restrain, hinder or reproduce the conditions of its existence but to destroy them.




It would seem wiser to use two different terms for social organs that have fundamentally different roles.


So, then, according to this, the only difference between the Leninist position and the anarchist one is a matter of real-world strategy (whether the bourgeois state should / needs to be used against itself, by the proletariat, given actual conditions), and one of semantics (what revolutionary organizations against the bourgeoisie should be termed, according to function).

Group hug, then -- ?


= )

[Blake's Baby]

It always depends on what exactly is meant by the term workers state. From what i've seen it ranges from taking control of the bourgeois state and attempting to turn it to new ends to a federation of workers councils.

Let's assume the workers state is a public force that's immediately identical to the proletariat organised as an armed power. It makes me wonder though, if by workers state we're on about this isn't there then a glaring difference between states that function to maintain that specific class society, and the state of the proletariat that functions to destroy it?

Of course both are organs for one class to suppress another in the general sense but im not convinced of its usefulness as it seems to ignore a fundamental distinction. Suppression in one instance is to restrain, hinder but reproduce the conditions of its existence while the suppression in the other is not to restrain, hinder or reproduce the conditions of its existence but to destroy them. It would seem wiser to use two different terms for social organs that have fundamentally different roles.

While I don't agree (I think, if the state is in the last analysis 'men armed in defence of property relations', then the 'proletarian state' is a state, this time organised to protect public property) this is at least an argument that needs to be taken seriously. The 'proletarian state' is a 'state of a new type' - not as all previous states have been a state which expresses the interests of a minority class, but a state which expresses the interests of the majority. The repressive functions of the state - which exist now so that the minority can keep the majority in check - will not be necessary when the majority is the leading class in society.

They will be needed even less as that majority class, through the progressive destruction of property and integration of other strata into the working class, generalises its own existence to the point that classes cease to exist - when everyone is 'working class' (ie integrated into the productive process) then there is no 'working class' because a class, by definition, is only part of the whole. There can be two or more classes, but there can never be less than two, much as you can't divide a pizza into one.

It's not that Anarchists want to sbolish the state now, and Marxists don't. It's that Anarchists want to abolish the state now, and Marxists recognise that you can't. States will exist as long as humans are divided into contending classes. The withering away of the state comes with the end of class society, which is in turn predicated on the abolition of property.

[Sabot Cat]

There has never been a proletarian dictatorship, besides the failed Paris Commune. Maybe you could argue for very briefly in 1918 Russia, but your point is invalid either way.

Someone should read that fucking article I posted.

I really hate to be snippy about this but I qualified that with 'ostensibly'.



For some reason or another, I understood "Napoleon" as a reference to Napoleon III, instead of his more famous uncle. Napoleon I, however, did not destroy the gains of the French revolution, but secured and expanded them. Likewise Cromwell.

Er, Cromwell's little republic collapsed after his death because it was so autocratic, and Napoleon's imperial gains were lost within his own lifetime; but that's hardly the point. The trouble with these is that they took a movement for democracy [broadly; Cromwell's compatriots were puritan nutjobs, but then you had groups like the Levellers that weren't so] and turned it into one for autocracy. That's my core problem here.

[Although I will admit that Napoleon was not a complete traitor to the values of his bourgeois revolution with the Napoleonic Code and all, but the point stands that he was an autocrat.]


Stalin and Mao need to be placed in the context of the material positions of the Soviet Union and China. And of course, the degeneration of the Russian revolution was accompanied by a reduction in both the numbers and the power of the state apparatus.

Good for you, then, but the fact remains that the Kronstadt programme would have been disastrous for Russia, and that the presence of the mutineers directly endangered a key strategic location. Would you have rather been under the Finns than the Bolsheviks as well?

If I knew that Stalin would be what's in store for the people of the Soviet Union...



Except, of course, what you said is ambiguous. What workers control what workplaces? From my previous exchanges with you I would guess that you think workers' control is when each petty group of workers owns "their own" means of production, which has pretty much nothing to do with socialism. So, yes, that can be implemented "in one country", hell, "in one rayon" or even "in one city". But it can't lead to the abolition of class society.

I obviously want as many workers to control as many workplaces as possible, but if you do have to start with one city, e.g. Paris, or region, e.g. Catalonia, and expand, that's better than nothing at all.


We need all this because that is how civil wars are conducted, particularly when either side has as its object nothing less than the complete extermination of the other. A food dictatorship is public control over the food supply, seizure of the surplus (or rather - seizure of whatever quantity of food is necessary to feed the cities and the armies), and so on. It is desirable because, well, the armies have to be fed, the enemy has to be starved and so on.

I suppose; I wonder if the so-called food dictatorship is a path to artificial famine and starvation, however.


You can't smash the bourgeois state apparatus using just a general strike, either, and strikes are in no way non-violent, since there is always an implicit threat to strikebreakers.

Yes, which is why I'm saying that they don't have to start violent.


As for legitimacy, good grief, don't you think you're projecting? Most people care about winning, not "legitimacy" - when the Bavarian soviet government was filled with legitimate, non-violent, pie-in-the-sky radical sots-dems, no one cared about it but the Freikorps, when Levine instituted a communist government and started to carry out measures for the defence of soviet power (too late, unfortunately), the workers started to participate.

There can be and have been successful revolutions wherein the participants are both a) non-violent to begin with and b) shore up legitimacy this way. But I see where you're coming from I suppose.


Except, of course, the Bolsheviks did resort to terror later, and this turned out to be the correct policy. If you want a comparison with the French Revolution, I think a more appropriate one would be the revolt in the Vendee, where the republican forces struck a single blow against the royalists, pacifying the region for the remainder of the war (and probably saving lives in the long run).

I don't agree with your methods or assessments. How does anything that lead to the kind of state the Soviet Union was or became justify it?


Except I'm not demanding definitions, I'm demanding to know how the hell your claims make any sense. Symbols don't organise prisons, carry out wars and executions and so on. Actual bodies of armed men and the associated authorities do.


I said that they could be either symbolic representations and those tangible elements.


In most of the neo-colonies the peasants and other strata that only exist due to the continued existence of backward elements of the economy are the majority.

I consider them to be agricultural workers, but it's a trifle over definitions I suppose.


Yes, one that made no sense as it seemed to assume that government officials are a class.

They can act as such.

[Thirsty Crow]

While I don't agree (I think, if the state is in the last analysis 'men armed in defence of property relations', then the 'proletarian state' is a state, this time organised to protect public property) this is at least an argument that needs to be taken seriously. The 'proplearian state' is a 'state of a new type' - not as all previous states have been a state which expresses the interests of a minority class, but a state which expresses the interests of the majority. The repressive functions of the state - which exist now so that the minority can keep the majority in check - will not be necessary when the majority is the leading class in society.

I'd say that the crucial distinction isn't the "expression" of interests (minority versus majority; bourgeoisie versus proletariat) as this lends itself all too easily to a viewpoint that sees political representation - a fundamental characteristic of the bourgeois state - as appropriate even for proletarian rule.

The crucial distinction in my mind, alongside the actual "content" and direction of the revolutionary transformation (communization in short), is participation in political life by an expanding number of proletarians, therefore also dismantling the division of labor into manual and mental.

[Ele'ill]

For those advocating a 'proletarian state'- How would it come about and what would it do/its purpose be?

[ckaihatsu]

For those advocating a 'proletarian state'- How would it come about and what would it do/its purpose be?


Post #41.

[Ele'ill]

ran out of computer time sorry if I minced something


While I don't agree (I think, if the state is in the last analysis 'men armed in defence of property relations', then the 'proletarian state' is a state, this time organised to protect public property)

What would a state offer for protection outside of what we see now as the various institutions making up the current state. If 'revolutionary consciousness' is public, why would central authority (under the guise of protection), be needed at all? (other than for social control and 'integration into the productive process' which sounds terrible)



The repressive functions of the state - which exist now so that the minority can keep the majority in check - will not be necessary when the majority is the leading class in society. They will be needed even less as that majority class, through the progressive destruction of property and integration of other strata into the working class, generalises its own existence to the point that classes cease to exist - when everyone is 'working class' (ie integrated into the productive process) then there is no 'working class' because a class, by definition, is only part of the whole. There can be two or more classes, but there can never be less than two, much as you can't divide a pizza into one.

It's not that Anarchists want to sbolish the state now, and Marxists don't. It's that Anarchists want to abolish the state now, and Marxists recognise that you can't. States will exist as long as humans are divided into contending classes. The withering away of the state comes with the end of class society, which is in turn predicated on the abolition of property.

this supposes that human beings and life are defined solely along economic lines, by productive capacity, and that 'as a class' we are homogenous and I find that to be untrue and if acted on to be the opposite of 'total freedom'

[Thirsty Crow]

What would a state offer for protection outside of what we see now as the various institutions making up the current state. If 'revolutionary consciousness' is public, why would central authority (under the guise of protection), be needed at all? (other than for social control and 'integration into the productive process' which sounds terrible)

I really believe that when Marxists and communists not employing some Marxist tradition talk about the workers' state there's simply a miscommunication at first since Marxists usually take it that the armed proletariat directly participating in political and economic decision making (soviets, workplace committees, public safety committees) constitutes the proletarian state simply by performing the function of suppression of counter-revolution (domestic and "international").

A similar issue occurs with the idea of a central organ of proletarian rule which might as well function as an executive body of delegates tasked with efficient and swift performance and coordination of various decisions whose roots are at the direct participatory level (mass assemblies, public debate and so on; by roots I mean that even though, for example, that the initiative came from specific revolutionary organizations, the decision wasn't imposed on a hapless proletariat that's allegedly engaged in revolutionary self-transformation).

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Firstly, the essence of the Spanish Revolution was in the rural areas, where capitalists either fled or were killed by the revolutionaries. It was more revolutionary than anything the could have happened in Russia.

There are usually no large concentrations of the proletariat in rural areas; even in situations where most of the productive land is owned by landlords and worked by rural proletarians, as was the case around Granada if I'm not mistaken, the majority of the proletariat is concentrated in the cities. So if the "essence of the... Revolution was in the rural areas", this tells us something about the character of the Revolution.

The fact that the anarchists did not smash the Catalonian Generalidad but served as ministers in the Popular Front belies your notion that the "Revolution" was "more revolutionary than anything the [sic] could have happened in Russia".

As for the "anti-fascist" bourgeoisie, here is how Rocker puts it:

"But in this respect also matters are really quite different. The C.N.T. from the beginning regarded the petty bourgeois and small farmer as natural allies in the struggle against Fascism. Its press has all along pointed out that during this transition period it recognizes any economic form which does not have as its objective the exploitation of man by man. For this reason it has put no obstacles in the way of family management in the country or of small enterprises in the city. To be sure the C.N.T. attacked with all its energy speculators and cut-throats with union cards in their pockets who wanted to profit from the confusion; and that is altogether understandable.
In its work of socialization the C.N.T. has imposed upon itself the greatest moderation and has gone about its task with a tact and prudence that only pure malevolence would dare to deny. Wherever small farmers have preferred individual operation to agrarian collectives, they have been left their free choice. Their small pieces of land have not been touched; they have even been enlarged in proportion to the size of the families. It is a fact that after the great days of the July revolution many hundreds of small employers and small farmers voluntarily put their plants and their land at the disposal of the workers' syndicates and hailed the social revolution with genuine enthusiasm. In Aragon, for example, an overwhelming majority of the small farmers declared for collective agriculture. There exist there at present about four hundred collective enterprises, of which only ten have joined the U.G.T., while all the others belong to the C.N.T. syndicates.

In reality a very friendly relation has existed for a long time between the C.N.T. and the anti-Fascist bourgeoisie. This did not change until the disruptive work of the Stalinists set in, and the Communists began to play up the petty bourgeoisie as their trump cards against the workers."


No, they didn't cease to function, they were actively being dismantled by the Bolsheviks since the day one of them taking power. Lenin and the Bolsheviks couldn't allow any federalist organization that would hold vast amount of power over the industrial process and that's the reason why they needed to destroy them. It's odd you would try to deny that since the centralization is the basic aspect of Leninism as far as I understand anyway.

Except (1) the soviets were never a federalist organisation, and (2) the soviets never oversaw the process of production, this oversight being the purview of the factory committees, glavki and tsentry. And yes, the soviets did cease to function, as the proletariat was decimated to perhaps 20% (I can't recall the exact figure) of its strength prior to the civil war, with most of the remaining proletariat being in the RKP(b).


Er, Cromwell's little republic collapsed after his death because it was so autocratic, and Napoleon's imperial gains were lost within his own lifetime; but that's hardly the point. The trouble with these is that they took a movement for democracy [broadly; Cromwell's compatriots were puritan nutjobs, but then you had groups like the Levellers that weren't so] and turned it into one for autocracy. That's my core problem here.

The thing is, the French revolution was not a "movement for democracy" but a bourgeois revolution. Napoleon preserved and extended the rule of the bourgeoisie in France and exported it to other countries. Likewise Cromwell, although the republican interlude was not a full-fledged bourgeois revolution.


If I knew that Stalin would be what's in store for the people of the Soviet Union...

And that's where the problems start. This was basically the line of Shachtman, Craipeau, Burnham and other renegades from socialism during the interwar period - they thought that since the USSR was "totalitarian" (a nonsense term stolen from fascists), the Western bourgeois states should be supported against the Soviets. Apparently even White Finland.

I don't think I need to spell out why this is a disastrous, counter-revolutionary line.


I obviously want as many workers to control as many workplaces as possible, but if you do have to start with one city, e.g. Paris, or region, e.g. Catalonia, and expand, that's better than nothing at all.

The point was that workers owning "their" workplaces has nothing to do with socialism. Socialism abolishes capital, it does not redistribute it in a manner that would be pleasing to petty craftsmen.


I suppose; I wonder if the so-called food dictatorship is a path to artificial famine and starvation, however.

It might be. The point of any such policy is to win the inevitable civil war. If that bleeds the peasantry dry, well, such is life.


Yes, which is why I'm saying that they don't have to start violent.

And again, you ignore the first half of my post. A general strike can't by itself bring down the bourgeois state apparatus, it needs to be smashed, and anyone who thinks that it can be smashed peacefully is not living in the real world.


There can be and have been successful revolutions wherein the participants are both a) non-violent to begin with and b) shore up legitimacy this way. But I see where you're coming from I suppose.

What revolutions were those?


I don't agree with your methods or assessments. How does anything that lead to the kind of state the Soviet Union was or became justify it?

Because the state apparatus was smashed, there was a dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia, a (necessarily partial) socialisation of the means of production, and so on. Of course, it wasn't nice. But I think that anyone who thinks that the first years of the revolution are going to be nice is fooling themselves. As communists, we base ourselves on the class nature of social formations, not whether they're nice.


I said that they could be either symbolic representations and those tangible elements.

This still doesn't tell us what a state as a "symbolic representation" is, a flag? I honestly have no idea what you're talking about.


I consider them to be agricultural workers, but it's a trifle over definitions I suppose.

No, it isn't. The petite bourgeoisie is a doomed and ruined class that can only play a progressive role in very limited circumstances and for a limited time. Communists do not base themselves on the petite bourgeoisie but the proletariat.


They can act as such.

No, they can't. Again, this is basically Burnham's "managerialism". But the government officials have no independent relation to the means of production, no necessary role in the productive process, and so on. Saying they are a class (or "act like a class", which amounts to the same) goes against historical materialism.

[Sabot Cat]

The thing is, the French revolution was not a "movement for democracy" but a bourgeois revolution. Napoleon preserved and extended the rule of the bourgeoisie in France and exported it to other countries. Likewise Cromwell, although the republican interlude was not a full-fledged bourgeois revolution.

Er... yes; which is why I labelled them as such a post of mine ago.


And that's where the problems start. This was basically the line of Shachtman, Craipeau, Burnham and other renegades from socialism during the interwar period - they thought that since the USSR was "totalitarian" (a nonsense term stolen from fascists), the Western bourgeois states should be supported against the Soviets. Apparently even White Finland.


I don't know; don't you think Bolsheviks' resources could've been used better on Whites than leftists?


I don't think I need to spell out why this is a disastrous, counter-revolutionary line.


Oh dear. Please don't shoot me, okay?


The point was that workers owning "their" workplaces has nothing to do with socialism. Socialism abolishes capital, it does not redistribute it in a manner that would be pleasing to petty craftsmen.

Yes; we are of one mind on this.



It might be. The point of any such policy is to win the inevitable civil war. If that bleeds the peasantry dry, well, such is life.


That's an incredibly blase attitude to take; I am not so lacking in basic empathy for others.


And again, you ignore the first half of my post. A general strike can't by itself bring down the bourgeois state apparatus, it needs to be smashed, and anyone who thinks that it can be smashed peacefully is not living in the real world.

You aren't picking up on what I'm saying here, still. Either the bourgeois state apparatus surrenders, or the workers have to initiate a counter-offensive against an attack. We can fight back.


What revolutions were those?

The overturning of the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines, the end of apartheid in South Africa, most of the revolutions of 1989; yes these were not socialist revolutions, but there is no reason why we can't use their tactics of a non-violent civil resistance initiative.


Because the state apparatus was smashed, there was a dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia, a (necessarily partial) socialisation of the means of production, and so on. Of course, it wasn't nice. But I think that anyone who thinks that the first years of the revolution are going to be nice is fooling themselves. As communists, we base ourselves on the class nature of social formations, not whether they're nice.

Er, I thought you were just saying you can't change class relations in one locale, which would make the revolution in Russia amount to nothing?



This still doesn't tell us what a state as a "symbolic representation" is, a flag? I honestly have no idea what you're talking about.


Something to that affect; it's all of the abstract things that exist exclusively on paper unless enforced like borders.



No, it isn't. The petite bourgeoisie is a doomed and ruined class that can only play a progressive role in very limited circumstances and for a limited time. Communists do not base themselves on the petite bourgeoisie but the proletariat.

I primarily define the petite-bourgeoisie as people who own small businesses, but I know others can include farmers in that.


No, they can't. Again, this is basically Burnham's "managerialism". But the government officials have no independent relation to the means of production, no necessary role in the productive process, and so on. Saying they are a class (or "act like a class", which amounts to the same) goes against historical materialism.

Government officials can direct a military or law enforcement to seize property or compel work; this potentiality gives them a distinct class dynamic, no matter if individual members happen to be proletarians or bourgeoisie.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Er... yes; which is why I labelled them as such a post of mine ago.

The point was that your characterisation of Napoleon and Cromwell as having "betrayed the revolution" is historically inaccurate; they did not overthrow bourgeois rule but secured it.


I don't know; don't you think Bolsheviks' resources could've been used better on Whites than leftists?

Except, of course, half of the "leftists" (Esers, Mensheviks, Popular Socialists, Yedinstvo, Regionalists, the Ukrainian Social-Democrats and so on) were the Whites. The rest, respectively, tried to drag Russia back into an imperialist war (the PLSR), and disrupted the requisition of food (the Makhnovtsy), objectively assisting the Whites and interventionists.


Yes; we are of one mind on this.

No, I don't think we are. Again, in our previous exchanges you advocated a "socialism" that amounted to worker co-operatives, which are merely a very ineffective form of capital.


That's an incredibly blase attitude to take; I am not so lacking in basic empathy for others.

Unfortunately, wars are not won by empathy, and whatever our personal feelings about the situation might be, the first task of any revolutionary proletarian authority is to safeguard the revolution, to win the civil war that will inevitably follow it.


You aren't picking up on what I'm saying here, still. Either the bourgeois state apparatus surrenders, or the workers have to initiate a counter-offensive against an attack. We can fight back.

Why would the bourgeois state apparatus surrender, because your slogans are very loud? This attitude of your is, with due respect, the worst form of idealism - the apparatus of the bourgeois state won't collapse out of pity at your ineffectual flailing, it can only be brought down by proletarian violence.


The overturning of the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines, the end of apartheid in South Africa[...]

Neither of which were revolutions in the communist sense - the overthrow of one class by another.


most of the revolutions of 1989; yes these were not socialist revolutions, but there is no reason why we can't use their tactics of a non-violent civil resistance initiative.

Again, this is basically the Shachtmanite line, rightly despised by everyone else, even those who think the USSR was a bourgeois state. Although your comments about White Finland make more sense now - if you support Solidarnosc, Havel, the Romanian generals and so on, why not the Supreme Ruler, Admiral Kolchak too? After all he fought for democracy against the evil totalitarian Bolsheviks.


Er, I thought you were just saying you can't change class relations in one locale, which would make the revolution in Russia amount to nothing?

Class society can't be abolished in one locale, but this does not mean that social formations don't have a definite class character - just as e.g. under capitalism unions are proletarian organisations. A workers' state is pretty much a union with military forces.


Something to that affect; it's all of the abstract things that exist exclusively on paper unless enforced like borders.

Borders are very real - we're talking about kilometres of fences, border outposts, markers and so on. The point is that nobody uses the term "state" in this way.


I primarily define the petite-bourgeoisie as people who own small businesses, but I know others can include farmers in that.

It's not about personal definitions, farmers own their means of production, which disqualifies them from the proletariat.


Government officials can direct a military or law enforcement to seize property or compel work; this potentiality gives them a distinct class dynamic, no matter if individual members happen to be proletarians or bourgeoisie.

That's not what "class" means in any sort of materialist analysis; a class is a group that has a distinct and indispensable part to play in the production process, that has a particular relation to the means of production.

[Blake's Baby]

For those advocating a 'proletarian state'- How would it come about and what would it do/its purpose be?

For those who don't understand that we don't 'advocate' a proletarian state, any more than we 'advocate' entropy or gravity...

While there are classes there will be a state. While there is property there are classes. So, until all property is collectivised and transformed from the exclusive property of one group into the common property of humanity, then classes exist and thus a state exists. This is as unavoidable as dying if you fall from a great height. We don't 'advocate' dying if you fall from a great height, we just recognise that it is unavoidable.

So, for those who advocate overcoming material conditions by wishing - how would it come about?



...
What would a state offer for protection outside of what we see now as the various institutions making up the current state. If 'revolutionary consciousness' is public, why would central authority (under the guise of protection), be needed at all? (other than for social control and 'integration into the productive process' which sounds terrible)...

I don't even understand the syntax of the question I'm afraid.

The world revolution must be as much as possible a simultaneous affair but it's not going to be completely simoultaneous. The proletariat is going to overthrow the governments of some states before others, and it will institute a public power in the territories it has 'liberated'. It will have to defend those territories against foreign powers and internal rebels seeking to return to the status quo ante bellum. This is a state (an organ for one class to impose its will on society) but a state 'of a new type' as it is a majoritarian state not a minoritarian state.

'integration into the production process' is the point of communism. How could it 'sound terrible'? Are you seriously proposing that in a communist society, we have a working class and a bunch of people who live off their labour? That's what we have now. What's the popint of a revolution if we end up in the same place as we started?



...
this supposes that human beings and life are defined solely along economic lines, by productive capacity, and that 'as a class' we are homogenous and I find that to be untrue and if acted on to be the opposite of 'total freedom'

Really, you're going to have to explain your point a little better here because I'm not getting it.

[Ele'ill]

So, for those who advocate overcoming material conditions by wishing - how would it come about?

They would probably say by wishing.



'integration into the production process' is the point of communism. How could it 'sound terrible'? Are you seriously proposing that in a communist society, we have a working class and a bunch of people who live off their labour? That's what we have now. What's the popint of a revolution if we end up in the same place as we started?

I think re-management of productive process is a cheap way of viewing life and never left where we started. Who/what is going to force me to work?

[Remus Bleys]

I would imagine that at first, the only thing that would "force" someone to work would be the fact that as humanity things need to be produced or, you know, nothing is produced and no one lives and nothing is past on... aka the end of humanity. So, really, necessity "forces" you to work. But, with the spread of industry and the elimination of unnecessary labor, more human work is devoted simply to producing what is necessary, thus drastically reducing the amount of individual labor. With industry and modern technology it becomes more and more automized, becoming more efficient which radically reduces the amount of work done. Productive forces are used to simply to alleviate the amount of work done, until possibly it doesn't need any manual labor. Who decides what is necessary? Why the whole of society (see "Conspectus of Bakunin's State and Anarchy").

I would imagine that what forces you to work would be a mix of the "morals" or "norms" that organically develop out of communism (Marx said, because of the fact that humanity now fully controls its activity (with no external (ex: nature) or internal (ex: capital) forces dictating what to do), work becomes life's prime joy and that the distinction of work and leisure is null and void. Lukács thought this was expressed by the "communist Saturdays.") and a mix of coercion (Lenin's famous "don't work, don't eat" wasn't really an appraisal of work so much that if one could work but didn't the they were forcing others to produce for their own benefit, thus adding unnecessary strain on those who did work with no alleviation (objectively harming the proletarian dictatorship, thus adding a barrier to communism) in addition to the fact that if no one did work then there would be nothing and all would die - this simple let's those people live on their own. Also, as 870 pointed out, a good way to win a war is to starve the enemy.). All of this needs to be pointed out with the fact that communism, as a movement, works towards less work in total (by using productive forces to satisfy human needs and eliminate work, and eliminating unnecessary work) until labor could possibly be totally gone away with (trotsky once said that man loathes to work, and does everything possible to make work unnecessary - this should be thought of as doing some more work now to completely eliminate future work.).

Finally, the question "who is going to make me work" is also misleading as the very nature of work radically and completely changes in communism (this change even starts in proletarian dictatorship).

[Ele'ill]

I can't quote in this thread for some reason but yeah, I don't disagree with any of that (@Remus Bleys) at first glance. I do think the nature of work has to radically change, probably to the point where it isn't 'work' in the sense that it is serving a productive process that is left over from what we have now, I don't really want to make that more efficient I want something new instead. I think that the 'spread of industry' that you mention will also involve the destruction of industry that is no longer desired or useful with all of the relatively useless things taking up space (whatever they might be, office buildings, empty lots, whatever) which will allow for planning on a local level. I am not a hippy but I would love to tend to a massive orchard/vegetable plot(s) that could provide food in conjunction with things shipped over from other areas. I think how cities are set up will completely change. My question about 'state' arises because there are a lot of inherent problems with a majority deciding things with the minority kind of being conversationally written of as 'reactionary forces' which we usually think would be fascists, capitalists, etc.. but might not necessarily be especially when we're talking about 'the proletariat' as being a homogenous group which I don't think it is. (regarding the purpose, communism, communization) If we're labeling any type of social relationship between individuals and groups of people at any given time within a revolutionary atmosphere, working class, as a 'state' I don't know that I can accept that.

[PhoenixAsh]

In this thread we see Marxists essentialy become Weberists in trying to marry two conflicting ideals. The fact that class is determined by the relationship to the means of production perpetuated through culture and ideology and the idea that state determines this. Essentially meaning that the state represents a means of production. And this stems from the reductionist view of the state that it merely manages property and the ideals of the bourgeoisie.

The fact of the matter is that class is wholely dependend on their relationship to the means of production and taking away or changing that relationship means that class will end and/or its nature will change dramatically.

The state is completely irrelevant for this and revolution itself and the abolishment of property and, logically, the state (as a factor of property).

The state then becomes defunct and worthless. UNLESS of course property is maintained....and thus class society is perpetuated.

In the current context of this thread the state would be perpetuated in the hands of the working class....or rather a small portion of the working class.

This will immediately change that portion of the working class's relationship to the means of production...and will immediately either create a sub-strata inside the expanded class (to later develop into a class in its own rights) determined by direct control and ownership to the means of production or simply recreate, redefine and redetermine the class interests of those who control the state (and thus property).

In other words. A new class or sub-class will emerge which will be emoblished by the state over the other classes or main class.

This has in fact happened time and time again.

[Blake's Baby]

And how could it not? Has property ever been abolished? Of course not. So how could classes cease to exist? How could states cease to exist?

Doesn't this rather prove our contention, that instead of just closing our eyes and wishing the state away, we actually have to fundamentally reorganise society for it to happen?

[Geiseric]

And how could it not? Has properit y ever been abolished? Of course not. So how could classes cease to exist? How could states cease to exist?

Doesn't this rather prove our contention, that instead of just closing our eyes and wishing the state away, we actually have to fundamentally reorganise society for it to happen?

So you want to get rid of property? Instead of reorganizing it to be publicly owned? Because that was the SPDs whole deal.

[Blake's Baby]

I do 'wish' people could discuss political positions without resorting to claims about what other people 'want'. But perhaps the material conditions for such a development don't currently exist.

Classes are an expression of differential property relations. It is only when all property has been taken under the control of the working class and the working class has generalised its own condition to the other classes in society - ie, when separate 'classes' have ceased to exist - that the state (all states) will cease to exist.

[TheDoctor1996]

A group of control freaks who brainwash and control people in order to keep their power.

[Remus Bleys]

In this thread we see Marxists essentialy become Weberists in trying to marry two conflicting ideals. The fact that class is determined by the relationship to the means of production perpetuated through culture and ideology and the idea that state determines this. Essentially meaning that the state represents a means of production. And this stems from the reductionist view of the state that it merely manages property and the ideals of the bourgeoisie.

The fact of the matter is that class is wholely dependend on their relationship to the means of production and taking away or changing that relationship means that class will end and/or its nature will change dramatically.

The state is completely irrelevant for this and revolution itself and the abolishment of property and, logically, the state (as a factor of property).

The state then becomes defunct and worthless. UNLESS of course property is maintained....and thus class society is perpetuated.

In the current context of this thread the state would be perpetuated in the hands of the working class....or rather a small portion of the working class.

This will immediately change that portion of the working class's relationship to the means of production...and will immediately either create a sub-strata inside the expanded class (to later develop into a class in its own rights) determined by direct control and ownership to the means of production or simply recreate, redefine and redetermine the class interests of those who control the state (and thus property).

In other words. A new class or sub-class will emerge which will be emoblished by the state over the other classes or main class.

This has in fact happened time and time again.
Class isn't determined by relationship to the means of production, it's determined by the historical mode of production that the class fights for, by the actions the class takes. It's a dynamic, muddled, complicated thing formed from the "relationship of the means of production" (not who owns them or doesn't own them, don't look at mere juridical views of property - rather of the without-reserves, the wage labor, the ones who have nothing) and of the action of the various parties (of the class enemy, of the opportunists, of other classes, and finally the communists). You see, your juridical view of property then leads you to deduce that because of the fact that the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is actually composed of capitalists because the fact the revolutionary class controls the means of production (of course, this is not all "one fell swoop," as socialism cannot be established by decree), you then use this to say that the proletariat is essentially bourgeois (even worse! A "new class": Bureaucracy!) even though through this control a whole new mode of production (communism) is being established. Undoubtedly this juridical view is the cause of your inability to understand the nature of the state.

Not having the state during the dictatorship is like socialism in one country. It would be nice, but its impossible. This isn't because it's a policy we find disagreeable but because it is impossible.

[PhoenixAsh]

Are you familiar with class theory?

Class is determined by the ownership of the means of production and position in the hierarchy of the production process. Class is a contributing factor to the mode of production.

[Црвена]

A perpetuator of hierarchy.

[RedMaterialist]

And how could it not? Has property ever been abolished? Of course not. So how could classes cease to exist? How could states cease to exist?



Property didn't even exist until about 10,000 yrs ago. Marx answered the question how classes and the state would cease to exist: The working class will revolt and destroy the capitalist state and then create their own state. The workers' state will then repress out of existence the exploiting capitalist classes. Once that is done the state will no longer have any reason or any basis for existing and it will wither away and die.

[KobeB]

I like my country, we have now post-socialist oriented democratic multi-party system. Only that it is overtly centralized as You might all know our capital city.
I guess our people differ in opinions whether we should stay or leave the concept of United European countries, we like our Hungarian language to be dominant, so we also want to keep our history and traditions alive. It gets harder in big city being cosmopolitan and all.
If you like traveling You are most welcomed in beautiful and sunny city of Budapest on the Danube river :) :)

[Blake's Baby]

Property didn't even exist until about 10,000 yrs ago...

Thatnks for telling me something I already know. I asked has property ever been abolished. If I ask you about the weather as it is now, will you tell me about the end of the last Ice Age?


... Marx answered the question how classes and the state would cease to exist: The working class will revolt and destroy the capitalist state and then create their own state. The workers' state will then repress out of existence the exploiting capitalist classes. Once that is done the state will no longer have any reason or any basis for existing and it will wither away and die.

It's not about 'reasons' for existing - it is all about the 'basis'. Engels' metaphor was based on biology - when the roots of the state (ie, property) are destroyed, the plant that is the result of those roots (ie, the state) will wither. No question of 'reason' at all.

Marx didn't refer to a 'workers' state'. He refered to the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.

[RedMaterialist]

It's not about 'reasons' for existing - it is all about the 'basis'. Engels' metaphor was based on biology - when the roots of the state (ie, property) are destroyed, the plant that is the result of those roots (ie, the state) will wither. No question of 'reason' at all.

What's the difference between the "basis" for the state or the "reasons" for its existence? The raison d'etre of the state is the oppression of a particular class of persons.

I don't think Engels meant that property needed to be destroyed for the state to wither and die. What he meant was that the capitalist class would have to be destroyed by the workers' state dictatorship for the state to wither.


Marx didn't refer to a 'workers' state'. He refered to the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.

What's the difference?

[MarcusJuniusBrutus]

Which state?

[Broviet Union]

Property didn't even exist until about 10,000 yrs ago. Marx answered the question how classes and the state would cease to exist: The working class will revolt and destroy the capitalist state and then create their own state. The workers' state will then repress out of existence the exploiting capitalist classes. Once that is done the state will no longer have any reason or any basis for existing and it will wither away and die.

But actual experiments in developing socialist societies have created situations in which power and access to resources, opportunity, and social prestige are monopolized by relatively small groups that the bureaucratic state apparatus relies on to carry out its functions. So either the Marxist theory of the state is fatally flawed, or Marxism-Leninism is. Possibly both.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

But actual experiments in developing socialist societies have created situations in which power and access to resources, opportunity, and social prestige are monopolized by relatively small groups that the bureaucratic state apparatus relies on to carry out its functions. So either the Marxist theory of the state is fatally flawed, or Marxism-Leninism is. Possibly both.

But Marxist theory doesn't talk about "power and access to resources, opportunity, and social prestige", but the relations of production.

[Broviet Union]

But Marxist theory doesn't talk about "power and access to resources, opportunity, and social prestige", but the relations of production.

The relations of production were also not significantly different than a capitalist state either; wage labor, violent strike breaking, alienation of the workers from genuine demcratic control over the means of production.

All of this just makes the classic Marxist states sound even worse than liberal bourgeois capitalism.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

The relations of production were also not significantly different than a capitalist state either; wage labor, violent strike breaking, alienation of the workers from genuine demcratic control over the means of production.

All of this just makes the classic Marxist states sound even worse than liberal bourgeois capitalism.

This was pretty much the line of Shachtman, Burnham and Eastman, all renegades from Trotskyism. It led them to support the "good, liberal" Western capitalist states over "evil" Soviet "totalitarianism". Well, they got their wish, mostly. But the people in the former Soviet Union, east Germany, Yugoslavia so on aren't exactly singing "thank God almighty we're free at last!" in the streets. Many of them aren't receiving enough calories to sing, in fact.

Now, as far as the relations of production go, the economies of the Soviet Union and states modeled after the Soviet Union were almost entirely statified and planned, and the ruling class could only have been the proletariat unless you think the party officials were a bourgeoisie (they would have been the most bizarre kind of bourgeoisie ever to exist). Of course wage-labour still existed - wage-labour can't be abolished by bureaucratic fiat. Of course, the system was deeply flawed, but if you can't appreciate the positive sides, you'll end up advocating an even worse system - as Shachtman did.

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

This is a stupid question I know but how do you describe the state?

A tyrannical, parasitical, pathological, suicidal and completely unnecessary form of social organization that for some stupid reason people think is still neat.

[RedMaterialist]

But actual experiments in developing socialist societies have created situations in which power and access to resources, opportunity, and social prestige are monopolized by relatively small groups that the bureaucratic state apparatus relies on to carry out its functions. So either the Marxist theory of the state is fatally flawed, or Marxism-Leninism is. Possibly both.

The monopolization of the exercise of power by relatively small groups is probably a good definition of a state. That is exactly what Marx advocated. The working class, acting through small groups relying on bureaucratic control, will slowly eradicate the capitalist classes. One hopes this will be done peacefully.

The working class will be the last class in history. Then the state will wither away and die.

[Sabot Cat]

The monopolization of the exercise of power by relatively small groups is probably a good definition of a state. That is exactly what Marx advocated. The working class, acting through small groups relying on bureaucratic control, will slowly eradicate the capitalist classes. One hopes this will be done peacefully.

The working class will be the last class in history. Then the state will wither away and die.

The state is not a tree, or a living organism of any kind. The people who are empowered through it are unlikely to give up their exclusive control of the society's resources, and furthermore, will probably use that leverage for their own benefit to the detriment of the working class as a whole, as they have time and time again in history.

[RedMaterialist]

The state is not a tree, or a living organism of any kind. The people who are empowered through it are unlikely to give up their exclusive control of the society's resources, and furthermore, will probably use that leverage for their own benefit to the detriment of the working class as a whole, as they have time and time again in history.

True enough. The "tree/living organism" language is a metaphor. And the capitalist class will not give up their control voluntarily. That is why a violent revolution is necessary. Engels once remarked that if the capitalists had any sense they would go peacefully. The 20th century, IMO, has proved that violence is necessary.

[Remus Bleys]

The state is not a tree, or a living organism of any kind. The people who are empowered through it are unlikely to give up their exclusive control of the society's resources, and furthermore, will probably use that leverage for their own benefit to the detriment of the working class as a whole, as they have time and time again in history.
The people who empower the state are the working class as a whole, which as they do away with capitalism do away with themselves as the proletariat, until that this state is organized by every person in the world, which actively changes the economic base of the state, leading to the ultimate destruction of capitalism, destroying class and leaving the human. It is absurd to talk of them giving up power, for why would they, and to who would they? When every member of society is the ruler of the state, it makes it superfluous and in that manner it withers away. No one is asking anyone to give up "power" for that would be reactionary... the human species emerges as humanity once more and you ask them to give up "power"?

[Futility Personified]

The state to me can be numerous things, though I think ultimately it all slips into semantics.

The state exists to enact the laws passed by the recognized democratic entity. Ultimately, a collection of individuals at the top will be able to make the rules as they see fit, and utilize the armed forces / police to make their will manifest. If they are voted in by the populace, voted in by each other, or just simply seize power, there will be a variance in how separate the policies they enact will be to the lives of the citizens who live there.

I'd describe a capitalist state as something that on the one hand, performs administrative functions to maintain a state of order within it's boundaries, with certain obligations to those considered it's citizens. At the same time, it exists to enforce the will of the bourgeoisie, to protect private property and stifle attempts at worker organisation. Any state should be dependent on the millitary forces it commands, as without them, it has no legitimacy. Sure, you have some pieces of paper saying you can do this, or you can do that, but I have 50,000 men with guns. A state seems to always exist for the sake of existing. Having power brings preferential treatment and it would take the psyche of christ to resist the temptation to abuse that.

It's taken me about half an hour of typing then un-typing and generally pissing around so simply, the only thing that would be able to prevent a coercive entity of large proportions subverting a revolution would be direct democracy. No recalling representatives, because representatives cannot make the choices of their constituents accurately. Whilst in the grip of capitalists, the state will only make decisions in their benefit. Whilst in the grip of individuals, a state will come to make decisions according to their benefit. Being head of such a powerful institution can be like being a king, when all the other people who want to be king can follow your interests. Behind closed doors.

[Red Star Rising]

An imaginary notion that is in place to maintain imaginary divisions between people. When these divisions are gone throughout the world, the state will probably follow soon after.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

OK, to begin, I think there are two antagonistic notions of the state being bandied about here: unfortunately, since they are articulated in completely different sets of terms (including instances where the same words refer to different concepts!) having a coherent discussion about these competing notions is incredibly difficult.

To (over-)simplify, let's say there is an "anarchist" and a "Marxist" notion of the state. The former concerns itself primarily with power, and the latter primarily with class. Of course, the reality is that these two things are not independent of one another, but I'll have to come back to that in a minute.

These two notions of the state not only understand what the state is differently, but also where it is. So, for example, while many anarchists would posit the possibility of autonomous zones, or spaces of limited effective sovereignty (eg where the state is incapable of exercising its power), the Marxist notion of the state would tend to be "all or nothing" (or, occasionally, the strange formulation of the "semi-state").

In this way, the anarchist imagination posits spaces in which class effectively breaks down; where the proletariat, in ceasing to act as subject-of-capital, simultaneously does away with the state. The armed activity which defends and expands this space is not itself state, but the interruption of the state. Contrastingly, the "Marxist" position would be that, insofar as the bourgeoisie still exist as a class-for-themselves (a body capable of exercising power) this armed conflict is necessarily between an ascendant (proletarian) state and the (decadent) bourgeoisie.

Of course, you'll see what I did there: power and class enter into both definitions in really fundamental ways.

If there's a problem with the "anarchist" notion, it's failing to grapple explicitly with class and the state. Where anarchists should attempt to look at the way the state shapes class, many anarchists simply say, "power corrupts". It's not, however, that it corrupts, so much as it reconfigures: Power shapes class by changing material relations to production and reproduction. The "Marxist" notion tends to make the same error from the opposite premisses - missing the relationship between class and power by simply saying, "Power doesn't corrupt! That's idealism!" while missing the way that the state is not simply an abstraction, but a real set of social relations inhabited by subjects who are transformed by it (in class terms!).

I recognize that this meanders a bit, and doesn't necessarily answer any questions - I hope it points to some interesting ones, though.