True socialism with a state

[RedWorker]

I wonder if anybody here thinks that a true form of socialism can co-exist with the state. (can be worldwide)

Basically not like the Soviet Union which was essentially capitalism by another name, with private property in the form of state owning all and workers having no power, etc...

Does anyone here believe that true workers' power, social control of the means of production can co-exist with the state, that a true democracy extended to the realm of economy can co-exist with the state?

If so please explain your views and how it would be achieved.

[(A)]

I think Minimal Statism would be a good place to start.

A night watchmen state answerable to the people and with no actual power other than organizing any necessary federal systems (Military, diplomatic, etc.) They would have to hold no actual power other than being a transparent deliverer of information and need to be subject to immediate and unrestricted recall.

Above the State would be the municipalities. Each region having a democratically elected or direct democracy run organization to organize voting. Once again answerable to the people and subject to immediate recall.

An example would be a town hall with five speakers elected by the town to plan further discussion and meetings of all necessary subjects. If one of them is found to be a despot, madman, criminal or whatever he would have no term to protect him and could be instantly fired with a vote.

The danger of any truly democratic nation is how to insure little Hitlers don't take over the military.

Options include municipal militias, or regional armed forces. Preventing a single army from taking over another municipality.

I could go on but I need to sleep I have been on this site for hours. Goodnight posters of RevLeft.

[rat]

It would have to be a VERY BENEVOLENT state, lol, for which there isn't really an historical precedent, not that that invalidates the concept. The state would have to facilitate workers' power while lowering the amount of hours they work, increasing their standards of living, building public works projects, and silencing dissent. From there a transition to communism could be made.

[(A)]

silencing dissent.

How is that benevolent? The fact that they would have the ability and right to silence people would make the whole state against the people and not of them.

People should not be afraid of their government. Government should be afraid of the people.

[radiocaroline]

A true true state which was answerable to the people could, in my opinion, pass the legislation/ideas which would be able to lead to a communist society where everyone is equal... A state can do this but it would only exist as a transitional sense .

[exeexe]

I think the real question is not if it could happen (because it could) but why would you want a state?
What service should the state provide that the workers can not do themselves?

[Psycho P and the Freight Train]

Well, state organs don't just magically disappear. I'm all for immediately abolishing it, but there's no way to do that without proper organization.

And then of course, no attempt to create a dictatorship of the proletariat has ever worked in history. The closest anyone has ever come to that is Cuba. I would say that Lenin's Soviet Union is the best example if it had lasted more than a few years, but Cuba had at least been a functioning workers' state for a while. Even then, they were reliant upon the Soviet capitalists for trade deals that kept them afloat.

The best method I think is something like what the Paris Commune was but with a few changes. There absolutely must be a Central Committee but it must be BACKED UP by a series of workers' syndicates and councils. Those councils must have the ability to immediately recall members of the Central Committee, while the Central Committee directs operations on a large scale. That way, it truly is a system of checks and balances without succumbing to the dangers of typical democratic systems. What happened with the Soviet Union was that the actual Soviets ceased to function, allowing a bureaucracy to form. Once that bureaucracy forms, the workers' state begins moving away from socialism and even into dangerous territory such as Stalin-type methods. Bureaucracies have privileged relationships to production, so they will never be in the interest of the worker. Instead they develop their own interests and transform from a corrupt nominal workers' state into a state capitalist entity and then from that to full-blown capitalism again.

Sorry that was a bit of a rambling mess, but I hope you got the gist of it.

[(A)]

The best method I think is something like what the Paris Commune was but with a few changes. There absolutely must be a Central Committee but it must be BACKED UP by a series of workers' syndicates and councils. Those councils must have the ability to immediately recall members of the Central Committee, while the Central Committee directs operations on a large scale. That way, it truly is a system of checks and balances without succumbing to the dangers of typical democratic systems.

I would agree. I believe that is call communalism and it's how I would hope things would turn out. A number of small municiple sized soviets who are responcible for themselves under democratic rule with a hearty constitution; confederated into one socalist people with a federal arm that is prevented from having any real power over the people. Least that is how I would wish it to be.

[consuming negativity]

I wonder if anybody here thinks that a true form of socialism can co-exist with the state. (can be worldwide)

Basically not like the Soviet Union which was essentially capitalism by another name, with private property in the form of state owning all and workers having no power, etc...

Does anyone here believe that true workers' power, social control of the means of production can co-exist with the state, that a true democracy extended to the realm of economy can co-exist with the state?

If so please explain your views and how it would be achieved.

You're basically asking "are there any liberals here?" Marxists and anarchists agree that the state will at some point have to be done away with and give way to complete autonomous worker self-administration. Although you could accurately characterize the "dictatorship of the proletariat" as a state, Marxists maintain that it is fundamentally different in character from other states in that it seeks to eliminate class distinctions and thereby eliminate itself, and so they probably wouldn't agree with your proposition. However, if you are talking about the state in terms of administration, then both of the aforementioned would give you a resounding "yes", because what we recognize as the state is not order but an organ by which one class subjugates the others, which is mutually exclusive with a classless society.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

You're basically asking "are there any liberals here?" Marxists and anarchists agree that the state will at some point have to be done away with and give way to complete autonomous worker self-administration. Although you could accurately characterize the "dictatorship of the proletariat" as a state, Marxists maintain that it is fundamentally different in character from other states in that it seeks to eliminate class distinctions and thereby eliminate itself, and so they probably wouldn't agree with your proposition. However, if you are talking about the state in terms of administration, then both of the aforementioned would give you a resounding "yes", because what we recognize as the state is not order but an organ by which one class subjugates the others, which is mutually exclusive with a classless society.

I think "autonomous worker self-administration" is a bit vague - to me it hints at federalism and autogestion, which are certainly not widely accepted among Marxists. It also needs to be stated that the public power in a socialist society will have a purely economic-administrative character. There will be no "socialist" laws, for example, merely economic coordination of the socialised, planned economy.

[Црвена]

I personally think that true socialism and a state can't coexist, since the state by nature is a bureaucratic and hierarchical structure and, though it may reverse class antagonisms and reverse who is being oppressed, it will not do away with oppression because it requires a ruling minority. We have seen in history that, when a state is supposedly "utilised for the benefit of the proletariat," it has simply been hijacked by people with bourgeois mentalities who like hierarchy and become a state-capitalist dictatorship over the proletariat. I suppose non-anarchists would refer to society with a state that is "withering away," as socialist too, but a state that wants to be permanent is never socialist.

[Brotto Rühle]

States only exist where class exists. I recommend reading David Adams' "Karl Marx and the State".

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

The state has not always existed. Given the total amount of human history there is to study, the state is absolutely miniscule in terms of timescale. 'States' in the modern sense (tools of power that have legitimacy in their use by governments in areas of policy, finance and foreign policy irrespective of 'divine rights' [i.e. through some notion of popular support, be it real or a facade]) really only started to exist in the middle of the last millenium. There were the Italian city states of (I believe) the 11th century, but they were short-lived and after that you only really saw the state in Britain, for example, starting to exist in a very immature form in the 14th century (with the poll taxes), but in its parliamentary, 'popular' form obviously only in the 17th Century after Charles snuffed it.

The lesson here is that there is no reason to believe that in a post-capitalist society (a truly post-capitalist society, not an ideologically-driven revolution rushed through by the few 'on behalf of' the many) a state would necessarily exist. The historical evidence points to the state (its levers utilised by a 'popular' government of some description) being a pre-cursor to economic expansion and the rise of generalised for-profit production.

In feudal times, the hierarchy of the feudal system itself, and the particular notions of Lords' control over demesne farming, formed the basis of social organisation. In capitalist times today, the state largely acts as the basis of social control, and in its more benevolent elements forms the basis of social provision in the form of (normally) education, healthcare and other 'minimum' provisions of a basic living standard. In a post-capitalist society, therefore, it is far from certain that any 'state', as we know it in its current form, would form the basis of social provision. Given that we are aiming for a society where 'social control' would not form part of the policy discussion, I don't necessarily see such a large, all-encompassing, national entity as being something we should strive towards. A more federalised system that focuses more on allowing greater social freedoms and satisfactory, efficient access to social provision is more something that I believe would be in keeping with the aims of a socialist society.

[Slavic]

The state should only exist during the revolution. It is a tool that can be used against the contra aswell as war time command economics. I do not favor command economy but I think it is the most useful during war time and famine which undoubtfully will occur during a revolution.

[RedMaterialist]

I think it depends on how you define "socialism." If it is defined as a transitional stage to communism then the workers' dictatorship/state can exist with socialism. After the capitalist class is eliminated then the state will wither and die and a communist society can finally be built.

On the other hand, if you define socialism and communism as basically the same thing then socialism cannot exist under a state, even a state as the dictatorship of the working class.

[Maraam]

Socialism is a mode of production and it does not require a lack of state. The lower and higher phase of communism both have the same relations of production (once socialism is built), but in an international situation where other capitalist countries exist it is impossible for the state to wither away.

Once that has settled and the economic forces of communism have developed, then the state can wither away and we can have socialism without a state. However to say that it is not 'true' socialism because there is a state is to engage in utopianism - we can all agree that a stateless society would be 'better' than a statist society, but taking that as part of the definition of socialism is arbitary and ignores how different geographical areas can have (and have had) different modes of production and those are interrelated in world society. Specifically, a classless society could exist in one area ('one country' if you will, although it wouldn't be particularly stable) and thus should not need the state, however as it's not isolated the state will continue to exist in order to exert class dominance internationally, by preventing counter-revolution internally and invasion externally. This could take the form of sporadic militias or a standing army and police force, but a state none-the-less. The economy would be socialist, but it would not be 'true communism' due to the existence of the state and the fact that communism hasn't been able to develop due to internal capitalism.

[Brotto Rühle]

Socialism is a mode of production and it does not require a lack of state. The lower and higher phase of communism both have the same relations of production (once socialism is built), but in an international situation where other capitalist countries exist it is impossible for the state to wither away.Yeah no. Socialism cannot exist in one country.


Once that has settled and the economic forces of communism have developed, then the state can wither away and we can have socialism without a state. However to say that it is not 'true' socialism because there is a state is to engage in utopianism - we can all agree that a stateless society would be 'better' than a statist society, but taking that as part of the definition of socialism is arbitary and ignores how different geographical areas can have (and have had) different modes of production and those are interrelated in world society. Define socialism and how a single country can be it in a world of capitalism.


Specifically, a classless society could exist in one area ('one country' if you will, although it wouldn't be particularly stable) and thus should not need the state, however as it's not isolated the state will continue to exist in order to exert class dominance internationally, by preventing counter-revolution internally and invasion externally. This could take the form of sporadic militias or a standing army and police force, but a state none-the-less. The economy would be socialist, but it would not be 'true communism' due to the existence of the state and the fact that communism hasn't been able to develop due to internal capitalism.socialism is communism. As is typical of the Stalinite, you have no idea what you're even talking about.