Withering of the State

[Servia]

If the state withers away, how are certain decisions made? If it is made by the people, isn't that just a democracy with no leaders?

[RedWorker]

The point here is the understanding of the word 'state'. Under the Marxist definition, the state would no longer exist. Management of society would, however, exist, and under a broader definition (not the Marxist one) a state may be said to exist. It is not that Marxists re-define words in order to make their universe make sense; rather, it is that they are not concerned with such a 'state', but with the state as we understand it, which WOULD disappear.

How the structure of the management of society will be is left for the coming society to establish, but it will start out with the structure of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

[Creative Destruction]

If the state withers away, how are certain decisions made? If it is made by the people, isn't that just a democracy with no leaders?

Italics are Bakunin; normal text is Marx.


Bakunin: The Germans number around forty million. Will for example all forty million be member of the government?

Marx: Certainly! Since the whole thing begins with the self-government of the commune.

The whole people will govern, and there will be no governed.

If a man rules himself, he does not do so on this principle, for he is after all himself and no other.

Then there will be no government and no state, but if there is a state, there will be both governors and slaves.

i.e. only if class rule has disappeared, and there is no state in the present political sense.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1874/04/bakunin-notes.htm

The entire thing is worth a read.

[Servia]

Would workers all over the world be working in conjunction with each other? The world would be one large commune?

[Blake's Baby]

Depends what you mean. It would be hard (not impossible) for me to have a real debate with a worker in Harbin or Nairobi or La Paz about something as I would with someone who lives on the same street/works in the same building. So in that sense, no.

But my assumption is that there would be 'vertical integration' and a measure of representation. We can't have a 'mass assembly of the world'. But the neighbourhood assemblies or workplace assemblies send some delegates to the city council, and the city council sends some delegates to the regional council, and the regional council sends some delegates to the continental council, and the continental council sends some delegates to the world council.

[RedMaterialist]

Would workers all over the world be working in conjunction with each other? The world would be one large commune?

Why not? We would all use the internet and social media.

[RedMaterialist]

If the state withers away, how are certain decisions made? If it is made by the people, isn't that just a democracy with no leaders?

A democracy is a type of state, as is any dictatorship. A society without a state (something practically impossible to imagine, yet) would be a society based on cooperation and not coercion.