Will musical artists still be paid by sales?

[condor]

And related to this, does communism imply equality whenever possible?

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Musical artists won't be paid.

[Zoop]

People won't be paid at all, as money won't exist.

Yes, communism does imply equality. If it doesn't involve equality, it isn't communism.

Equality here meaning equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome or endowment.

[Sibotic]

Well, I mean, it is possible that 'musical artists' who someone in a governing role dislikes can't receive anything, it is also possible that there might be stipulations in place to prevent this in what some might call a less important nation. All of these possibilities are within the ambit of what is possible in communism, where the consumption of musical artists is not the question.

[ShadowStar]

And related to this, does communism imply equality whenever possible?

No, musical artists will not be paid. Under communism, money will be abolished.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Well, I mean, it is possible that 'musical artists' who someone in a governing role dislikes can't receive anything, it is also possible that there might be stipulations in place to prevent this in what some might call a less important nation. All of these possibilities are within the ambit of what is possible in communism, where the consumption of musical artists is not the question.

Government in communism?

Nations in communism?

Um... no.

Also, the consumption of musical artists is very much the question; refer to the cannibalisation theory tendency.

[Zoop]

Well, I mean, it is possible that 'musical artists' who someone in a governing role dislikes can't receive anything, it is also possible that there might be stipulations in place to prevent this in what some might call a less important nation. All of these possibilities are within the ambit of what is possible in communism, where the consumption of musical artists is not the question.

How exactly are governing roles compatible with communism?

[Sibotic]

Government in communism?

Nations in communism?

Um... no.

Also, the consumption of musical artists is very much the question; refer to the cannibalisation theory tendency.
'Consumption' is a term with multiple meanings, yes, it's a pity you didn't get the memo.

Administrative roles in communism is something that has been pretty much a staple of historical views regarding organisation and such relating to communism, so that's not really as straightforward as you're posing it (by conflating 'government' used here in a loose sense with 'state,' although whatever.) 'Nations' was used in a fairly insignificant position, now that you mention it, in which it surely can't be a source of even the most pedantic consternation.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

'Consumption' is a term with multiple meanings, yes, it's a pity you didn't get the memo.

Someone must have eaten the courier. Happens all the time.


Administrative roles in communism is something that has been pretty much a staple of historical views regarding organisation and such relating to communism, so that's not really as straightforward as you're posing it (by conflating 'government' used here in a loose sense with 'state,' although whatever.) 'Nations' was used in a fairly insignificant position, now that you mention it, in which it surely can't be a source of even the most pedantic consternation.

You weren't talking about the communist administration of things. You were talking about someone in a "governing role" (?) stopping an artist from receiving things, i.e. that thing we call "government over men", which will not exist in communism. And the government is the executive committee of the state, or by synecdoche the state itself. People on RL sometimes make weird claims that a government can exist in a stateless society, but this is to be taken as seriously as lelbertarians who insist that a republic and a democracy are two different kinds of government, and simply denotes the sad failure of intellectual imagination many users suffer from, where they imagine communism to have the same old shit structure of class society from beat cop to prime minister.

[Sewer Socialist]

Well, I mean, it is possible that 'musical artists' who someone in a governing role dislikes can't receive anything, it is also possible that there might be stipulations in place to prevent this in what some might call a less important nation. All of these possibilities are within the ambit of what is possible in communism, where the consumption of musical artists is not the question.

Concerns about nations and governance aside (and are important, despite your dismissal of them), there are two more points about communism you are missing.

Communism is a free access society; even the most horrible musicians receive anything and everything they need.

Because of that, people are not compelled to work, and so the distinction between professional and amateur musician is blurred. So even if everyone thinks your music is shit, you are not starving, you are not homeless; nothing at all is withheld from you.

Of course, if no one likes your music, you probably would not spend 50 hours a week on it.

[Ricemilk]

There's a confusion between communism and socialism in some of this thread. As commonly understood, anyway. Communism is a state, a condition of our species, which no existing or recent nation-state has claimed to successfully install. Communist Parties are called that because they're full of Communists, not because any state they achieve power in is then Communist. It may be administered according to variably-compromised socialist principles, but it's not communism. The closest real-life examples to communism are non-state projects of various scale, and they are often quickly overcome by capitalist force of arms and diplomacy, or the pressures of same on their home Party. If we're talking about communism, consumption and production are two different aspects of every commune/society member's life. simple guide: 1. children, the elderly and the sick/infirm/disabled have a right to live. 2. so, free food, and the other material needs of life. 3. beyond that: he who wishes to eat shall work. 4. you work tomorrow, you eat free today. 5. you shirk the equal (not literally hour for hour) division of labor for selfish reasons (ie not struggling with depression/fatigue/inadequately controlled pain/etc).....soon time for a little chat with concerned members of the community. 6. repeat until end of species. People may, through the consumers' union, demand discs be pressed with the music of those who want to produce it. If so, the recording, pressing and sale is an entirely different aspect of the musicians' life than the consumption and personal possession of necessities and (equally) sharing of the good things in life as interested/possible. Musicians in communism should have no more need of currency than anyone else, that is, zero or maybe in some possible systems, some kind of work/excuse chit or credit token, where if they do something productive (or can't), they have access to so many imported and luxury goods, say. They need not prioritize profit; those who desire profit over communism will probably have a more suitable geopolitical entity to move to.

[Sewer Socialist]

Communism abolishes work, in that there is no distinction between work and recreation. As such, people are not coerced to work. Coercion is the method of a repressive society, a society of conflict, a society we will abolish. Unions, a method of resisting a repressive society, are similarly irrelevant. There is no currency, no tokens, no vouchers, nothing at all other than global communism - complete freedom for every single inhabitant of the planet.

If not, what's the fucking point? I've had enough of work-or-starve, work-or-be-evicted, work-work-work either way, work-work-work till you die.

[Ricemilk]

Unions, a method of resisting a repressive society, are similarly irrelevant.
This is an overly essentialist view of the nature of unions. They are organizations for more or less direct proletarian (and other subaltern class) control of socioeconomic affairs. In free communism (any other kind seems a blatant oxymoron), people will organize unions of both production and consumption to coordinate activities, and neither your favorite party nor favorite leader will be able to repress it.

I harbor no illusions that a free revolution would be devoid of Marxists; let them organize their repression or lack thereof on the adjacent commune, and workers from there may choose to join the free project if they wish...or not. Similarly, producers' and consumers' unions will be a reality in the communist areas, as in every other genuine revolution, and if you can effectively prevent this from occurring, you do not live under communism, but at best, some sort of advanced revolutionary state which still yearns and strives for communism.

No disrespect meant to your ideology, analyses or vision of the good society; no reason it shouldn't be able to coexist peacefully with communism.

[Sewer Socialist]

This is an overly essentialist view of the nature of unions. They are organizations for more or less direct proletarian (and other subaltern class) control of socioeconomic affairs. In free communism (any other kind seems a blatant oxymoron), people will organize unions of both production and consumption to coordinate activities, and neither your favorite party nor favorite leader will be able to repress it.

I harbor no illusions that a free revolution would be devoid of Marxists; let them organize their repression or lack thereof on the adjacent commune, and workers from there may choose to join the free project if they wish...or not. Similarly, producers' and consumers' unions will be a reality in the communist areas, as in every other genuine revolution, and if you can effectively prevent this from occurring, you do not live under communism, but at best, some sort of advanced revolutionary state which still yearns and strives for communism.

No disrespect meant to your ideology, analyses or vision of the good society; no reason it shouldn't be able to coexist peacefully with communism.

You are correct to note that unions are (at their best, at least) a proletarian organization. But communism abolishes the proletariat. There is no working class in communism; there are no classes!

Similarly, there are no parties, no leaders, no representatives of conflicting interests. Similarly, everyone is a producer and everyone a consumer, and so they're no unions of either in so much as there are no organizations which stand apart from society. There is a general coordination of society, but it is free of antagonism, free of conflict.

Unions and the like are not "prevented," and I definitely did not use that word. I said they are made irrelevant - a vestige of class society, of contradiction, of a contradiction which has been resolved.

Communism will overtake all that is non-communist, there will be no non-communism. This will be established by the same force which makes irrelevant the regression to capitalism or slavery; if everyone's needs are met, exploitation is abolished.

I have no idea what you are referring to as "my ideology," or anything that will "coexist with communism," as if it is something other than communism itself.

[Ricemilk]

You are correct to note that unions are (at their best, at least) a proletarian organization. But communism abolishes the proletariat. There is no working class in communism; there are no classes!Because the productive of the former classes organized their freedom, then their power, then all capital and work through institutions they had wisely established with explicit-mandate votes of the entire membership facilitated by instantly recallable delegates they freely elected from among their own, to prevent stratification or political isolation. These institutions, the leaderless fighting unions, will have a continued role allowing the establishment of incredible feats of human cooperation for those who choose to contribute (as people are driven to do).


Similarly, there are no parties, no leaders, no representatives of conflicting interests.Would tend to agree except your assertion about the absence of unions, flying in the face of what has been observed in anarchies; theoretically not too different from the goal of heterodox Communist Parties. (ETA: Other than communism hopefully lasting longer)


Similarly, everyone is a producer and everyone a consumer, and so they're no unions of either in so much as there are no organizations which stand apart from society. There is a general coordination of society, but it is free of antagonism, free of conflict.This is exactly the organization I refer to. (ETA: Except that the lack of a soviet-like structure for people to decide on things as consumers would have the effect of leaving the disabled and elderly out of decision-making. If the Party is separate from the union, I suppose it fulfills a similar role to a consumer's union in a sense.)

It's (been) easiest to call these unions in my dialect, and (other than the specific political unions who see their existence as inherently limited and more demonstrative than constitutive) they don't shrink away in favor of another, differently-structured organ of high social cooperation accomplishing the exact same functions by the same ultrademocratic means, because that would be a waste of time unless the same free association of producers (and consumers, though these are of course not two entirely distinct groups) somehow became unable to perform the same functions under the same institutional demands as immediately before they achieved communism together.

Maybe you would call such an organization something different, like a syndicate, or simply the social organization? In any case, on the road to communism, it would not be inherently difficult for, say, Marxist-Leninist farmhands skeptical of the anarchists' path to communism to break off to (ETA: try to) perfect their preferred intermediate means of organizing the social revolution without interference, but in solidarity with all other genuine associations of producers earnestly seeking to meet global needs and uplift the species together. And vice versa.

If one of the experiments (or new iterations of old ideas) demonstrably leads close to communism, workers in the other organization might dissolve theirs or otherwise merge the two. Either way, the associations of communism allowing workers to control their workplaces and efficiently gather and act on information about needs of the consumers (everyone, including the old, infirm, distant, etc.) and society at large, will presumably not be intensely structurally different from the original soviets, the Spanish federation, or other social organizations of labor which presided over actual revolutions. And here I mean whichever organization is responsible for organizing labor/production as such.


I have no idea what you are referring to as "my ideology," or anything that will "coexist with communism," as if it is something other than communism itself.Extrapolating from the logic apparent to me at the time, though I'm holding out hope that we've simply had a bit of a misunderstanding about organizational nomenclature. I have been up a long time.

[Sibotic]

Concerns about nations and governance aside (and are important, despite your dismissal of them), there are two more points about communism you are missing.
Not really, but if you have problems with the fact that people might call something a nation under communism, then that's really a problem with their use of words rather than anything substantial.


Communism is a free access society; even the most horrible musicians receive anything and everything they need.Socialism isn't inherently a 'free access' society, no, and this much can be attested in Das Kapital as well as historical socialism in fairly clear and correct manners.


Because of that, people are not compelled to work,'That' here is an assumption. I'm saying that communism can accommodate various things, and you're saying that you'd prefer one way, which wasn't the question and is probably not up to you.


and so the distinction between professional and amateur musician is blurred.This is rarely blurred, except in the sense that abolishing the 'division of labour' makes everyone an amateur everything, which is a different sense entirely. A major musician and a local one are always quite differentiated, as also questions of who should be which, and problems people might have over an artist being one rather than the other.


So even if everyone thinks your music is shit, you are not starving, you are not homeless; nothing at all is withheld from you.
I don't think that someone who is hated by everyone is really likely to be subject to such things, because that wouldn't be much of a statement.


You weren't talking about the communist administration of things. You were talking about someone in a "governing role" (?) stopping an artist from receiving things, i.e. that thing we call "government over men", which will not exist in communism. And the government is the executive committee of the state, or by synecdoche the state itself. People on RL sometimes make weird claims that a government can exist in a stateless society, but this is to be taken as seriously as lelbertarians who insist that a republic and a democracy are two different kinds of government, and simply denotes the sad failure of intellectual imagination many users suffer from, where they imagine communism to have the same old shit structure of class society from beat cop to prime minister. 'Governing role' is about as vague as you'd need, it involves a role that involves governing in some sense, which needn't even imply a 'government.' That said, if something along these lines were to be established by a democratic vote (which I think we can agree wouldn't re-establish capitalism), then would that be similarly a problem for the following reason, namely that democracy was the bourgeois state form in its most developed and apt form and a form of government, and therefore incompatible with communism in any capacity? I mean, you might think it better for communism to not have any vestiges of democracy - but that's really your call. We're talking about the possible conditions within a communist state as formally defined (I did use the word 'state,' perhaps close your eyes when reading that bit), which is not a self-sustaining economy not subject to human control, obviously actions taken with a specific rationale might not have been compatible with communism but for other reasons it might be (eg. an artist who was well-off under capitalism might well have others figure that that isn't becoming and opt to strip them of that even if they are still popular), rather than how to make a communist 'situation' more just which is a different question.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Socialism isn't inherently a 'free access' society, no, and this much can be attested in Das Kapital as well as historical socialism in fairly clear and correct manners.

Ah, see, that's the problem; you think that class societies trading on the global market were socialist.


'Governing role' is about as vague as you'd need, it involves a role that involves governing in some sense, which needn't even imply a 'government.'

Of course it does. And even if this were not the case, socialism means the cessation of all governing, all government over men.


That said, if something along these lines were to be established by a democratic vote (which I think we can agree wouldn't re-establish capitalism), then would that be similarly a problem for the following reason, namely that democracy was the bourgeois state form in its most developed and apt form and a form of government, and therefore incompatible with communism in any capacity? I mean, you might think it better for communism to not have any vestiges of democracy - but that's really your call. We're talking about the possible conditions within a communist state as formally defined (I did use the word 'state,' perhaps close your eyes when reading that bit), which is not a self-sustaining economy not subject to human control, obviously actions taken with a specific rationale might not have been compatible with communism but for other reasons it might be (eg. an artist who was well-off under capitalism might well have others figure that that isn't becoming and opt to strip them of that even if they are still popular), rather than how to make a communist 'situation' more just which is a different question.

This is just an awful, awful jumble of words. Is democracy going to wither away in communism? Of course. That's part of the ABC. Whether voting is going to be used is completely irrelevant; democracy as a form of government will be gone. If proposals are to be voted on, they are going to be proposals about increasing the targets for sorghum by an additional seven thousand units, lowering the targets for pig iron by three thousand units and so on. They will not be proposals to ban certain kinds of light bulbs or anal sex or limit abortion - and not to limit what part of the social product some musician can take.


There's a confusion between communism and socialism in some of this thread. As commonly understood, anyway.

As commonly understood, communism and socialism are the same, if we're talking about revolutionary politics. Outside of that context, people might think that Sweden is socialist and Sparta communist, but that's no concern of ours.


If we're talking about communism, consumption and production are two different aspects of every commune/society member's life. simple guide: 1. children, the elderly and the sick/infirm/disabled have a right to live. 2. so, free food, and the other material needs of life. 3. beyond that: he who wishes to eat shall work. 4. you work tomorrow, you eat free today. 5. you shirk the equal (not literally hour for hour) division of labor for selfish reasons (ie not struggling with depression/fatigue/inadequately controlled pain/etc).....soon time for a little chat with concerned members of the community. 6. repeat until end of species. People may, through the consumers' union, demand discs be pressed with the music of those who want to produce it. If so, the recording, pressing and sale is an entirely different aspect of the musicians' life than the consumption and personal possession of necessities and (equally) sharing of the good things in life as interested/possible. Musicians in communism should have no more need of currency than anyone else, that is, zero or maybe in some possible systems, some kind of work/excuse chit or credit token, where if they do something productive (or can't), they have access to so many imported and luxury goods, say. They need not prioritize profit; those who desire profit over communism will probably have a more suitable geopolitical entity to move to.

Oh dear. Where would they move to? Where would the allegedly communist society import goods from? Communism is a global system; just like a man is either dead or alive the world is either communist or capitalist. There can't be pockets of capitalism in communism, and there can't be currency of any kind in communism.

[Sibotic]

Ah, see, that's the problem; you think that class societies trading on the global market were socialist.
That would seem to constitute a problem with the project of the aforementioned book, if 'class societies trading on the global market' weren't a fairly irrelevant part of their definition which can hardly be constitutive of anything.


Of course it does. And even if this were not the case, socialism means the cessation of all governing, all government over men.Govern, obviously, has a technical sense as well as anything else. While obviously that's only true in a technical sense if the law is replaced with peer pressure, which is vulgar and populist like Engels often was and Lenin always was, so whatever, evidently nobody's talking in particular about 'social issues' here, so much as the distribution of things. If you just mean to define laissez-faire government as the community having no influence over the actions of atomised individuals, then that might be more of an issue, other than which obviously communism itself is a social imposition upon the means of distribution. Notwithstanding which distribution in communism is not necessarily an unmediated process, nor necessarily 'free access' (this might be the issue? In any case extending this to unmediated free access which can permit of no limitations is still an extension), so most of this discussion is just pedantry.


This is just an awful, awful jumble of words.
But words are all I have to engage your interest and responses.

[Бай Ганьо]

Even within the context of bourgeois law, paying artists by sales (and by extension the whole concept of intellectual property) makes no sense:


The basic property of information seems to be that its transfer and multiplication is possible without taking away anything from the source. When I tell you something, I don't lose anything from what I'm telling you. I just lose some saliva, some energy, etc.

This entails that information cannot be owned for very intrinsic reasons. Property after all, is something you can lose. If you can't lose something you can't consider it to be your property neither. Thus the whole notion of intellectual property, property of ideas, appears to be nonsensical, and, not for ideological reasons but logically so.

[Emmett Till]

And related to this, does communism imply equality whenever possible?

The original question was profoundly ridiculous, even here on Revleft it would be hard to find anyone other than the condor who might think musicians would be paid on the basis of sales in a society with no buying or selling.

More interestingly, what about under the dictatorship of the proletariat, in a society in transition between capitalism and socialism after the revolution, where money still exists?

Well, in the USSR all musicians were on government salary. Upside being that, as long as they weren't dissidents, they could all quit their day jobs and would not "starve in garrets," the traditional fate of artists of all sorts under capitalism, the phrase coined in France. Try and make a living as a musician or artist in America and you will know what I mean.

The downside of course being that you had to toe the party line or bad things would happen to you.

The solution is obvious, you want proletarian democracy, Leninism not Stalinism. So artists would get state support if their local workers council, or rather the music experts the workers appoint to decide that sort of thing, thought they deserved it, if not they'd be told to get back to their day job and try to produce better stuff for the next yearly review or whatever.

[Jacob Cliff]

Government in communism?

Nations in communism?

Um... no.

Also, the consumption of musical artists is very much the question; refer to the cannibalisation theory tendency.
Not disagreeing with any premises here over whether or not workers would be paid in communism, but just of small note: is communism not the negation of government, but rather the negation of class society and consequently of the state? I have heard, numerous times, that communism is not the abolition of government per se, but is rather the transformation of the "government above men" into the "government of men." I think, ultimately, governing and (of course) administration would not cease under communism but would rather be brought to the fullest extent possible -- the social regulation of society as a whole. I do think there's a qualitative difference between the state and the government (and if I'm wrong, do correct me)

[ComradeAllende]

Not disagreeing with any premises here over whether or not workers would be paid in communism, but just of small note: is communism not the negation of government, but rather the negation of class society and consequently of the state? I have heard, numerous times, that communism is not the abolition of government per se, but is rather the transformation of the "government above men" into the "government of men." I think, ultimately, governing and (of course) administration would not cease under communism but would rather be brought to the fullest extent possible -- the social regulation of society as a whole. I do think there's a qualitative difference between the state and the government (and if I'm wrong, do correct me)

It is important here to make the distinction between the Marxist definition of the state and the more mainstream notion of the state. The Marxists hold the state to be a "dictatorship" of the ruling socioeconomic class over all others in a given mode of production: in feudalism, the landed class ruled over the peasants, the burgesses, the landless knights, the serfs, etc; in capitalism it is the bourgeoisie that rules over the proletariat, the petite-bourgeois, and remnants of the feudal classes (peasants, knights, etc.), although they may rule alongside the ex-ruling class for a while (like the bourgeoisie did with the Juncker aristocracy in Prussia).

The more mainstream notion of "the state" is the elected officials, administrative bureaucracy, etc that carries out the dictates of the implicit rulers, be they "the people" or whomever. The Marxist "state" as a class dictatorship will wither away as we achieve a classless society (since there will be no organized class to rule or oppress); the administrative state will still exist, but it will be subject to direct democratic control and will be solely in charge of managing the production of use-values. As I understand it, laws preventing certain "disorderly" acts like protests, vandalism, and drunkenness will either disappear or be curtailed significantly, although those are certainly subject to debate.

I don't think the OP has a clear hold on what "communism" means; I think he associates "communism" with "barracks communism", and I'll let Marx do the explaining:

What a beautiful model of barracks communism! Here you have it all: communal eating, communal sleeping, assessors and offices regulating education, production, consumption, in a word, all social activity, and to crown all, Our Committee, anonymous and unknown to anyone, as the supreme dictator. This indeed is the purest anti-authoritarianism...

[reviscom1]

Music did not start off as a commercial activity, nor did storytelling.

It started off as a communal activity, telling songs and stories around the fire.

Thanks to the digital revolution, they are becoming that again, but on a much wider scale.

All these Capitalist idiots bemoaning that the internet will "kill" music have all the vision of a bat if they can't see that.

[Luís Henrique]

even the most horrible musicians receive anything and everything they need.

Except, of course, applause.

Luís Henrique

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I'd completely forgotten about this thread.


But words are all I have to engage your interest and responses.

The problem is not that you're using words, the problem is that you're doing so badly. Now, I know some people on RevLeft take poor communication skills to be a sign of some special kind of insight, but they're not. They simply make your posts a pain to read. And when you say something that can be reconstructed as a sentence in the English language, what it says is often so blatantly wrong one wonders if the tortured prose isn't deliberate. For example:


That would seem to constitute a problem with the project of the aforementioned book, if 'class societies trading on the global market' weren't a fairly irrelevant part of their definition which can hardly be constitutive of anything.

(The book in question being Capital.) Marx never defines socialism as class societies trading on the market in the Capital. Marx never defines socialism in the Capital as that work is an explanation of capitalist society. However Engels is clear in Antiduehring that socialism is the same thing as communism, a global, classless, stateless society with no money, markets etc.


Not disagreeing with any premises here over whether or not workers would be paid in communism, but just of small note: is communism not the negation of government, but rather the negation of class society and consequently of the state? I have heard, numerous times, that communism is not the abolition of government per se, but is rather the transformation of the "government above men" into the "government of men." I think, ultimately, governing and (of course) administration would not cease under communism but would rather be brought to the fullest extent possible -- the social regulation of society as a whole. I do think there's a qualitative difference between the state and the government (and if I'm wrong, do correct me)

The usual formulation, by Engels, talks about the government over men being replaced by the administration of things. I did a quick search for "government of men" and "government of persons" in the M-E archive; I wasn't able to find anything except the use of "government of persons" in one translation where "government over men" is in the translation I use, and I don't recall Marx or Engels ever using that phrase, or using the term government in reference to the socialist society. The government is the executive committee of the state; the "political authority" that Engels claims all socialists conceive of as disappearing in the new society. The distinction between government and state is a piece of RevLeft folklore.

Administration would quite possibly increase in the socialist society, particularly as all the means of production that were administered by individuals and private bodies would be administered by public bodies now (but on the other hand, where tens if not hundreds of independent corporations once stood, in the socialist society there will be only one production centre and so on). But government would not - government will have withered away. If the economy is to be administered as one giant machine, by a general social plan, in their private and civic lives people will be free to do as they please. Society will concern itself with those provable and quantifiable affairs that concern the entire society - production, science etc. - and not with metaphysical abstractions such as morality etc.


It is important here to make the distinction between the Marxist definition of the state and the more mainstream notion of the state. The Marxists hold the state to be a "dictatorship" of the ruling socioeconomic class over all others in a given mode of production: in feudalism, the landed class ruled over the peasants, the burgesses, the landless knights, the serfs, etc; in capitalism it is the bourgeoisie that rules over the proletariat, the petite-bourgeois, and remnants of the feudal classes (peasants, knights, etc.), although they may rule alongside the ex-ruling class for a while (like the bourgeoisie did with the Juncker aristocracy in Prussia).

The more mainstream notion of "the state" is the elected officials, administrative bureaucracy, etc that carries out the dictates of the implicit rulers, be they "the people" or whomever. The Marxist "state" as a class dictatorship will wither away as we achieve a classless society (since there will be no organized class to rule or oppress); the administrative state will still exist, but it will be subject to direct democratic control and will be solely in charge of managing the production of use-values. As I understand it, laws preventing certain "disorderly" acts like protests, vandalism, and drunkenness will either disappear or be curtailed significantly, although those are certainly subject to debate.

I think we need to be careful here. The Marxist position that the state is a class dictatorship is an explanation of what the state is; it is not a redefinition, which would make us as dishonest as those American lolbertarians who redefine commonly-understood terms such as capitalism and the market so they can claim some sort of shallow "victory" in debates. I don't think any sort of administration is viewed as a state today; obviously my university is not a state, no matter how many forms I have to sign.