Communist State?

[drain.you]

Hey everyone,
I'm guessing that I have a major problem in my knowledge of communism. Why is it that people say there is no such thing as a communist state? Surely you have a country, ie; a state and when it becomes communist then it is a communist state? Is state referring to something else? I'm confused, help me out please.

[which doctor]

According to some interpretations of Marx (considered by many to be the founder of Communism) the state cannot exist in a communist society. The state only represents oppression and classism. A Communist state is considered (by many less-authoritarian socialists) to be an oxymoron. A Communist state cannot exist because Communism directly opposes the state.

[drain.you]

That didnt really explain anything. I am aware that people think that there is no such thing as a communist state but what do you mean by a state? How is a piece of land ran by the people oppressive?

[LSD]

It really comes down to what one means by "state".

You seem to be using the word interchangably with "country" or "region" which, I suppose, is in the American tradition of the word; but technically speaking, a state is not the land itself, it is the mechanism which rules the land.

The simplest, and most common, definition of the state is simply, "an organized political community, occupying a territory, and possessing internal and external sovereignty, that enforces a monopoly on the use of force". In a more Marxist sense, a state is the body which is created by and which serves to perpetuate the rulling beneficiary of the subsistant class dynamic.

In really really simple terms, therefore, a state is nothing more than the institutional body which creates, maintains, and enforces power within a dilineated area.

So, for instance,"state" of the United State of America is not the landmass occupied by the American government but the American government itself.

The reason that there cannot be a "communist state" is simply that communism is, by definition, a stateless society. That is, there is no political or economic community with an institutional monopoly on force. Rather that monopoly is dispersed to the entire society at large.

"Communist state" is a fundamental contradiction in language. It's like saying a "democratic dictatorship"; the terms are simply inherently dichotomous.

[Fistful of Steel]

Originally posted by [email protected] 19 2006, 11:25 PM
Hey everyone,
I'm guessing that I have a major problem in my knowledge of communism. Why is it that people say there is no such thing as a communist state? Surely you have a country, ie; a state and when it becomes communist then it is a communist state? Is state referring to something else? I'm confused, help me out please.
Because it doesn't become "communist" in some communist's understanding of what communism is. It just becomes a degenerated worker's state, with the bureaucracy in control. Not the classless, free society envisioned.

[RebelDog]

Foremost, if you have a state you have borders and are 'different' from people in other states. Having a border to keep people in is not communism. Having a border to keep people out is not communism. Communism has no borders. Borders limit freedom, as do states.