>Dismissing a direct reading of the "withering away of the state" phrase as
>an "anarchist" interpretation will not do. It is an outburst
>of anarchist utopianism by Marx, pure and simple.
Draper's exhaustive survey of absolutely everything that Marx said about
this subject suggests that it wasn't an "outburst." Marx was anti-state and
hoped that the rise of the proletariat would create the objective
conditions under which the withering away of the state could happen.
Marx's optimism on this issue seems based on his extrapolation of the
growth and spread of the working-class movement in Western Europe during
his lifetime. But the development of the proletariat as a class-conscious
and self-organized force is much more complicated and contingent than the
"laws of motion of capital," the drive to create crises, concentration,
centralization, etc. Marx was much more accurate about the latter,
therefore. (Mike Lebowitz' BEYOND CAPITAL is good on this stuff.)
> What is in the CM in no way can be called a "withering away of the
> state," and I continue to maintain that the latter is an utopian "vision"
> (yes, Jim D., I agree, it is a vision and hence "utopian").
It's not utopian in the sense that Marx & Engels used the term, since it is
based in a materialist analysis of historical potentialities of capitalist
society, i.e., the failures & successes of capitalism in conjunction with
the growth of the working-class movement as the basis for replacing it.
Utopianism typically refers to having a fixed image of the way the world
"should be" and then trying to create or bring about that image. I don't
think Marx's vision of the withering away of the state is detailed enough,
while he clearly believed that workers were the ones who would create their
own socialism rather than applying some preconceived model.
Almost everyone has a tinge of utopianism -- an inkling of the way the
world should be. Milton Friedman, for example, has a vision of a perfect
market Eden. Unfortunately, his views are endorsed by powerful agencies
such as the US Treasury Department and the IMF, who try to force the world
into that mold.
>What is in the CM's platform is fairly practical, and as has already been
>noted by me, some of it is standard in most
>most modern economies (e.g. progressive income tax), and some is standard
>in garden variety socialist economies,
>(e.g. nationalized credit), and some is more utopian (e.g. abolition of
>the distinction between the city and the country,
>unless one considers suburbs to have achieved this... ).
It's important to avoid quoting this list out of context. _Before the list_
is presented, the CM's "platform" is portrayed as a "pretty generally
applicable" description of what the proletariat will do to "win the battle
of democracy," to become "organized as the ruling class," to make "despotic
inroads on the rights of [capitalist] property." Further, it is
"economically insufficient and untenable, but ... in the course of the
movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old
social order..." (page 490 of Tucker's 2nd edition of the MARX-ENGELS READER)
In this light, Marx & Engels' list doesn't sound like a "platform" or "the
features of a socialist state" as much as a tentative description of what
can/will/might happen in the early stages of a revolution. It's pretty much
the same thing as what Marx elsewhere called the "dictatorship of the
proletariat." It's the establishment of the working class as a new ruling
class, replacing the old one.
Note that the list is _followed by_ a description of the withering away of
the state, without using that term:
"When, in the course of development [in the course of human events?], class
distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in
the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will
lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is
merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another. If the
proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the
force of circumstances, to organize itself as a class, if, by means of a
revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, then it will, along with
these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class
antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its
own supremacy as a class.
"In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class
antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of
each is the condition for the free development of all." (pp. 490-1)
It should be noted that for Marx, the state is an institution of coercion
to impose and reproduce class relations. This differs from the liberal
conception of the state, which is basically an institution that provides
"public goods" which must coerce the free-riders who exploit the production
of public goods without paying for them. (William Baumol stated this theory
well.) Whereas Marx sees the power of the capitalist class to exploit the
workers (and the need for the state to keep the game going), the liberals
ignore that power and conflict in terms of "special interests" that go
against the "general interests" of the society (also known as the "public
interest"). (It's _liberals_ , not Marx, who are in the tradition of
Rousseau's theory of the "general will." They posit a public interest while
ignoring the way in which class relations pervert the concrete expressions
of that interest.)
The way I interpret Marx's descriptions of the "withering away of the
state" (in the CM and elsewhere) is in terms of a shift from the
class-domination vision of the state to an actual application _in practice_
of the liberal image of what the state should be. That is, Marx hoped that
the conflicts in society would shift from being _between classes_ to being
between what's good for society -- something that's decided democratically
by the association of workers rather than springing full-blown from Marx's
head -- and individual interests. Further, communications within the
association would weaken and undermine the potential of special interests
from undermining the collective's goals.
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
