On the State “Since the state is the form in which the individuals of a ruling class assert their common interests, and in which the whole civil society of an epoch is epitomized, it follows that all common institutions are set up with the help of the state and are given the political form.” – Marx and Engels, The German Ideology (1845-46), Marx Engels Collected Works, Vol. 5, Progress Publishers, Moscow 1976, p. 90 “And people think they have taken an exceedingly bold step when they have freed themselves of faith in a hereditary monarchy and swear now by the democratic republic. In reality, however, the State is nothing else than a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed no less so in the democratic republic than in the monarchy.” – Frederick Engels (1891), Introduction to The Civil War in France (Charles H. Kerr, 1934, p.26). cf. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels Selected Works, Vol. 2, Progress Publishers, Moscow 1969, p.189 “The proletariat seizes political power and turns the means of production into State property. But in doing this, it abolishes itself as proletariat, abolishes all class distinctions and class antagonisms, abolishes also the State as State. … “The first act by virtue of which the State really constitutes itself the representative of the whole society – the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society – that is, at the same time, its last independent act as the State. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out itself, the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The State is not “abolished.” It dies out.” – Frederick Engels (1880), Socialism – Utopian and Scientific (Charles H. Kerr, 1914, p. 127). – cf. Marx-Engels Collected Works, Vol. 24, Progress Publishers, Moscow 1989, pp.320-21; Selected Works, Vol. 3, pp. 156-57 (deliberately distorted) marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch24.htm “As the state arose from the need to keep class antagonisms in check, but also arose in the thick of the fight between the classes, it is normally the state of the most powerful, economically ruling class, which by its means becomes also the politically ruling class, and so acquires new means of holding down and exploiting the oppressed class. The ancient state was, above all, the state of the slave-owners for holding down the slaves, just as the feudal state was the organ of the nobility for holding down the peasant serfs and bondsmen, and the modern representative state is the instrument for exploiting wage-labor by capital. … “The state, therefore, has not existed from all eternity. There have been societies which have managed without it, which had no notion of the state or state power. At a definite stage of economic development, which necessarily involved the cleavage of society into classes, the state became a necessity because of this cleavage. We are now rapidly approaching a stage in the development of production at which the existence of these classes has not only ceased to be a necessity, but becomes a positive hindrance to production. They will fall as inevitably as they once arose. The state inevitably falls with them. The society which organizes production anew on the basis of free and equal association of the producers will put the whole state machinery where it will then belong–into the museum of antiquities, next to the spinning wheel and the bronze axe.” marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/ch09.htm Also at: Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884), Progress Publishers, Moscow 1968, pp. 168, 170
Posted on: Sun, 18 May 2014 06:06:09 +0000
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