>He,a nd all the withering-away-of-the-state Marxists (obviously he's not one of them) are mistaken about socialsim being able to dispense with law and the state, but that is another story. jks
The state is indispensable to class society, but by the same token it is incompatible with a classless society. This is not to support the concept of the state withering away under socialism though, socialism is a class-less society, so the existence of a political state demonstrates conclusively that the society is not socialist.
Socialism is not anarchy, socialism is government of the economy by the people, for the people. As distinct from political government - government of the people (by the people, for the people in its democratic manifestation.) In a capitalist society political government is associated with economic anarchy, a socialist society OTOH is exactly the opposite - economic government, political anarchy.
What few people seem to be able to grasp about socialism is that economic democracy necessitates freedom from political government. It is a crucial foundation, not an optional extra.
Universal, unconditional personal economic security is absolute vital for an economic democracy to function. Each member of society needs to be able to speak with absolute freedom, without fear of political, or especially economic, repercussions. All people need to be able to engage freely and voluntarily in the socialised means of production. So long as there is the slightest possibility of some people gaining power over others, such a society would be corrupted. Many will be afraid to speak out freely about problems, for fear of offending those in power. Those who have power would inevitably seek to use economic means to coerce others to support this or that political decision. By definition, political government is about controlling people. People subject to the control of others cannot at the same time be considered autonomous citizens in a democracy.
Those who have political power over the means of production must logically be considered a separate economic class to the people who do not have such power and would inevitably be the subjects of those who control their livelihood and thus their votes.
In short, power corrupts. Those who have class power have never and will never voluntarily relinquish it. To assert that it would "wither away" is laughably optimistic.
Those who advocate political socialism, on the other hand, proclaim the possibility a form of class society which retains a ruling political class. It makes no sense at all if you look at it closely, in fact it is apparent that both of these concepts amount to the same thing in practice. The only difference is that the "wither away" crowd are making the false promise that it might only be temporary. The political socialists are having none of that, they insist that the political elite could and should will rule us forever.
Capitalism is preferable to either of these forms of "socialism". Ecomonic anarchy under capitalism at least preserves us from totalitarianism. Mostly.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas