Almost everone here, including Doug and me, agree that class conflict is eliminable.
and horrid acts of interpersonal violence like
>murder, rape, domestic violence, etc.)
No doubr these can be drastically minimized; I do not think they can be eliminated.
that demands the presence of
>the state (an institution that monopolizes legitimate use of force),
>regardless of what sort of social relations we may have.
Those are not the only things that demand the presence of the state. Please note: it is only one function of the state to monopolize the legitimate use of force, although that is a good function. I should not want every Tom, Dick, and Harriet to have the right to blow me away with no fear of legal consequences. In addition to its coercive aspect, the state also,a nd indeed primarily, has a number of other functions" it establishesa nd maintains a regimes of laws that enable people to do things they want to do with some predictive regularity, such as make contracts, have marriages, transfer property, and the like.
This is a point made with eloquent force in HLA Hart's great book The Concept of Law, criticizing the old Austin-Bentham view that the law is commands backed by threats of force--a view basically held by mnay Marxists who have no absorbeds Gramsci's lessons about hegemony. In addition the state provides public goods like roads and schools that people will not provide on their own.
So, even if the last murderer and rapist could be rehabilitated and the last capitalist reformed by labor, we would still the the state and law. Lenin admitted as much in in quasi-anarchist tract, The State and Revolution. His example--a ghood one too--was the Post Office.
jks
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