Wojtek *
So basically what you are arguing is abolish the
bourgeois state whose main purpose it to protect
capitalist property rights, and replace it with a
socialist one whose function is to coordinate the
operation of a compex publicly owned economy. That is
a different argument than that the state will
disappear altogether.
^^^^^ CB: Professor Sokolowski I think generally you are better read than I am, but might I suggest you read _The State and Revolution_. It covers these basics, even if you don't agree with them , you could get down the basic idea of what I am getting at. You might focus on the definition of "the state" there. It is taken straight from _The Origin of the Family , Private Property and the _State__ by Engels.
The _state_ does not coordinate economic activity as a state. That is an administration of things function. The state is the special repressive apparatus, standing bodies of armed men, prisons, weapons etc. It doesn't coordinate the economic activities, make the plan. It represses people.
The state is the used by one class to suppress the other. In the first phase there is still a socialist state , because there is a need to suppress the remaining bourgeoisie and defend against remaining bourgeois states elsewhere. In terms of the economy, we are in the "from each according to ability, to each according to _work_ phase still, roughly. In the second phase, there are no more bourgeoisie or bourgeois state, so the state can whither away. That's a ways off. It's communism.
The latter strikes me as an absurd proposition - how
on earth can one seriously believe that 6+ bn people
can live and interact without institutionalized norms
of behavior, laws, institutionalized means of
communication, etc. is beyond me.
^^^^^ CB: This is where communism does finally unite with anarchism. Communism doesn't hold that there won't be coordination, communication, customs etc. There will be all that, or else how to plan ? What communism holds with anarchism is that humans are capable of doing this without a repressive apparatus, guns, soldiers, police. When exploiting classes are abolished, we will all be able to get along without repressive apparatus, war, etc. It is fundamentally trusting of human _nature_ not warped by class exploitative society.
Government not a state, if we want to use two words to distinguish.
" The state, then, has not existed from all eternity. There have been societies that did without it, that had no idea of the state and state power. At a certain stage of economic development, which necessarily involved the split of society into classes, the state became a necessity because of this split. 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 just as inevitably as they arose at an earlier stage. Along with them the state will inevitably fall. Society, which will reorganize production on the basis of a free and equal association of the producers, will put the whole state machinery where it will then belong -- into the museum of antiquities, by the side of the spinning wheel and the bronze axe." - Fred Engels
http://www.marx2mao.com/M&E/OFPS84.html#s9