Engels was just wrong.
--- On Fri, 9/25/09, c b <cb31450 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Problem ?
>
> Here's the classic Marxist idea from Engels:
>
> “The state is, therefore, by no means a power forced on
> society from
> without; just as little is it 'the reality of the ethical
> idea', 'the
> image and reality of reason', as Hegel maintains. Rather,
> it is a
> product of society at a certain stage of development; it is
> the
> admission that this society has become entangled in an
> insoluble
> contradiction with itself, that it has split into
> irreconcilable
> antagonisms which it is powerless to dispel. But in order
> that these
> antagonisms, these classes with conflicting economic
> interests, might
> not consume themselves and society in fruitless struggle,
> it became
> necessary to have a power, seemingly standing above
> society, that
> would alleviate the conflict and keep it within the bounds
> of 'order';
> and this power, arisen out of society but placing itself
> above it, and
> alienating itself more and more from it, is the state."
> (Pp.177-78,
> sixth edition)[1]
>
>
> Because the state arose from the need to hold class
> antagonisms in
> check, but because it arose, at the same time, in the midst
> of the
> conflict of these classes, it is, as a rule, the state of
> the most
> powerful, economically dominant class, which, through the
> medium of
> the state, becomes also the politically dominant class, and
> thus
> acquires new means of holding down and exploiting the
> oppressed
> class....” The ancient and feudal states were organs for
> the
> exploitation of the slaves and serfs; likewise, “the
> modern
> representative state is an instrument of exploitation of
> wage-labor by
> capital. By way of exception, however, periods occur in
> which the
> warring classes balance each other so nearly that the state
> power as
> ostensible mediator acquires, for the moment, a certain
> degree of
> independence of both....” Such were the absolute
> monarchies of the
> 17th and 18th centuries, the Bonapartism of the First and
> Second
> Empires in France, and the Bismarck regime in Germany.
>
> “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
> was
> necessarily bound up with the split of society into
> classes, the state
> became a necessity owing to this split. We are now rapidly
> approaching
> a stage in the development of production at which the
> existence of
> these classes not only will have ceased to be a necessity,
> but will
> become a positive hindrance to production. They will fall
> 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
> machinery
> of state where it will then belong: into a museum of
> antiquities, by
> the side of the spinning-wheel and the bronze axe."
>
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