Withering away of the state
The withering away of the state refers to a prediction in Marxist theory that the coercive apparatus of government, viewed as a tool for maintaining class domination, will dissolve organically once a classless communist society eliminates the underlying antagonisms necessitating organized suppression.[1] This idea posits that, following the proletarian revolution and a transitional phase of dictatorship of the proletariat, public administration will supplant state coercion as economic abundance and social harmony render forceful governance obsolete. The concept originated in the writings of Friedrich Engels, particularly in his 1877 polemic Anti-Dühring, where he argued that the state arises from irreconcilable class conflicts and must fade as those conflicts resolve through the socialization of production. Karl Marx alluded to similar dynamics in analyses like his Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875), envisioning a higher phase of communist society free from the state as traditionally understood.[2] Vladimir Lenin systematized the doctrine in The State and Revolution (1917), countering reformist distortions by insisting the proletarian state would first smash the bourgeois order before withering, contingent on the global triumph of socialism and unprecedented productive forces.[3] In historical application, self-proclaimed Marxist regimes such as the Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin expanded state structures into vast bureaucratic machines, prioritizing central planning and political monopoly over any observable atrophy, with power concentrating in party elites rather than dispersing.[4] Similar patterns emerged in Maoist China and other 20th-century experiments, where transitional dictatorships persisted indefinitely amid economic scarcity and internal purges, yielding no empirical instance of stateless communism.[5] Critics contend the theory underestimates entrenched interests and human incentives for power retention, lacking causal mechanisms to ensure voluntary dissolution and instead facilitating authoritarian consolidation masked as inevitable progress.[6]Historical Origins
Coinage and Early Development
The phrase "withering away of the state" originates from Friedrich Engels' Anti-Dühring (Herr Eugen Dühring's Revolution in Science), published in 1878, where Engels critiqued the utopian socialism of Eugen Dühring and outlined the Marxist view of the state's eventual dissolution.[7] In the section on socialism, Engels asserted: "The state is not 'abolished'. It dies out," emphasizing that under communism, as class antagonisms vanish and production is organized on a societal scale, the coercive apparatus of the state becomes superfluous and gradually atrophies without forcible destruction.[7] This formulation drew from the German term absterben, connoting a natural decay rather than abrupt elimination, distinguishing it from anarchist calls for immediate state abolition.[8] Engels' coinage built directly on Karl Marx's prior theoretical groundwork, particularly in the Critique of the Gotha Programme (written in 1875 but published posthumously in 1891), where Marx described the revolutionary overthrow of the bourgeois state followed by a proletarian dictatorship as a transitional phase.[9] Marx argued that this dictatorship would suppress bourgeois counter-revolution until the "enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor" vanishes, enabling a higher phase of communist society where the state, as an instrument of class rule, ceases to exist.[9] He contrasted this with reformist demands for a "free people's state," viewing such notions as illusions that perpetuated state power under proletarian guise rather than its ultimate obsolescence.[10] The roots of this idea trace back to Marx and Engels' collaborative The German Ideology (written 1845–1846, published 1932), which first systematically critiqued the state as a product of class division destined to disappear with the abolition of private property and classes. There, they posited that in a classless society, public power would lose its political character, transforming into simple administration of things, thereby rendering the state as a separate entity unnecessary. This early development rejected both Hegelian idealism, which saw the state as the realization of reason, and Proudhonist mutualism, insisting instead on materialist analysis: the state's emergence from economic antagonisms implied its dissolution upon their resolution. Engels later refined these insights in Anti-Dühring to counter Dühring's conservative socialism, which envisioned a perpetuated state under "final cause" governance, underscoring Marxism's commitment to the state's historical transience.[11]Relation to Marx and Engels' Broader Works
The concept of the state's withering away emerges from Marx and Engels' materialist analysis of history, wherein the state functions as a coercive instrument of the ruling class, arising from economic antagonisms as detailed in The German Ideology (written 1845–1846). There, they argue that the division of labor produces classes, and the state emerges to manage irreconcilable class conflicts, but it will dissolve once classes are abolished through communal control of production. This foundational view frames the state not as eternal but as a historical product destined to vanish with the elimination of its economic basis. In The Communist Manifesto (1848), Marx and Engels extend this by declaring the state the "executive committee" of the bourgeoisie, which the proletariat must conquer to dismantle class society, resulting in an "association" where public power loses its political, i.e., oppressive, character. They envision the revolutionary overthrow centralizing means of production, gradually supplanting state coercion with social self-regulation, aligning the withering process with the Manifesto's call for proletarian dictatorship as a transitional step toward classless society. Engels coined the specific phrase "withering away" (absterben) in Anti-Dühring (1877–1878), critiquing utopian socialism by positing that under proletarian rule, the state's administrative functions would expand while its repressive apparatus atrophies, as class antagonisms fade and social relations self-organize. This builds on Marx's earlier ideas, emphasizing dialectical transition rather than abrupt abolition, and counters anarchist immediatism by rooting dissolution in material preconditions. Marx reinforced this in Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875), distinguishing socialism's lower phase—marked by the "dictatorship of the proletariat" and "bourgeois right" remnants—from communism's higher phase, where productive forces enable distribution "according to needs," rendering the state unnecessary as coercive mediation. Similarly, in The Civil War in France (1871), Marx praised the Paris Commune (1871) as a prototype, where officials were elected and recallable, state bureaucracy minimized, and functions fused with societal self-management, prefiguring the state's gradual obsolescence. Engels' The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884), drawing on anthropological data, historicizes the state as emerging around 4,000–3,000 BCE with surplus production and class stratification, reinforcing its impermanence tied to private property's abolition. Across these works, the withering away embodies dialectical materialism: the state, superstructure to the class-based base, extinguishes as communism realizes human emancipation from alienated rule. Scholarly analyses, such as Hal Draper's examination, confirm this consistency, rejecting interpretations of Marx and Engels as statists by emphasizing the state's instrumental, transient role.[12]Theoretical Framework
Preconditions and Mechanisms
In Marxist theory, the preconditions for the withering away of the state center on the complete abolition of class distinctions and antagonisms, which render coercive state apparatus obsolete. Friedrich Engels argued that the state emerges historically from irreconcilable class conflicts and persists only as long as these divisions require organized violence to maintain class rule; its dissolution becomes possible only when productive forces reach a level of development sufficient for society to appropriate the means of production collectively, eliminating scarcity-driven exploitation.[7] This requires a prior revolutionary transformation where the proletariat seizes state power, reorganizes production to end commodity exchange and wage labor, and progressively eradicates bourgeois property relations, leading to a classless society capable of self-administration without hierarchical compulsion.[10] The transitional dictatorship of the proletariat forms the immediate precursor, functioning as the political mechanism to enforce these changes during the shift from capitalism to communism. Karl Marx described this phase as inevitable between capitalist and communist society, where the state assumes the form of proletarian dictatorship to suppress counter-revolutionary forces and centralize control over production, but this is not the endpoint—rather, it sets the stage for the state's self-negation by abolishing the proletariat itself as a distinct class through the elimination of all antagonisms.[10] Engels emphasized that even in this period, the state's role evolves from ruling people to merely "directing processes of production," with coercive elements atrophying as social harmony emerges from material abundance and cooperative labor.[7] Mechanistically, the process unfolds through the proletariat's final independent act: converting private means of production into state property, after which the state loses its raison d'être as classes dissolve and society assumes direct management.[7] Engels clarified that the state does not require forcible abolition post-revolution but "withers away" organically, as its administrative functions—now stripped of class bias—become superfluous in a system of free association where production is planned collectively without anarchy or compulsion.[7] This atrophy hinges on causal progression from revolutionary expropriation to the transcendence of "bourgeois right," where distribution evolves from equivalent exchange to needs-based allocation, obviating any need for state enforcement.[10] Marx and Engels viewed this as dialectical: the very instrument of class suppression (the state) undermines itself by fulfilling its historical task, transitioning governance to unmediated social coordination.[7][10]Dictatorship of the Proletariat as Transitional Phase
The dictatorship of the proletariat, as conceptualized by Karl Marx, constitutes the political form of the transitional period between capitalist society and communist society. In his Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875), Marx stated: "Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat."[10] This phase entails the working class seizing control of the state apparatus to dismantle bourgeois property relations and suppress class antagonisms. During this transitional dictatorship, the proletariat employs state power to expropriate the means of production from the capitalist class, reorganize economic life on socialist principles, and defend the revolution against counter-revolutionary forces. Friedrich Engels elaborated in Anti-Dühring (1878) that the state, under proletarian control, facilitates the abolition of class distinctions by eliminating the economic basis of exploitation, thereby rendering coercive state institutions superfluous over time.[7] Marx viewed this not as perpetual rule but as a temporary measure to achieve the preconditions for a classless society, where "the narrow horizon of bourgeois right" is transcended.[10] The mechanism of transition hinges on the progressive socialization of production, which diminishes the need for state coercion as antagonisms fade. Engels clarified that the state "withers away" precisely because it loses its function once classes are eradicated, contrasting with anarchistic calls for immediate abolition that ignore the material conditions requiring proletarian state power.[7] This theoretical framework posits the dictatorship as a bridge: proletarian dominance ensures the revolutionary restructuring, after which administrative functions persist briefly in a non-coercive form before dissolving into communal self-governance.[13] Empirical implementation, however, has historically deviated from this envisaged temporality, as explored in subsequent analyses.Key Interpretations
Lenin's Clarifications and Polemics
Vladimir Lenin composed The State and Revolution in August and September 1917 while in hiding from the Provisional Government, aiming to restore the original Marxist doctrine on the state against distortions by Second International socialists.[14] The work, published in 1918, systematically expounds Marx and Engels' views, insisting that the bourgeois state must be violently smashed and replaced by the dictatorship of the proletariat, a transitional apparatus to suppress the bourgeoisie and facilitate the transition to classless society.[14] Lenin clarified that the state's withering away is not synonymous with immediate abolition but a gradual process contingent on the elimination of class antagonisms through proletarian rule.[3] Lenin delineated two phases of communist society per Marx's Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875): the lower phase, or socialism, featuring labor-based distribution under proletarian dictatorship; and the higher phase, where "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" prevails, rendering the state obsolete as simple administration of things supplants coercion.[3] He emphasized that this withering requires the economic precondition of socialized production eliminating exploitation, allowing habits of voluntary cooperation to replace coercive state functions.[3] The dictatorship expands democracy for the majority while curtailing freedoms of former oppressors, ensuring the conditions for the state's dissolution.[3] In polemics against bourgeois scholars and opportunists like Karl Kautsky, Lenin rejected portrayals of the state as a neutral reconciler of classes, asserting it as an instrument of minority rule that demands revolutionary destruction, not mere reform or "ultra-democracy."[1] He lambasted opportunists for evading the dictatorship's coercive role, accusing them of diluting Marxism into parliamentary gradualism that preserves bourgeois state machinery.[1] Against anarchists, Lenin countered their advocacy for overnight state abolition, arguing—via Engels—that proletarian organization is essential to vanquish exploiters before classes vanish, as "freedom consists in converting the state from an organ superimposed upon society into one completely subordinate to it."[3] These clarifications positioned the dictatorship not as an end but as a rigorous mechanism to forge the material basis for stateless communism.[3]