The State and its functions

What is the right thing to be done

By Daniel Paquet             dpaquet1871@gmail.com

In English:  www.dpaquet1871.blogspot.com

“It is, then, nature’s purpose to make the bodies of free men to differ from those of slaves, the latter strong enough to be used for necessary tasks, the former erect and useless for that kind of work, but well suited for the life of a citizen of a state, a life which is in turn divided between the requirements of war and peace.”[1]

We must remember that Ancient Greece was living under the system of slave-owners, so:  “Since states are made up of two sections, those who have property (including  ‘slaves’, -Ed.) and those who do not, both, if possible, ought to believe that they owe their safety to the regime, and neither ought to treat the other unjustly.  But whichever of the two sections is the more powerful, its members ought to be thoroughly embraced by the regime, so that, with this backing for is interests, the tyrant may be able to avoid the necessity of such measures as the liberation of slaves and the confiscation of arms.  For it is sufficient  for the purpose of being stronger than his attackers if one or other of the two sections be added to his power.”[2]

“- Won’t the Guardians, in facts, be far fewer in number than any other group with special knowledge and name?

• Yes.
• So the state founded on natural principles is wise as a whole in virtue of the knowledge inherent in its smallest constituent part or class, which exercises authority over the rest.  And it appears further that the naturally smallest class is the one which is endowed with that form of knowledge which   alone of all others deserves the title of wisdom.”[3]

This group of Guardians is a class accordingly to Marxists.  Now let us see the role of the State for them.  “The state is a machine in the hands of the ruling class for suppressing the resistance of its class enemies.  In this respect the dictatorship of the proletariat (which occurs so many centuries after Plato, since there were not proletarians in his era, - Ed.) does not differ essentially from the dictatorship of any other class, for the proletarian state is a machine for the suppression of the bourgeoisie.  But there is one substantial difference.  This difference consists in the fact that all hitherto existing class states have been dictatorships of an exploiting minority over the exploited majority, whereas the dictatorship of the proletariat is the dictatorship of the exploited majority over the exploiting minority.”[4]

“Since the State is the form in which the individuals of a ruling class assert their common interests, and in which the whole civil society of an epoch is epitomized, it follows that the State mediates in the formation of all common institutions and that the institutions receive a political form.  Hence the illusion that law is based on the will, and indeed on the will divorced from its real basis – on free will.  Similarly, justice is in its turn reduced to the actual laws.”[5]

“Summing up his historical analysis (The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, -Ed.), Engels says:  ‘The state is, therefore, by no means a power force on society from without;  just as little is “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 cleft into irreconcilable antagonisms which is powerless to dispel.  But in order   that these antagonisms, classes with conflicting economic interests, might not consume themselves and society in sterile struggle, a power, seemingly standing above society became necessary for the purpose of moderating the conflict, of keeping it within bounds of ‘order’; and this power, arise out of society, but placing itself above it, and increasingly alienating itself more and more from it, is the state.’

This expresses with perfect clarity the basic idea of Marxism with on the question of the historical role and the meaning of the state.”[6]

“The Commune (Paris, 1871) is the form ‘at last discovered’ by the proletarian revolution (that formed essentially a working-class government, -Ed.), under which the economic emancipation of labour can take place.  The Commune is the first attempt of a proletarian revolution to smash the bourgeois state machine; and it is the political form ‘at last discovered,’ by which the smashed state machine can and must be replaced.”[7]

More generally, we may say that “the state presents itself to us as the first ideological power over man.  Society creates for itself an organ for the safeguarding of its common interests against internal and external attacks.  This organ is the state power.  Hardly come into being, this organ makes itself independent vis-à-vis society; and, indeed, the more so, the more it becomes the organ of a particular class, the more it directly enforces the supremacy of that class.  The fight of the oppressed class against the ruling class becomes necessarily a political fight, a fight first of all against the political domination of this class.  (…)  But once the state has become an independent power vis-à-vis society, it produces forthwith a further ideology.  It is indeed among professional politicians, theorists of public law that the connection with economic facts gets lost for fair.”[8]

“Socialism means the abolition of classes.  The dictatorship of the proletariat has done all it could to abolish classes.  But classes cannot be abolished at one stroke.”[9]

La Nouvelle Vie Réelle, www.lnvr.blogspot.com   and www.pourlakominternnow.blogspot.com

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[1] Aristotle, The Politics, Penguin Classics, Toronto, 1992, page 69

[2] Ibidem, The Politics, pages 350-351

[3] Plato, The Republic, Penguin Classics, Toronto, 1987,  page 139

[4] Stalin, J. V., The foundations of Leninism, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1975/Reprinted in United States, 2010, pages 42-43

[5] Tucker, Robert C., The Marx-Engels Reader, The German Ideology, W.W. Norton & Company, New York-London, 1978, page 187

[6] Lenin, V.I., The State and Revolution, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1970, /Reprinted by Red Star Publishers, U.S.A., 2014, pages 4-5

[7] Ibidem, The State and Revolution,  page 47

[8] Marx, Karl; Engels, Friedrich; Lenin, V. I., On Historical Materialism, Feuerbach & The End of Classical German Ideology, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972, pages 233-234

[9] Ibidem, Economics and Politics in the Era of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, page 645