Comment on Communism
lucullus@discuss.tchncs.de 6 days agoMaybe you can clarify for me, as I’m not knowlegeble in Marxism: When the state withers away, what is the central organisation called, that manages the means of production? I thought that would also be called functions of a state. Thanks
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 6 days ago
Engels calls it “the Administration of Things,” I’d call it government. Really, the heart of the matter is that many people think Marx was advocating for decentralization, which does not logically follow from the rest of Marxism advocating for central planning and whatnot, leading to a weird misconception of a lot of cebtralization and somehow dissolving, which is evidently false.
We can think of it as a “State” remaining as long as we recontextualize what that means with respect to Marxism, the modern colloquial sense of a State would remain in an altered form is all.
lucullus@discuss.tchncs.de 6 days ago
Ah, so it is just a case of a specific definition of “state”. What are the attributes of a state in that definition (as they do not include "the Administration of Things)? Goes totally against my intuition with that word
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 6 days ago
The state is fundamentally a tool of class oppression. Such aspects would include private property rights, and other enshrinements of class distinctions, which are gradually erased as property is collectivized. Additionally, aspects like policing would transform to be more akin to social workers as the economic reasons for crime would be dramatically minimized, things like that.