The main revolutionary Marxist current around today is Trotskyism. The biggest of the Trotskyist internationals is the United Secretariat of the Fourth International (known in Trot circles as USec). Its leading theoretician is Ernest Mandel. Where I put forward a Marxist position it is that put forward by Mandel in a talk given to the Belgian National Federation of Socialist Students and later issued as a pamphlet by the American Socialist Workers Party with the title "The Marxist Theory of the State". Tonight I will concentrate on the fundamental purpose of the State, and not on those socially useful services it provides as an additional function as these are not essential to its purpose nor are they provided by all modern states.
The starting position is common to both anarchism and Marxism, that the State did not always exist. Mandel goes on to say, and we would not disagree with him, that the state has a special characteristic which is "the exercise of certain functions is removed from the community as a whole to become the exclusive perogative of a tiny fraction of members of this community". In other words the emergence of the state is a product of the division of society into rulers and ruled.
The second example is that of justice. In primitive societies there were no legal codes, partly because writing had yet to be invented. However, apart from quarrels decided by families or among individuals themselves, only tribal or collective assemblies were empowered to render judgements. There were no special groups of individuals who had to the right to dispense justice. The idea that certain men or women, detached from the tribe or collectivity, had the right to judge would seem to members of a society based on the tribe or clan just as nonsensical as as the reverse appears to most of our contemporaries.
To sum up, at a certain point in human history, before we were divided into classes, the basic functions of the state were exercised collectively by all adult members of the community. It is only with birth of class society that these functions are taken away from the mass and reserved to a minority who exercise these functions in a special way. This special way is that these functions are primarily used to defend and further the interests of the ruling class.
While the modern capitalist state is far more developed and much better at public relations that the state of fuedal times, it has the same essential purpose. Although there is universal suffrage in perhaps half the world, society has no more control than it did 400 years ago. While governments may come and go with each general election the state remains. Its power is a permanent power. The general staff of the army, the special troops, the police, the Special Branch, the top administrators of government departments (often called the "key" civil servants), the national security bodies, the judges, and so on - all all free of the influence of elections. Once in you get to stay in unless other elements within the structure want you out for reasons of their own. Think about the so-called independence of judges, what most of these reactionary old bastards are independent of is any requirement to reflect the wishes of the community they claim to serve.
Anarchists and Marxists do agree that
Mandel accepts that the state is part and parcel of the division of society into classes when he says "As long as the state exists it will be proof of the fact that social conflicts remain".
Before moving on to the most important question, that of whether the working class needs a state, there is one point that must be stated. If the capitalist state is fundamentally an instrument in the service of the ruling class, does that we mean we should be indifferent to to the particular form the State takes - parliamentary democracy, military dictatorship, religious fundamentalist, fascist dictatorship? Certainly not. The more freedoms we have to organise and explain our ideas, the more we can do to bring the advent of anarchism that bit closer. We also, of course, wish to enjoy as much freedom as we can because we find freedom a good thing in itself. That is why anarchists must defend what democratic rights we have against every and all attempts to restrict such rights (or to be more accurate 'concessions' as we have no absolute rights under capitalism). This means fighting anti-strike laws, fighting increased police powers and the institution of a "strong state", and it means fight fascism.
To return to the question, Mandel says, and I quote "One can always resort to a hypocritical attitude, as do certain anarchists: Let's abolish the State and call the people who exercise State functions by another name. But that's a purely verbal opposition, a paper"abolition" of the State." As far as he is concerned while there remains shortage or scarcity of goods the State is necessary, such a society cannot function without a State. The State quickly jumps from being the mechanism which allows a small minority to rule to being, and again I quote directly from him, "people who regulate conflicts - that's what the State is".
As a good and longstanding Leninist he sees the working class as ignorant, as the "stupid classes" who are incapable of resolving differences among themselves until we reach the stage where society can produce an abundance for all and so eliminate conflict. It would be easy to write pages upon pages disproving this contention. While all economic conflict will not disappear until there is a society of abundance (which on a world scale capitalism has developed the productive capability for), such conflict can certainly be managed, reduced and minimised. The experience of the industrial and agricultural collectives which affected the lives of at least seven million Spaniards in the 1930s rubbishes his argument.
All the arguments thrown up by Mandel for a so-called workers state are false. They talk of the need for organising the economy, for national defence, for defence against internal counter-revolutionaries, for watchdogs to oversee the industries, for a special body to dispossess the ruling class of its wealth and power. There is not one among these tasks that can not be carried out by bodies under the direct control of the working class and its mandated delegates. And to suggest this is not to call the state by another name, one more acceptable to anarchists. For no statism is acceptable to us. The essence of statism is the removal of powers that should belong to the community as whole (though they may for reasons of efficiency delegate their actual implementation), is their removal into the hands of a tiny minority who claim to act on our behalf and in our interests but who are not under our direct control. In other words it continues the division into rulers and ruled.
Marxists wish to centralise all executive and legislative power in the hands of a tiny minority. They say it and they have done when given a chance. We are all aware of how they behaved and put their politics into practice at the time of their crowning glory - the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia. 99% of contemporary Marxists take their inspiration from the Bolsheviks. The only exceptions I know about are the very small groups of Luxemburgists, council communists and non-Leninists such as Red Action. And none of these has yet stated clearly where they stand on the question of the State except to say they want their State to be more democratic that that of Lenin, but they have yet to say how they will do this.
As I have said, Mandel, though I very much doubt he would put it in these words, sees the working class as ignorant and possibly even stupid. His Trotskyist state will educate them until they are capable of running their own lives and the society they live in. He puts it like this "The withering away of the State should be conceived of as self-management and self-government of producers and citizens which expands more and more until, under conditions of material abundance and a high cultural level of the entire society, the latter becomes structured into self-governing producer-consumer communities".
And how will he stop his "workers state" becoming another Stalinist-type bureaucracy which turns itself into a fully fledged ruling class. Easy. Just obey the five rules of Mandel:
1. The bodies that make decisions shall also implement them, public officials will be elected "to the greatest extent", and no excessive salaries will be paid.
2. Respect the democratic character of workers' self-management committees.
3. Freedom of press and organisation for all parties who respect the government's laws, and independence of the trade unions from the state - with the right to strike.
4. Decision making bodies to have full freedom of debate and be open o public view.
5. Respect the principal of a written law.
We can discuss these so-called protections in the discussion. The most important point is that, like it or not, Mandel has admitted that his State will be different and apart from the organs of the working class. That is why these protections are needed. Unwittingly he has agreed with us when we say that the State does not just serve a ruling class, but one which is a minority. If the working class are running the show why wold thy need trade unions and right to strike, who would they go on strike against? The majority has no need of such undemocratic structures to protect itself.