Hello!

Apologies if this has been asked before, I did try searching but wasn’t really sure how to phrase it and didn’t find anything.

I’m reading Lenin’s “The State & Revolution”, but something confuses me when he talks about the proletarian state withering away. He says it would begin practically immediately, after all the state exists to suppress the opposite class, and after the revolution there would be no opposite class to suppress, and so the state would have no other option but to wither.

However, that’s only true within one country. Now more than ever all countries are inter-connected, and as we’ve seen in practically every socialist revolution, the likes of the US government will ensure it is not an easy transition. That means that even after revolution, a country is going to require a state in order to defend against outside attacks, is it not? Or am I misunderstanding what is meant by state?

Does that mean the withering away of the state cannot begin until all the world is communist? Is this already a theory? It sounds like something I’ve seen people discuss, but I don’t know the word for it.

Thank you!

  • Doubledee [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    0·
    17 days ago

    So when the proletariat takes over a state, it begins to use it, as you observed, as a weapon to suppress the bourgeoisie. However capitalism is global, like you say, and the real problem is that the class war transcends national boundaries. How this is resolved has been the subject of debate among Marxists: Karl seemed to believe that the revolution would be global once it began and would happen in one large movement. Conditions on the ground have never actually gotten to that point, however, and some Soviet and Chinese theorists have argued that it’s possible to sustain socialism within one country without achieving a global revolution.

    Regardless, as far as I can tell, it’s not really possible to transition to a stateless, classless society until the revolution is either global or has achieved critical mass such that there can be no bourgeois resistance. Socialism might be possible in one country, but communism will be an all-or-nothing proposition, for the exact reasons you’ve observed. It only makes sense to surrender a tool you need to defend yourself once you are no longer under threat.