When workers run the state

[dcsmart]

JUST BECAUSE, as Bones Husley argues in response to Paul D'Amato, "a state is required to create and enforce a capitalist mode of production" does not mean by extension that every state necessarily does so ("Vanguards and state power"). In fact, a kind of state is also required to abolish the capitalist mode of production.

Before going any further, I think that it's important to establish a clear definition of the state. In State and Revolution, Lenin offers this:

The state is a product and a manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms. The state arises where, when and insofar as class antagonism objectively cannot be reconciled. And, conversely, the existence of the state proves that the class antagonisms are irreconcilable.

In other words, if you have a society that includes two classes of people whose interests are fundamentally and necessarily opposed, such as capitalist and wage worker, lord and serf, or master and slave--in general exploiter and exploited--a state is necessary to maintain this society with its relations of production, in these cases to establish and preserve the dominance of the exploiting class over the exploited.

The flip side is that if you have a society where there is a state, then that society must be split into classes with opposite interests. The state, then, is an instrument for the domination of one class over another, for the subordination of the interests of one class to those of an opposing class.
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FULL ARTICLE
http://socialistworker.org/2009/08/25/when-workers-run-the-state
ARTICLE REFERRED TO IN ABOVE
http://socialistworker.org/2009/08/05/views-brief