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!
The complete and total withering of the state must be global, yes, and can only truly exist once the basis of class and thus the state is no more. However, any socialist state that exists, exists to collectivize all property eventually and thus eliminate the basis of the state and class, and thus this process already is present from the outset. This is economically compelled by centralization and building up the productive forces.