Abstract
Given the many misunderstandings concerning the ‘dying away’ of the state, this is the longest chapter. I begin by analysing debates among German socialists in the 1840s, finding that they did not urge the state’s abolition (Abschaffung), annihilation (Vernichtung) and dialectical transformation (Aufhebung). With one exception: Max Stirner in The Ego and Its Own (1845) urged that the state should be abolished as an immediate and willed act. This would come to be the position of Bakunin particularly in 1870s, since he saw the state as the prime cause of exploitation. For Engels (and Marx), this made no sense: in light of their method, the state was a secondary phenomenon, arising from economic conditions and class struggle. Thus, a communist revolution would need to enact wide-swee** changes to the forces and relations of production before aspects of the superstructure, such as the state, could be addressed. As the struggle with the Anarchists developed, we find an increasing emphasis that one of the final results of constructing socialism would be not the ‘abolition’ of the state, but its falling away, disappearance, going to sleep, or—as the third edition of Anti-Dühring of 1894 famously put it—its dying away.
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Notes
- 1.
Given the detailed textual analysis in the appendix, I have removed it from the text of the this book and located it at my website: roland-theodore-boer.net.
- 2.
- 3.
These statements should make it clear that although they had a specific European history of states in mind, they did not restrict their anti-statism merely to the modern European state, whether absolutist or bourgeois, as some mistakenly suggest (Parekh 1990).
- 4.
This is a paraphrase of What is Property?, for Proudhon actually writes ‘Je suis anarchiste’ (Proudhon 1840a, 212).
- 5.
- 6.
- 7.
Even so, in the new society the tribes, nationalities and races will ‘not be annihilated [nicht vernichtet]’, but be able to construct a new and large family (Hess 1841, 156).
- 8.
A native of Elberfeld (like Engels), Püttmann would eventually emigrate in 1854 to Melbourne, Australia, where he distinguished himself as a local publisher until his death in 1874.
- 9.
Thus, those who assert that the idea of ‘abolishing’ the state was widespread at the time do so without having studied the actual material (Draper 1970, 283). The introduction to MEGA I.3 (p. 52) makes a similar assertion.
- 10.
Translation mine. Elsewhere, he uses ‘selbst erlöschen’ (Stirner 1845a, 292). One or two others seemed to have followed Stirner’s lead in the late 1840s. For example, Eduard von Müller-Tellering wrote to Marx in 1849 that all peoples should stand together and ‘annihilate [vernichten] the old society [Gesellschaft] to the last extremity’ (Mülle-Tellering 1849, 146). This is an exception rather than the rule.
- 11.
See also the observation in a letter to Marx in 1845, that Stirner ‘despises [verachten]’ the state, although it is an ideal of the state, and that he seeks to ‘annihilate [vernichten]’ bourgeois society (Hess 1845b, 450).
- 12.
- 13.
See also: ‘They know that property, capital, money, wage-labour and the like are no ideal figments of the brain but very practical, very objective products of their self-estrangement and that therefore they must be sublated [aufgehoben werden] in a practical, objective way for man to become man not only in thinking, in consciousness, but in mass being, in life’(Marx and Engels 1845a, 55–56; 1845b, 53).
- 14.
An earlier draft of the ‘Principles’, called ‘Entwurf eines Kommunistischen Glaubensbekenntnis’, or in English, ‘Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith’ (Engels 1847a), is planned to appear in MEGA I.6, but thus far has appeared only in a 1969 collection (Andréas 1969). This earlier catechism is much closer to that of Hess. Compare, however, an even more concise form in a letter from Engels in 1846: ‘(1) to ensure that the interests of the proletariat prevail, as opposed to those of the bourgeoisie; (2) to do so by the Aufhebung of private property and replacing same with community of goods; (3) to recognise no means of attaining these aims other than democratic, violent [gewaltsame] revolution’ (Engels 1846a, 54; 1846b, 82).
- 15.
We also find a reasonably consistent use of Vernichtung, with reference to the effect of capitalist exchange and bourgeois society on the aristocracy and feudal social relations, of the annihilation of economic misery under the communist organisation of the economy, of classes and their opposition, and of the existing basis of marriage in private property (Engels 1847b, 368, 370, 377, 378; 1847c, 346, 348, 354, 355).
- 16.
- 17.
- 18.
I leave aside the passages where the theoretical and abstract formulations of the Young Hegelians are contrasted with realities addressed by the communist cause (Marx and Engels 1845–1846a, 350, 456–457, 500–501; 1845–1846b, 367, 469–470, 511–512). It is also intriguing to note an early observation in a letter from Marx to Arnold Rüge, where he compares different communist doctrines and observes that the Aufhebung of private property and communism are ‘by no means identical [keineswegs identisch]’, since communism has other socialist doctrines (Marx 1843, 55).
- 19.
This section echoes the master–slave dialectic, derived from Hegel and appearing also in The Holy Family (see above).
- 20.
In this text, Engels and Marx also speak of the proletariat as the expression of ‘the dissolution [Auflösung] of all classes, nationalities, etc., within present society’.
- 21.
Contra Draper (1970, 284–285).
- 22.
One may also mention here the occasional uses of nehmen (nimmt), take away or deprive, Aufhören, stop or cease, Verlust, loss, wegfallen, be discontinued, verschwinden, disappear or vanish, fallen, fall (away), sich ändern, change, Auflösung, dissolution, and verwandeln, convert or transform.
- 23.
- 24.
The few exceptions concern bourgeois charges against Communists, in relation to the family, countries and nations, and the threefold slogan of truth, religion and morality (Marx and Engels 1848a, 478, 479, 480; 1848b, 501, 502, 504), as well as one usage concerning bourgeois property (Marx and Engels 1848a, 477; 1848b, 501).
- 25.
- 26.
A literal translation of Eigenheit to bring out the word-play, although it may also be translated as ‘individual peculiarity’.
- 27.
- 28.
The German of Stirner’s text reads: ‘Indem die Sozialisten auch das Eigentum wegnehmen, beachten sie nicht, daß dieses sich in der Eigenheit eine Fortdauer sichert. Ist denn bloß Geld und Gut ein Eigentum, oder ist jede Meinung ein Mein, ein Eigenes? Es muß also jede Meinung aufgehoben oder unpersönlich gemacht werden’ (Stirner 1845a, 132).
- 29.
An English translation struggles to capture the wordplay: ‘Since the workers are in a state of distress, the existing state of affairs, i.e., the state (status = (e)state) must be abolished’. Here, The German Ideology condenses the text by turning the majority who are at a disadvantage (die Mehrzahl gegen die Minderzahl im Nachteil) into ‘Weil die Arbeiter’. The German of Stirner’s text reads: ‘Die Reflexionen und Schlüsse des Kommunismus sehen sehr einfach aus. Wie die Sachen dermalen liegen, also unter den jetzigen Staatsverhältnissen, stehen die Einen gegen die Andern, und zwar die Mehrzahl gegen die Minderzahl im Nachteil. Bei diesem Stande der Dinge befinden sich jene im Wohlstande, diese im Notstande. Daher muß der gegenwärtige Stand der Dinge, d. i. der Staat (status = Stand) abgeschafft werden’ (Stirner 1845a, 122). In English: ‘The reflections and conclusions of communism look very simple. As matters lie at this time, in the present situation with regard to the state, therefore, some, and they the majority, are at a disadvantage compared to others, the minority. In this state of things the former are in a state of prosperity, the latter in a state of need. Hence the present state of things, the state itself, must be done away with’ (Stirner 1845b, 107).
- 30.
If so, how do we assess Engels’s claim in an 1871 letter to Carlo Cafiero, a young Italian radical who was being drawn into Anarchism: ‘the “abolition of the state” is an old German philosophical phrase, of which we made much use when we were tender youths’ (Engels 1871a, 163). This observation appears in the context of pointing out the faults of Bakunin’s sectarian activities (Engels 1871a, 162–164), referring with relish to the Lyons fiasco of 1870, when Bakunin infamously declared that the state was abolished, only to be arrested by the local police and bundled out of town (see more below). There is one problem: the letter was originally written in English, which was subsequently rendered into Italian by a police translator (after Cafiero was arrested and his correspondence confiscated). While we have the Italian ‘abolizione’ (Marx and Engels 1964, 21), the original English has not been found (the rendering in MECW is a back-translation). Thus, we simply do not know what ‘old German philosophical phrase’ Engels had in mind, nor indeed what ‘tender youths’ might mean. Perhaps Engels was referring with some embarrassment to his isolated flourish in response to Proudhon (see above). Or was Engels deploying a tactic to indicate to Cafiero that one may entertain quasi-anarchist ideas in one’s youth, but one soon grows up? On Cafiero and his initial closeness to Marx and Engels, his turn to anarchism and then later return to Marxism, see Drake (2003, 29–55).
- 31.
Lefebvre’s curious effort (2009, 69–94) to pursue this thought in the young Marx’s writings fails in its task.
- 32.
For one of the best and careful analyses of Stirner in light what became Anarchism, see Leopold (2006), who also usefully defines Anarchism in terms of two categories: a necessarily negative one in which the state is illegitimate, and a peripheral positive one that is the subject of much disagreement, for it concerns the necessity or otherwise of an alternative structure and its content (collective or liberal).
- 33.
Tellingly, similar language appears in a piece written in the same year, on the Bauernkrieg of 1525 (Engels 1850a, 1850b). Here Engels speaks of the peasant demands for the Abschaffung, Zerstörung, Beseitigung, Vernichtung and Aufhebung of a whole range of landlord and priestly privileges, burdens on peasants, serfdom, feudal rule, and indeed of all authority. Clearly, the language was appropriate for such a revolutionary movement.
- 34.
Except for Vernichtung and this only with reference to the fashions of popular thought rather than the state.
- 35.
Even today, it has become a curious bourgeois fallacy in the guise of a now-defunct ‘neo-liberalism’ (Hirszowicz and Mailer 1994).
- 36.
- 37.
In 1865 we find the first recurrence of ‘Abschaffung aller Classenherrschaft’ (Marx 1865a, 54), albeit as a German translation published a little later of the original English, ‘abolition of all class rule’ (Marx 1865b, 13). In the same year, Marx wrote a series of letters to Johann Baptist von Schweitzer, where he mentions Proudhon’s first book on property as epoch-making, but also quite sensational and not worth so much in a strictly scientific manner. At least, Marx points out, Proudhon challenged the rather utopian manner of earlier proposals that property should be ‘aufgehoben’ (Marx 1865c, 60; 1865d, 26).
- 38.
It is difficult to find a relatively impartial and balanced account of the struggle, since inevitably the writer in question favours one side rather than another. To find such a work, we need to go back to Cole’s study (1954). The actual struggle began in the late 1860s and ran into the 1870s. Related to the struggle, one finds resolutions, statements, minutes, newspaper items, and longer deliberations. I restrict references to—where possible—original language sources: Engels (1871b, 1871c, 1871d, 1871e, 1871a, 162–164; 1872b, 1872h, 1872m, 1872k, 1872f, 1872e, 1872g, 1872j, 1872i, 1872a, 1872l, 1873h, 1873e, 1873g, 1873c, 1873f; 1874a, 1874b, 1874c, 1874d, 1874e, 1877a), Marx (1868, 1869a, 1869b; 1870a, 1870b, 1872c), Marx and Engels (1871a, 1871b, 1871c, 1872a, 1872g, 1872e; 1872f; 1873a, 1874), IWMA (1869, 1871a, 1871b, 1871c, 1871d, 1871–1872). In the context of the struggle, Bakunin is mentioned explicitly for the first time in Marx’s ‘Confidential Communication’ (Marx 1870b) and by the next year his name and the myriad organisations of which he was a part turn up very frequently.
- 39.
Since there is no complete English edition of Bakunin’s works, I refer here to the earlier French edition in 6 volumes, particularly since most of Bakunin’s revolutionary material was written in French. The exception is ‘Statehood and Anarchy’, which was written in Russian for a Russian audience and has recently been republished in the same language (Bakunin 1873a). The work has also appeared in good French and English translations (Bakunin 1873b; 1873c). A complete French edition of Bakunin’s writings, begun by Arthur Lehning but left incomplete, has been published (Bakunin 1961–1981), with a subsequent gathering of the remaining material, plus original language texts, on a CD-ROM and published by the Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis in Amsterdam (Bakunin 2000). One may also refer to the selected works in Russian and complete works in Italian (Bakunin 1922; Bakunin 1977–2009). Further, James Guillaume has edited all relevant documents from the many Anarchist organisations and their myriad gatherings (Guillaume 1905–1910).
- 40.
Note the following: ‘l’État, sous ses formes différentes, depuis l’État théocratique et la Monarchie la plus absolue jusqu’à la République la plus démocratique basée sur le suffrage universel le plus large, n’est autre chose qui le régulateur et le garantisseur de cette exploitation mutuelle’ (Bakunin 1871b, 314). ‘Tous les États actuellement existants, fondés exclusivement sur l’exploitation systématique et réglée du travail Populaire par les classes économiquement et politiquement privilégiées, ont pour base la violence et pour but unique l’agrandissement de leur puissance au détriment des peuples voisins et par tous les moyens possibles. C’est pourquoi je conclus à la nécessité de l’abolition de tous les États, comme condition absolue de l’établissement de la justice et de la paix dans le monde’ (Bakunin 1869b, 246).
- 41.
- 42.
Similarly: ‘L’État est donc la négation la plus flagrante, la plus cynique et la plus complète de l’humanité’ (Bakunin 1867, 150; see also Bakunin 1869a, 225–226; 1870a, 62); ‘l’État le bien naît non de la liberté, mais au contraire de la négation de la liberté’ (Bakunin 1867, 160; see also Bakunin 1869a, 225–226; 1870a, 62).
- 43.
Occasionally, Bakunin spoke of the state ‘dissolving [se dissoudre]’ into a society organised according to justice (Bakunin 1867, 56), but his preference is for the stronger terminology of deliberate and willed abolition.
- 44.
In Statism and Anarchy, Bakunin sought to make a virtue of such vague formulations, since ‘the masses bear all the elements of their future organisational norms in their own more or less historically evolved instincts, in their everyday needs and their conscious and unconscious desires’ (Bakunin 1873c, 135).
- 45.
In French: ‘Seulement à la destruction de cet empire, à la liquidation de tout État politique dans les pays qu’il embrasse … L’abolition non seulement politique mais économique des classes; l’égalisation économique et sociale des individus dans l’éducation, dans le travail et dans la jouissance des produits du travail, afin que pour tous les individus humains sur la terre, sans difference de nations et de sexe, il n’y ait plus qu’un seul mode d’existence, et que cette nouvelle existence se manifeste par la plus grande liberté de chacun, fondée sur la plus étroite solidarité de tous. Eh bien, nous les défions de réaliser ce but dans un État politique quelconque!’ (Bakunin 1868–1869, 74).
- 46.
These topics arise from the actual material written during the struggle. For a somewhat different account, focusing on issues of human nature, freedom and political agency—albeit without reference to original language material or indeed much from the struggle itself—see Robertson (2003).
- 47.
In his notes on Bakunin’s late piece, Statism and Anarchy, Marx observes that Bakunin’s ‘political rhetoric’ concerning social revolution has a glaring gap: ‘its economic conditions simply do not exist for him [existieren nicht für ihn]’ (Marx 1875a, 633; 1875b, 518). Or as he puts in relation to the specific item of abolishing inheritance, proposed by one of Bakunin’s organisations, the International Alliance of Socialist Democracy: ‘What we have to grapple with, is the cause and not the effect, the—economical basis—not its juridical superstructure’ (Marx 1869c, 132; see also IWMA 1869).
- 48.
Engels was rather fond of expressing this principle in various ways. For example, the Bakuninists hold that the state is ‘the root of all evil [Prinzips des Bösen]’, or the ‘epitomy of all evil [Inbegriff alles Bösen]’ (Engels 1873c, 324; 1877a, 89–90). The terminology was not new to Engels. Already in 1844, he had observed in a comment in relation to William Godwin (recognised now as one of the founders of Anarchism) that he ‘attacked the very essence of the state itself with his aphorism that the state is an evil [Übel]’ (Engels 1844a, 555; 1844b, 486).
- 49.
See also Marx’s observation in his notes on Bakunin’s Statism and Anarchy: ‘Since therefore the propertied classes cannot satisfy the passion and the aspirations of the people, “only one means is left them—state force (гocyдapcтвeннoe нacилиe), in a word, the «state», because the actual meaning of «state» is «Gewalt» (violence, véhémence, force), «government by Gewalt, concealed if possible, but if the worst comes to the worst, a ruthless «Gewalt», etc.’’ (Marx 1875a, 604; 1875b, 493). Translation modified.
- 50.
Elsewhere, both Engels and Marx quote from ‘The Program of the International Brotherhood’ of 1869: ‘This association proceeds from the conviction that revolutions are never made either by individuals or by secret societies. They come about, as it were, of their own accord [d’elles mêmes], produced by the force of things [la force des choses], by the course of events and facts. They are prepared over a long time deep in the instinctive consciousness of the popular masses [dans la profondeur de la conscience instinctive], and then they flare up [éclatent]. … All that a well-organised secret society can do is, first, to assist in the birth of the revolution by spreading among the masses ideas corresponding to their instincts’ (Marx and Engels 1873a, 179; 1873b, 469; 1874, 485–486).
- 51.
- 52.
The allusion to ‘embryo’ is in response to the ‘Sonvillier Circular’, from the gathering in that town in November 1871 that saw the emergence of the Jurassic Federation: ‘The future society must be nothing else than the universalisation of the organisation that the International has formed for itself. We must therefore strive to make this organisation as close as possible to our ideal. How could one expect an egalitarian society to emerge out of an authoritarian organisation? It is impossible. The International, embryo of the future society [embryon de la future société humaine], must from now on faithfully reflect our principles of federation and liberty, and must reject any principle tending toward authority and dictatorship’ (Guillaume 1905–1910, Vol. 2, 240).
- 53.
Engels occasionally seeks to locate the Bakuninist moment with the sectarian intrigues as characteristic of the early and necessarily immature stage of the communist movement, but one that it outgrows with time (Marx and Engels 1872a, 32–34; 1872b, 106–107; Engels 1877a, 1877b). This overall approach would come to fruition with the opening sections of ‘Socialism: Utopian and Scientific’ (1880a, 1891, 1880b).
- 54.
This text was originally published in French and has thus far appeared in this form in the collection Le Mouvement Socialiste, in 1913.
- 55.
- 56.
I have quoted the text from Engels’s piece, ‘On the Death of Karl Marx’, although this section has a slightly complicated history. The section under analysis was initially drafted by Engels in English, in a letter to Philipp van Patten, but published first in German (also by Engels’s hand) in Der Sozialdemocrat 21, 17 May, 1883. In the English draft, the text—as if to emphasise the point—reads ‘the gradual dissolution and ultimate disappearance’ of the State (Engels 1883b, 10). However, not only did the German version of the letter appear first, but the text on Marx’s death was itself written in German, where Engels offers ‘allmälige Auflösung [gradual dissolution]’ (Engels 1883a, 11; 1883c, 419).
- 57.
See also the slightly earlier text: ‘The proletariat seizes political power and turns the means of production in the first instance into state property. But, in doing this, it sublates itself [hebt es sich selbst] as proletariat, sublates [hebt … auf] all class distinctions and class antagonisms, [sublates] also the state as state’ (Engels 1894a, 534; 1894b, 267).
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Boer, R. (2021). Abolition or Dying Away of the State?. In: Friedrich Engels and the Foundations of Socialist Governance. SpringerBriefs in Philosophy. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-4695-9_4
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