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What is the state and how do we smash it Spectre of Communism podcast

Spectre Of Communism · 2023-11-28

Here is the structured analytical summary of the podcast episode.

Core Argument

The central thesis is that the state is not a neutral arbiter standing above society, but a weapon of class rule. Its essence is "armed bodies of men" — the police, army, courts, and prisons — whose monopoly on violence exists to defend private property and maintain the power of the capitalist minority over the working-class majority. The episode argues that this class character is not accidental but structural: it is embedded in the law, the social background of judges and civil servants, the bribery of lobbying, and the mystifying rituals of monarchy and "democratic" elections. Because the state is built in the image of the ruling class, it cannot be captured and wielded for working-class interests. It must be smashed and replaced with a workers' state — a dictatorship of the proletariat — which will itself eventually wither away as class distinctions dissolve under communism.

Theoretical Grounding

The analysis draws directly from the classical Marxist tradition on the state, particularly:

  • Lenin's State and Revolution: The episode explicitly echoes Lenin's definition of the state as a product of irreconcilable class antagonisms and his insistence that the bourgeois democratic republic is the ideal political form for capitalism, precisely because it allows the ruling class to change personnel without changing the system.
  • Marx and Engels on the Paris Commune: The argument that the working class cannot simply take over the existing state machine but must smash it is grounded in the lessons Marx drew from the Commune's failure.
  • The dictatorship of the proletariat: The episode positions this concept — a workers' state armed and organised to suppress the resistance of the overthrown capitalist class — as the defining feature of a genuine revolutionary, in explicit opposition to anarchist positions that reject any form of state.
  • The withering away of the state: The end goal is not the workers' state as a permanent institution, but a stateless, classless communist society. The state exists only because class antagonisms exist; when classes are abolished, the need for the state disappears.

This places the episode firmly within the Leninist tradition, as distinct from social-democratic or anarchist currents. It is a restatement of orthodoxy for a contemporary audience, not an innovation.

Conjunctural Relevance

The episode connects its theoretical argument to the current moment in several specific ways:

  • The 2008 financial crash: Used to illustrate the selective enforcement of law. The criminality of bankers went almost entirely unpunished, while working-class crime is aggressively policed. This is presented as a live, recent memory that demonstrates the state's class bias.
  • The Israeli state and international law: The repeated US vetoes of UN Security Council resolutions condemning Israel are cited to show that "international law" is toothless when it conflicts with the interests of a major imperialist power. This ties the domestic analysis of the state to its geopolitical function.
  • The BLM movement and Minneapolis (2020): The episode points to the NAACP organising armed neighbourhood patrols after the police were driven from the streets as a concrete, recent example of workers (in this case, a community) organising their own defence — an embryo of the kind of alternative, democratic policing a workers' state might involve.
  • The British political conjuncture: The episode notes the explicit turn of sections of the ruling class toward Keir Starmer's Labour Party as a "safe" alternative to the discredited Tories, arguing that this rotation of parties leaves the fundamentals of capitalist power untouched.

Where the Argument Continues

This episode is a primer. It deliberately leaves open several questions that are developed elsewhere in the corpus:

  • How is a workers' state built in practice? The episode gestures toward strike committees (1926 UK, 1968 France) and occupied factories (Venezuela, Brazil) as embryonic forms, but does not detail the strategy for moving from these to a national workers' state. This is the subject of Against the Stream episodes on revolutionary strategy and the transitional programme.
  • Why did the Soviet Union degenerate? The episode mentions the USSR as a "deformed workers' state" under Stalinism but does not explain the mechanism of that degeneration. This is a major thread in the broader RCI/IMT tradition, covered in episodes on the Russian Revolution and Stalinism.
  • The precise relationship between the state and capital in the era of fictitious capital and globalisation. The episode focuses on the national state as a weapon of the national ruling class. The question of how the state functions under the dominance of transnational finance capital is left for more advanced analysis, such as episodes on imperialism and the current crisis.

Connections

  • Lenin, State and Revolution: The foundational text for the entire argument. Should be read alongside this episode.
  • Walter Bagehot, The English Constitution: Cited in the episode for its honest account of the monarchy's role as a distraction. A useful primary source on the mystification of the bourgeois state.
  • Marx, The Civil War in France: The classic analysis of the Paris Commune and the source of the "smash the state" conclusion.
  • Other Against the Stream / Spectre of Communism episodes: Any episode dealing with reformism, the Labour Party, or the strategy of the united front will develop the political conclusions implicit here. Episodes on the 2008 crisis and its aftermath will deepen the analysis of the state's role in managing capitalist crises.

Key Quotes

  1. "The essence of the state is armed bodies of men... the courts, the prisons, the Army, the police... those are the things that really back up those other institutions."
  2. "The state is not designed to stand above society and treat everyone equally; it is designed to be a weapon in the hands of the rich and powerful."
  3. "You can elect whatever government you like... it doesn't affect that fact [that a tiny number of people own the vast majority of wealth]... the bourgeois democratic republic is the ideal state form for capitalism."
  4. "You can't take over the capitalist state machine and wield it in the interests of a different class... it is built, owned, and operated by them."
  5. "The key defining feature of a revolutionary is an understanding of and a fighting for a defence of what Lenin called the dictatorship of the proletariat... a workers' state made of armed bodies of men under the democratic control of 99% of society."