I may be misremembering, but the way I recall Engles describing it in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific is that as you dissolve class relations you remove the previous purpose of government, which was to enforce class roles through, for instance, enforcement of private property rights. As the “Administration of People” becomes unnecessary, the government is relegated to “Administration of Things” which moves it away from controlling people, and let’s it “melt away” as it’s remaining functions become less “governmental” and more of just managing logistics of things.
Sort of. You remove the classist aspects of previous society. Socialism itself emerges from Capitalism, and Communism emerges from Socialism. When I say Communism has a government, I very much mean there would still be laws, social workers, central planners, administrators, elections, even police, but not the elements of previous class society like Private Property Rights.
This is why Marx specifically describes this process as “whithering away.” He is not arguing that the government will dissolve itself, this argument has been levied against AES countries falsely. Instead, it is through lack of maintenance that these aspects erode over time, like how the Monarchy in the UK is vestigial, or how there are no longer streetlamp lighters. As technology and society progresses, what once was considered necessary makes itself obsolete and fades.
This is the core of dialectical materialism, ie a tree contains within it elements of its past as a seed and elements of its future as an older and eventualy dead tree, everything is a transformation of its previous self.
I may be misremembering, but the way I recall Engles describing it in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific is that as you dissolve class relations you remove the previous purpose of government, which was to enforce class roles through, for instance, enforcement of private property rights. As the “Administration of People” becomes unnecessary, the government is relegated to “Administration of Things” which moves it away from controlling people, and let’s it “melt away” as it’s remaining functions become less “governmental” and more of just managing logistics of things.
Sort of. You remove the classist aspects of previous society. Socialism itself emerges from Capitalism, and Communism emerges from Socialism. When I say Communism has a government, I very much mean there would still be laws, social workers, central planners, administrators, elections, even police, but not the elements of previous class society like Private Property Rights.
This is why Marx specifically describes this process as “whithering away.” He is not arguing that the government will dissolve itself, this argument has been levied against AES countries falsely. Instead, it is through lack of maintenance that these aspects erode over time, like how the Monarchy in the UK is vestigial, or how there are no longer streetlamp lighters. As technology and society progresses, what once was considered necessary makes itself obsolete and fades.
This is the core of dialectical materialism, ie a tree contains within it elements of its past as a seed and elements of its future as an older and eventualy dead tree, everything is a transformation of its previous self.