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Question Marx

Marx’s Leviathan

Patrick Cannon on anarchy and state.

One way Marx distinguished his type of communism from all the other socialist theories and party platforms around during his lifetime was by advocating a specific and prominent role for the state. He imagined government playing a key part in the transformation of society from capitalism to socialism, and then lastly into pure communism, which was to be a stateless, classless society. Here I seek to explain a criticism of Marx’s state theory that was best made by the anarchist thinker Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876).

In their 1848 booklet The Manifesto of the Communist Party Marx and Engels sketched the initial consolidation of a proletarian government which would take back wealth and land for the public, institute severely progressive taxation, centralize credit by means of a national bank, establish a plan for nationwide economic development, integrate industrial manufacturing and agriculture, provide free education to all children, and carry out a number of other programs. This consolidation of power would create a powerful centralized government wielded by and for the benefit of the working class, supplanting the current bourgeois, capitalist government.

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