Engels and Lenin on why the state is not abolished — it withers away as class antagonisms disappear and society administers itself
Before we can understand the withering away of the state, we must understand what the state is. The Marxist-Leninist theory of the state stands in sharp opposition to the liberal, idealist view that the state is a neutral arbiter standing above society, balancing the interests of different groups.
For Marxism-Leninism, the state is nothing other than an instrument of class oppression. It is the organised force by which one class maintains its domination over another. The police, the army, the courts, the prisons, the bureaucracy — these are not impartial institutions. They exist to enforce the rule of the class that controls the means of production.
The state arose at a particular historical moment: when society split into antagonistic classes. In primitive communism, there was no state because there were no classes. When private property emerged and society divided into exploiters and exploited, the state became necessary to prevent these irreconcilable class antagonisms from tearing society apart — by holding down the oppressed class through force.
The state is not eternal and not neutral. It is a product of class society, an organ of class rule, an instrument for the oppression of one class by another. It arose with class antagonisms and will disappear when those antagonisms cease to exist.
"The state is a product and a manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms. The state arises where, when and insofar as class antagonisms objectively cannot be reconciled."
— V. I. Lenin, The State and Revolution (1917)The theory of the withering away of the state was first developed by Friedrich Engels in two major works: Anti-Dühring (1878) and The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884).
In Anti-Dühring, Engels explained that when the proletariat seizes state power and socialises the means of production, it abolishes itself as a proletariat, abolishes all class distinctions and class antagonisms, and thereby abolishes the state as a state. The state is not formally dissolved by decree — it withers away, becoming superfluous as the conditions that gave rise to it disappear.
In The Origin of the Family, Engels traced the historical emergence of the state from the dissolution of the primitive commune. He demonstrated that the state had not always existed, that human society had managed its affairs for thousands of years without a state, and that therefore the state was not permanent. Just as it had a beginning, so it would have an end.
Engels drew a crucial distinction between political authority (the coercion of one class by another) and administrative functions (the coordination of social production). Under communism, the first disappears entirely. The second remains but is no longer a state function — it becomes the common concern of all members of society.
The management of factories, railways, hospitals, and schools does not require a state apparatus of repression. It requires rational organisation, which a classless society is perfectly capable of providing. As Engels put it, the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things and the direction of the processes of production.
"The state is not 'abolished.' It withers away."
— Friedrich Engels, Anti-Dühring (1878)Lenin's State and Revolution (1917), written on the eve of the October Revolution, represents the most thorough and systematic development of the Marxist theory of the state. Lenin rescued Engels' teaching from the distortions of the opportunists and gave it concrete revolutionary content.
Lenin made two crucial distinctions that are essential for understanding the withering away of the state:
The bourgeois state machine — its army, police, bureaucracy — cannot simply be taken over by the working class. It must be smashed, broken up, destroyed. This is the lesson of the Paris Commune and every revolution since. The working class must build its own state apparatus from scratch.
The new proletarian state — the dictatorship of the proletariat — is itself a transitional form. As class distinctions are eliminated and socialist construction advances, this state gradually loses its political character and withers away. It is not smashed but becomes unnecessary.
This distinction is critical. The bourgeois state is smashed by revolution. The proletarian state withers away through the elimination of classes. Confusing these two processes — as both anarchists and opportunists do — leads to fundamental political errors.
The transitional state between capitalism and communism is what Marx called the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is the state that will eventually wither away — but only after it has fulfilled its historical task.
The dictatorship of the proletariat is necessary because the overthrown exploiting classes do not simply accept their defeat. They resist by every means available: sabotage, counter-revolution, foreign intervention, economic warfare. The proletarian state must suppress this resistance, just as the bourgeois state suppresses the resistance of the working class — but with a fundamental difference.
Under capitalism, a minority (the bourgeoisie) suppresses the majority (the proletariat). Under the dictatorship of the proletariat, the majority suppresses the minority. This means that the proletarian state is already a state in the process of ceasing to be a state. It is, as Lenin described it, a "semi-state" — democratic for the vast majority, repressive only toward the former exploiters.
The dictatorship of the proletariat is not the opposite of democracy — it is the fullest democracy for the working people, combined with the suppression of the exploiters. As the exploiting classes are eliminated and resistance ceases, even this suppressive function becomes unnecessary, and the state withers away.
"So long as the state exists there is no freedom. When there is freedom, there will be no state."
— V. I. Lenin, The State and Revolution (1917)One of the most common misunderstandings — promoted especially by anarchists — is that revolutionaries should aim to abolish the state immediately upon seizing power. Marxism-Leninism rejects this position as utopian and ultimately counter-revolutionary.
The state withers away gradually because the material conditions that sustain it disappear gradually. Class distinctions do not vanish the day after the revolution. The former bourgeoisie retains knowledge, connections, and habits of command. The division between mental and manual labour persists. The productive forces must be developed to the point where abundance replaces scarcity. International capitalism continues to threaten the revolution from without.
All of these processes take time — an entire historical epoch. To demand the immediate abolition of the state is to demand the impossible and, in practice, to leave the proletariat defenceless against its class enemies.
The state withers away when and only when the following conditions are met:
All class distinctions — between workers and peasants, mental and manual labour — must be eliminated. There must be no exploiting class to suppress.
The productive forces must be developed to the point where scarcity is overcome and distribution can proceed according to need, not according to labour performed.
People must become accustomed to observing the elementary rules of social life without compulsion — not from fear of punishment but from habit and conviction.
So long as hostile capitalist states exist and threaten socialist construction, the proletarian state retains its defensive and military functions. World revolution creates the conditions for withering away.
The question of the state has been the fundamental dividing line between anarchism and Marxism since the days of the First International. Understanding this difference is essential.
Anarchists demand the immediate abolition of the state. They regard all states — including a workers' state — as inherently oppressive. They reject the dictatorship of the proletariat as a new form of tyranny. In practice, this means leaving the revolution defenceless against counter-revolution and foreign intervention.
Marxism-Leninism holds that the proletariat must first seize state power, smash the bourgeois state, and establish its own state — the dictatorship of the proletariat. This state is then used to suppress the exploiters, build socialism, and create the conditions under which the state itself becomes unnecessary and withers away.
Both anarchists and Marxist-Leninists agree on the ultimate goal: a stateless, classless society. The disagreement is about how to get there. History has vindicated the Marxist-Leninist position. Every anarchist experiment — from the Paris Commune (which Marx praised but which lacked a proletarian state) to revolutionary Spain — was crushed precisely because it failed to establish the organised, disciplined power necessary to defend the revolution.
"We do not after all differ with the anarchists on the question of the abolition of the state as the aim. We maintain that, to achieve this aim, we must temporarily make use of the instruments, resources, and methods of state power against the exploiters."
— V. I. Lenin, The State and Revolution (1917)A question that troubled many Marxists in the 1930s was this: if the state is supposed to wither away under socialism, why did the Soviet state appear to be growing stronger? Stalin addressed this question directly at the 18th Party Congress in 1939.
Stalin argued that Engels' formula about the withering away of the state presupposed the victory of socialism in all or most countries. But the Soviet Union existed as the sole socialist state in a world of hostile capitalist powers. Under conditions of capitalist encirclement, the proletarian state could not begin to wither away — it had to strengthen itself to defend socialist construction against external aggression and internal sabotage directed from abroad.
This was not a revision of Engels but a development of Engels in light of new historical conditions that Engels could not have foreseen. The withering away of the state remains the goal, but the concrete path to that goal depends on the international situation. So long as imperialism exists and threatens socialist states, the proletarian state must maintain and even strengthen its defensive capacity.
Capitalist encirclement explains why the socialist state must strengthen before it can wither away. The external threat of imperialism requires a powerful state apparatus for defence. The withering away of the state is a process that unfolds fully only when socialism triumphs on a world scale.
The opposite is true. Marxism-Leninism aims at the complete elimination of the state. But it recognises that this cannot happen by decree — it requires the elimination of the conditions that make the state necessary, above all class antagonisms.
The Soviet state existed under permanent siege from world imperialism. It could not wither away while surrounded by hostile powers intent on its destruction. The collapse of the USSR was caused by revisionism, not by the impossibility of the Marxist programme.
The withering away of the state is not a policy decision to weaken the state. It is an objective historical process that occurs when the material conditions for it are ripe. Prematurely weakening the proletarian state only serves the counter-revolution.
While both envision a stateless society, the method is fundamentally different. Anarchists reject the transitional workers' state; communists embrace it as the only proven path to classless society. This is not a minor tactical disagreement — it is the lesson written in the blood of every defeated revolution.
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