As we discussed in section H.3.7, the Marxist theory of the state confuses an empirical analysis of the state with a metaphysical one. While Engels is aware that the state developed to ensure minority class rule and, as befits its task, evolved specific characteristics to execute that role, he also raised the idea that the state ("as a rule") is "the state of the most powerful, economically dominant class" and "through the medium of the state, becomes also the politically dominant class." Thus the state can be considered, in essence, as "nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another." [Marx-Engels Selected Works, pp. 577-8 and p. 258]

The clear implication is that the state is simply an instrument, without special interests of its own. If this is the case, the use of a state by the proletariat is, therefore, unproblematic (and so the confusion between working class self-organisation and the state we have discussed in various sections above is irrelevant). This argument can lead to simplistic conclusions, such as once a "revolutionary" government is in power in a "workers state" we need not worry about abuses of power or even civil liberties (this position was commonplace in Bolshevik ranks during the Russian Civil War, for example). It also is at the heart of Trotsky's contortions with regards to Stalinism, refusing to see the state bureaucracy as a new ruling class simply because the state, by definition, could not play such a role.

For anarchists, this position is a fundamental weakness of Marxism, a sign that the mainstream Marxist position significantly misunderstands the nature of society and the needs of social revolution. However, we must stress that anarchists would agree that state generally does serve the interests of the economically dominant classes. Bakunin, for example, argued that the State "is authority, domination, and forced, organised by the property-owning and so-called enlightened classes against the masses." He saw the social revolution as destroying capitalism and the state at the same time, that is "to overturn the State's domination, and that of the privileged classes whom it solely represents." [The Basic Bakunin, p. 140]

However, anarchists do not reduce our analysis and understanding of the state to this simplistic Marxist level. While being well aware that the state is the means of ensuring the domination of an economic elite, anarchists recognise that the state machine also has interests of its own. The state, for anarchists, is the delegation of power into the hands of a few. This creates, by its very nature, a privileged position for those at the top of the hierarchy:

"A government [or state], that is a group of people entrusted with making the laws and empowered to use the collective force to oblige each individual to obey them, is already a privileged class and cut off from the people. As any constituted body would do, it will instinctively seek to extend its powers, to be beyond public control, to impose its own policies and to give priority to its special interests. Having been put in a privileged position, the government is already at odds with the people whose strength it disposes of." [Malatesta, Anarchy, p. 34]

Thus, while Malatesta was under no doubts that under capitalism the state was essentially "the bourgeoisie's servant and gendarme," it did not mean that it did not have interests of its own. As he put it, "the government, though springing from the bourgeoisie and its servant and protector, tends, as with every servant and protector, to achieve its own emancipation and to dominate whoever it protects." [Op. Cit., p. 20 and p. 22]

Why this would happen is not hard to discover. Given that the state is a highly centralised, top-down structure it is unsurprising that it develops around itself a privileged class, a bureaucracy, around it. The inequality in power implied by the state is a source of privilege and oppression independent of property and economic class. Those in charge of the state's institutions would aim to protect (and expand) their area of operation, ensuring that they select individuals who share their perspectives and who they can pass on their positions. By controlling the flow of information, of personnel and resources, the members of the state's higher circles can ensure its, and their own, survival and prosperity. As such, politicians who are elected are at a disadvantage. The state is the permanent collection of institutions that have entrenched power structures and interests. The politicians come and go while the power in the state lies in its institutions due to their permanence. It is to be expected that such institutions would have their own interests and would pursue them whenever they can.

This would not fundamentally change in a new "workers' state" if it is, like all states, based on the delegation and centralisation of power into a few hands. Any "workers' government" would need a new apparatus to enforce its laws and decrees. It would need effective means of gathering and collating information. It would thus create "an entirely new ladder of administration to extend it rule and make itself obeyed." While a social revolution needs mass participation, the state limits initiative to the few who are in power and "it will be impossible for one or even a number of individuals to elaborate the social forms" required, which "can only be the collective work of the masses . . . Any kind of external authority will merely be an obstacle, a hindrance to the organic work that has to be accomplished; it will be no better than a source of discord and of hatreds." [Kropotkin, Words of a Rebel, p. 169 and pp. 176-7]

Rather than "withering away," any "workers' state" would tend to grow in terms of administration and so the government creates around itself a class of bureaucrats whose position is different from the rest of society. This would apply to production as well. Being unable to manage everything, the state would have to re-introduce hierarchical management in order to ensure its orders are met and that a suitable surplus is extracted from the workers to feed the needs of the state machine. By creating an economically powerful class which it can rely on to discipline the workforce, it would simply recreate capitalism anew in the form of "state capitalism" (this is precisely what happened during the Russian Revolution). To enforce its will onto the people it claims to represent, specialised bodies of armed people (police, army) would be required and soon created. All of which is to be expected, as state socialism "entrusts to a few the management of social life and [so] leads to the exploitation and oppression of the masses by the few." [Malatesta, Op. Cit., p. 46]

This process does not happen instantly, it takes time. However, the tendency for government to escape from popular control and to generate privileged and powerful institutions around it can be seen in all revolutions, including the Paris Commune and the Russian Revolution. In the former, the Communal Council was "largely ignored . . . after it was installed. The insurrection, the actual management of the city's affairs and finally the fighting against the Versaillese, were undertaken mainly by popular clubs, the neighbourhood vigilance committees, and the battalions of the National Guard. Had the Paris Commune (the Municipal Council) survived, it is extremely doubtful that it could have avoided conflict with these loosely formed street and militia formations. Indeed, by the end of April, some six weeks after the insurrection, the Commune constituted an 'all-powerful' Committee of Public Safety, a body redolent with memories of the Jacobin dictatorship and the Terror , which suppressed not only the right in the Great [French] Revolution of a century earlier, but also the left." [Murray Bookchin, Post-Scarcity Anarchism, pp. 148-9] A minority of council members (essentially those active in the International) stated that "the Paris Commune has surrendered its authority to a dictatorship" and it was "hiding behind a dictatorship that the electorate have not authorised us to accept or to recognise." [The Paris Commune of 1871: The View from the Left, Eugene Schulkind (ed.), p. 187] The Commune was crushed before this process could fully unfold, but the omens were there (although it would have undoubtedly been hindered by small-scale of the institutions involved). As we discuss in the appendix on "What happened during the Russian Revolution?", a similar process of a "revolutionary" government escaping from popular control occurred right from the start of the Russian Revolution. The fact the Bolshevik regime lasted longer and was more centralised (and covered a larger area) ensured that this process developed fully, with the "revolutionary" government creating around itself the institutions (the bureaucracy) which finally subjected the politicians and party leaders to its influence and then domination.

Simply put, the vision of the state as merely an instrument of class rule blinds its supporters to the dangers of political inequality in terms of power, the dangers inherent in giving a small group of people power over everyone else. The state has certain properties because it is a state and one of these is that it creates a bureaucratic class around it due to its centralised, hierarchical nature. Within capitalism, the state bureaucracy is (generally) under the control of the capitalist class. However, to generalise from this specific case is wrong as the state bureaucracy is a class in itself — and so trying to abolish classes without abolishing the state is doomed to failure:

"The State has always been the patrimony of some privileged class: the sacerdotal class, the nobility, the bourgeoisie — and finally, when all the other classes have exhausted themselves, the class of the bureaucracy enters upon the stage and then the State falls, or rises, if you please to the position of a machine." [Bakunin, The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, p. 208]

Thus the state cannot simply be considered as an instrument of rule by economic classes. It can be quite an effective parasitical force in its own right, as both anthropological and historical evidence suggest. The former raises the possibility that the state arose before the classes and that its roots are in inequalities in power (i.e. hierarchy) within society, not inequalities of wealth. The latter points to examples of societies in which the state was not, in fact, an instrument of (economic) class rule but rather pursued an interest of its own.

As regards anthropology, Michael Taylor summarises that the "evidence does not give [the Marxist] proposition [that the rise in classes caused the creation of the state] a great deal of support. Much of the evidence which has been offered in support of it shows only that the primary states, not long after their emergence, were economically stratified. But this is of course consistent also with the simultaneous rise . . . of political and economic stratification, or with the prior development of the state — i.e. of political stratification — and the creation of economic stratification by the ruling class." [Community, Anarchy and Liberty, p. 132] He quotes Elman Service on this:

"In all of the archaic civilisations and historically known chiefdoms and primitive states the 'stratification' was . . . mainly of two classes, the governors and the governed — political strata, not strata of ownership groups." [quoted by Taylor, Op. Cit., p. 133]

Talyor argues that it the "weakening of community and the development of gross inequalities are the concomitants and consequences of state formation." He points to the "germ of state formation" being in the informal social hierarchies which exist in tribal societies. [Op. Cit., p. 133 and p. 134] Thus the state is not, initially, a product of economic classes but rather an independent development based on inequalities of social power. Harold Barclay, an anarchist who has studied anthropological evidence on this matter, concurs:

"In Marxist theory power derives primarily, if not exclusively, from control of the means of production and distribution of wealth, that is, from economic factors. Yet, it is evident that power derived from knowledge — and usually 'religious' style knowledge — is often highly significant, at least in the social dynamics of small societies. . . Economic factors are hardly the only source of power. Indeed, we see this in modern society as well, where the capitalist owner does not wield total power. Rather technicians and other specialists command it as well, not because of their economic wealth, but because of their knowledge." [quoted by Alan Carter, Marx: A Radical Critique, p. 191]

If, as Bookchin summarises, "hierarchies precede classes" then trying to use a hierarchical structure like the state to abolish them is simply wishful thinking.

As regards more recent human history, there have been numerous examples of the state existing without being an instrument of class rule. Rather, the state was the "ruling class." While the most obvious example is the Stalinist regimes where the state bureaucracy ruled over a state capitalist regime, there have been plenty of others, as Murray Bookchin points out:

"Each State is not necessarily an institutionalised system of violence in the interests of a specific ruling class, as Marxism would have us believe. There are many examples of States that were the 'ruling class' and whose own interests existed quite apart from — even in antagonism to — privileged, presumably 'ruling' classes in a given society. The ancient world bears witness to distinctly capitalistic classes, often highly privileged and exploitative, that were bilked by the State, circumscribed by it, and ultimately devoured by it — which is in part why a capitalist society never emerged out of the ancient world. Nor did the State 'represent' other class interests, such as landed nobles, merchants, craftsmen, and the like. The Ptolemaic State in Hellenistic Egypt was an interest in its own right and 'represented' no other interest than its own. The same is true of the Aztec and the Inca States until they were replaced by Spanish invaders. Under the Emperor Domitian, the Roman State became the principal 'interest' in the empire, superseding the interests of even the landed aristocracy which held such primacy in Mediterranean society. . .

"Near-Eastern State, like the Egyptian, Babylonian, and Persian, were virtually extended households of individual monarchs . . . Pharaohs, kings, and emperors nominally held the land (often co-jointly with the priesthood) in the trust of the deities, who were either embodied in the monarch or were represented by him. The empires of Asian and North African kings were 'households' and the population was seen as 'servants of the palace' . . .

"These 'states,' in effect, were not simply engines of exploitation or control in the interests of a privileged 'class.' . . . The Egyptian State was very real but it 'represented' nothing other than itself." [Remaking Society, pp. 67-8]

Bakunin pointed to Turkish Serbia, where economically dominant classes "do not even exist — there is only a bureaucratic class. Thus, the Serbian state will crush the Serbian people for the sole purpose of enabling Serbian bureaucrats to live a fatter life." [Statism and Anarchy, p. 54] Leninist Tony Cliff, in his attempt to prove that Stalinist Russia was state capitalist and its bureaucracy a ruling class, pointed to various societies in which "had deep class differentiation, based not on private property but on state property. Such systems existed in Pharaonic Egypt, Moslem Egypt, Iraq, Persia and India." He discusses the example of Arab feudalism in more detail, where "the feudal lord had no permanent domain of his own, but a member of a class which collectively controlled the land and had the right to appropriate rent." This was "ownership of the land by the state" rather than by individuals. [State Capitalism in Russia, pp. 316-8] As such, the idea that the state is simply an instrument of class rule seems unsupportable. As Gaston Leval argued, "the State, by its nature, tends to have a life of its own." [quoted by Sam Dolgoff, A Critique of Marxism, p. 10]

Alan Carter summarises the obvious conclusion:

"By focusing too much attention on the economic structure of society and insufficient attention on the problems of political power, Marx has left a legacy we would done better not to inherit. The perceived need for authoritarian and centralised revolutionary organisation is sanctioned by Marx's theory because his theoretical subordination of political power to economic classes apparently renders post-revolutionary political power unproblematic." [Marx: A Radical Critique, p. 231]

Given this blindness of orthodox Marxism to this issue, it seems ironic that one of the people responsible for it also provides anarchists with evidence to back up our argument that the state is not simply an instrument of class role but rather has interests of its own. Thus we find Engels arguing that proletariat, "in order not to lose again its only just conquered supremacy," would have "to safeguard itself against its own deputies and officials, by declaring them all, without exception, subject to recall at any moment." [Marx-Engels Selected Works, p. 257] Yet, if the state was simply an instrument of class rule such precautions would not be necessary. As such, this shows an awareness that the state can have interests of its own, that it is not simply an machine of class rule.

Aware of the obvious contradiction, he argues that the state "is, as a rule, the state of the most powerful, economically dominant class which, through the medium of the state, becomes the politically dominant class . . . By way of exception, however, periods occur in which the warring classes balance each other, so nearly that the state power, as ostensible mediator, acquires, for the moment, a certain degree of independence of both." And points to "the Bonapartism of the First, and still more of the Second French Empire." [Op. Cit., pp. 577-8] But if the state can become "independent" of economic classes, then that implies that it is no mere machine, no mere "instrument" of class rule. It implies the anarchist argument that the state has interests of its own, generated by its essential features and so, therefore, cannot be used by a majority class as part of its struggle for liberation is correct. Simply put, Anarchists have long "realised — feared — that any State structure, whether or not socialist or based on universal suffrage, has a certain independence from society, and so may serve the interests of those within State institutions rather than the people as a whole or the proletariat." [Brian Morris, Bakunin: The Philosophy of Freedom, p. 134]

Ironically, arguments and warnings about the "independence" of the state by Marxists imply that the state has interests of its own and cannot be considered simply as an instrument of class rule. Rather, it suggests that the anarchist analysis of the state is correct, namely that any structure based on delegated power, centralisation and hierarchy must, inevitably, have a privileged class in charge of it, a class whose position enables it to not only exploit and oppress the rest of society but also to effectively escape from popular control and accountability. This is no accident. The state is structured to enforce minority rule and exclude the majority.