I. Division On The Question Of The State

First off the idea for this post largely comes from a, believe it or not, somewhat civil and productive discussion about anarchism vs. Marxism. Particularly a member of the Commune for Distributing Agitprop (CDAP) asked me this question:

What exactly are the institutions you would use to characterize a proletarian state? What do they look like, and how are they operated?

I think this is such a crucial and oft-ignored question even by many socialists. Worse still, both some anarchists and socialists will respond with the non-answer that destroying the bourgeois state, abolishing private property, and facilitating direct participation by the proletariat will inherently create communism, that ideal state of cooperative equality and liberation. We are faced with “What is Step 1?” and answer with a description of Step 76.

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