Marx's Theory of Stages: The Withering Away of the State Under Socialism

[Draggingtree]

Marx's Theory of Stages: The Withering Away of the State Under Socialism

04/07/2017 Ralph Raico

[This "report" appears to have been written while Professor Raico was a university student. No date is given. The paper was found in a folder in the Rothbard Papers that included several unpublished papers by Raico.]

I. The Marxist Theory of Stages

The distinctive feature of Marxism among the socialist ideologies is its historical theory, especially the doctrine of the inevitability of socialism. Already in 1847, Marx credits the "petty bourgeois socialists like Sismondi, with having practically 

completed the critique of capitalism on economic grounds, and having exposed "the hypocritical apologies of economists."1 What these men had so far neglected to do was to lay bare the laws of historical development, whereby an epoch follows necessarily from the one preceding, and develops, necessarily, into the one following, until, at the end of this chain, lies socialism.

The great moving powers in history are, according to Marx, "the material productive forces," evidently meaning the sum of capital goods at any given time. To these correspond, at every stage of their development, certain "relationships of production." These relationships are "determined, necessary, and independent of human will." On this frame­work of property relationships there is elaborated the whole intellectual, political, and social "superstructure."2   https://mises.org/blog/if-majority-votes-secede-—-what-about-minority