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Concept
Withering away of the state
Summary
Withering away of the state is a Marxist concept coined by Friedrich Engels referring to the idea that, with the realization of socialism, the state will eventually become obsolete and cease to exist as society will be able to govern itself without the state and its coercive enforcement of the law.
The phrase stems from Friedrich Engels, who wrote in part 3, chapter 2 of Anti-Dühring (1878):
The interference of the state power in social relations becomes superfluous in one sphere after another, and then ceases of itself. 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. ( Der Staat wird nicht „abgeschafft“, er stirbt ab. )
A related quote from Engels comes from Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State (1884):
The society which organizes production anew on the basis of free and equal association of the producers will put the whole state machinery where it will then belong—into the museum of antiquities, next to the spinning wheel and the bronze axe.
Although Engels first introduced the idea of the withering away of the state, he attributed the underlying concept to Karl Marx, and other Marxist theorists—including Vladimir Lenin—would later expand on it. According to this concept of the withering away of the state, eventually a communist society will no longer require coercion to induce individuals to behave in a way that benefits the entire society. Such a society would occur after a temporary period of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
It proceeds from the concept of the transformation of the state in the previous stage of society called socialism. Engels posits that—similar to the arguments made by Henri de Saint-Simon before him—in a socialist society public organization would become primarily concerned with technical issues such as the optimal allocation of resources and determination of production as opposed to drafting and enforcing laws and thus the traditional state functions would gradually become irrelevant and unnecessary for the functioning of society.
Official source
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