An Administration, Not a Government

1. Society is, broadly speaking, divided into two classes, the slave class and the slave-owning class.

2. Between these two classes there is a conflict of interests—centred around the sale and purchase of labour-power—which can be ended only by the abolition of the slave-owners, i.e., the capitalist class.

3. No one but the slaves themselves can abolish the capitalist class, and so doing achieve the freedom of the workers.

4. As the slave class, i.e., the working class, is the last class to be emancipated, there is no other class to be exploited, hence the need for government automatically disappears. 

The difference, then, between administration and government is that the first serve the people and the other represses them. A good example of administration is to be found in the constitution of the Socialist Party.

The control of the affairs of the Party is vested entirely in the membership of the Party. We have certain officials who are responsible for the execution of the instructions given to them by the Party. If they fail in this work or do it in an unsatisfactory manner, they can be removed from office at any time the Party thinks fit.

We apply this principle to the affairs of society and point out that while we do not dispute the ability of the master class to govern, we do affirm that they cannot administer, for such a function must necessarily be performed in the interests of the workers, and hence can only be carried out by the workers themselves. To talk of a socialist State is to talk in contradictions. The State is a machine designed to maintain the subjection and exploitation of a large mass of people by a few. It developed when the production of wealth surplus to the needs of the producer became possible. Its function was to protect the system of the expropriation of that surplus wealth. Thus, it is a very old institution—and now that we live under capitalism, with its exploitation of the working class under modern industrial conditions, it still carries out the same function. Today, as ever, the state is there to preserve and protect the private ownership of the wealth, power and privilege of the relatively small dominant class in society.

The establishment of world socialism will involve the abolition of the state, but this must be achieved by first gaining control of the entire powers and machinery of governments, including the armed forces. The practical question involved in this is that the socialist majority must be in a position to implement its object. It must be in a position to control events, which means being in a position to enact the common ownership of the means of production and to ensure that society is completely transformed on this basis. At the centre of the capitalist class, power is their control of the forces of the state, therefore this must be taken out of their hands.  The capture of political control by the World Socialist Movement will establish the position whereby socialist delegates will be in control of the machinery of governments at local and national level throughout the world. Their first action will be to implement the common ownership of the means of production. Classes will thus be abolished and an egalitarian community come into being.

Socialism will be a society in which there will be no place for governments, armies, police forces or any of the other oppressive institutions required by capitalism. In socialism the means of production and distribution of wealth will be held in common by society, enabling production to be carried on with the sole purpose of satisfying the needs of human beings. This means that, for the first time in the history of the human race, society will be in a position to eradicate forever the conditions of poverty, want, fear and insecurity, along with violent, aggressive beings which these conditions breed. A society which caters for the needs of its members, because its members will be in control, will not need to set above itself a group of people to rule over it and dictate its actions. When all freely avail themselves of the wealth freely created there will be no need for policemen to stand guard over it to prevent people from taking what they need from what they produce.

Capitalism is a social set-up which produces goods for sale. Socialism will be a society which makes things because people need them. Capitalism has competition, the wages system, and the State. Socialism will have cooperation, open access to wealth, and democratic freedom. Remember this, the next time somebody peddles a socialist State nonsense about the need for a "workers' state". 

Engels is quite clear:

“The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal collective capitalist. The more it proceeds to the taking over of the productive forces, the more it actually becomes collective capitalist, the more citizens it exploits. The workers remain wage-workers, proletarians. But the capitalist relation is not done away with; it is rather brought to a head.”