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i;8<br />

VIOLENCE AND THE LABOR MOVEMENT<br />

sions and excesses arising from these, are removed,<br />

nothing more remains to be repressed, and a special repressive<br />

force, a State, is no longer necessary. The<br />

first act by virtue of which the State really constitutes<br />

itself the representative of the whole of society<br />

— the taking<br />

possession of the means of production in the name<br />

of society<br />

— this is, at the same time, its last independent<br />

act as a State. State interference in social relations becomes,<br />

in one domain after another, superfluous, and<br />

then dies out of itself the ; government of persons<br />

is replaced<br />

by the administration of things, and by the conduct<br />

of processes of production. The State is not 'abolished.'<br />

It dies out. This gives the measure of the value<br />

of the phrase 'a free State,' both as to its justifiable use<br />

at times by agitators, and as to its ultimate scientific insufficiency;<br />

and also of the demands of the so-called<br />

anarchists for the abolition of the State out of<br />

hand." (30)<br />

This conception of the role of the State is one that no<br />

anarchist can comprehend. He is<br />

unwilling to admit<br />

that social evolution necessarily leads through State socialism<br />

to industrial democracy, or even that such an<br />

evolution is possible. To him the State seems to have a<br />

corporeal, material existence of its own. It is a tyrannical<br />

machine that exists above all classes and wields a<br />

legal, military, and judicial power all its own. That the<br />

State is only an agency for representing in certain fields<br />

— the power of a dominant economic class this is something<br />

the anarchist will not admit. In fact, Bakounin<br />

seems to have been utterly mystified when Eccarius answered<br />

him at Basel in these words : "The State can be<br />

reformed by the coming of the working class into<br />

power." (31) That the State is but a committee for<br />

managing the common affairs of the capitalist class can

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