uggle for
existence based upon our present anarchy in production, with the
collisions and excesses arising from these, are removed, nothing more
remains to be repressed, and a special repressive force, a State, is no
longer necessary. The first act by virtue of which the State really
constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society--the
taking possession of the means of production in the name of
society--this is, at the same time, its last independent act as a State.
State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after
another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of
persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct
of processes of production. The State is not 'abolished.' _It dies out._
This gives the measure of the value of the phrase 'a free State,' both
as to its justifiable use at times by agitators, and as to its ultimate
scientific insufficiency; and also of the demands of the so-called
anarchists for the abolition of the State out of hand."[30]

This conception of the role of the State is one that no anarchist can
comprehend. He is unwilling to admit that social evolution necessarily
leads through State socialism to industrial democracy, or even that such
an evolution is possible. To him the State seems to have a corporeal,
material existence of its own. It is a tyrannical machine that exists
above all classes and wields a legal, military, and judicial power all
its own. That the State is only an agency for representing in certain
fields the power of a dominant economic class--this is something the
anarchist will not admit. In fact, Bakounin seems to have been utterly
mystified when Eccarius answered him at Basel in these words: "The State
can be reformed by the coming of the working class into power."[31] That
the State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the
capitalist class can neither be granted nor understood by the
anarchists. Nor can it be comprehended that, when the capitalist class
has no affairs of its own to manage, the coercive character of the State
will gradually disappear. State ownership undermines and destroys the
economic power of private capitalists. When the railroads, the mines,
the forests, and other great monopolies are taken out of their hands,
their control over the State is by this much diminished. The only power
they possess to control the State resides in their economic power, and
anything that wea