State Theory: Let the State Return Back to Society; Process from Class Society to Communism

September 2013

Author Yu Keping is the Chair Professor and Dean of the School of Government at Peking University, director of the Center for Chinese Political Studies. This article was originally published in the 9th issue of Theoretical Vision in 2013. The original title was “Let the State Return Back to Society – Marxist Views on the State and Society”. Yu Keping has long served as the chief expert and first person in charge of the “Study on the Basic Views of Classical Marxist Writers” project titled of the Marxist Theory Research and Construction Project.

The relationship between the state and society is the key to understanding the materialist conception of history. Without studying the relationship between the state and society, it is impossible to correctly understand Marx’s materialist conception of history. The state that Marx refers to is neither a “country” in the sense of territory nor a “nation” in the sense of nation, but a “state” in the sense of regime/political rule of power. Therefore, the process of “withering-away of the state” (Absterben des Staates) in the Marxist texts is actually a process of returning of the state back to the society.

As the basic organizational form of human survival, society coexists with man. As long as man exists, society will exist, and the State (A “state disappearance” in the Marxist context is actually a process of a state returning power to the people. As the basic organizational form of human survival, society always coexists with humans. As long as humans exist, society will exist, and the state is just a passer-by in human society.

  The state must eventually return back to society, and the process of state’s demise is the process of State returning to society. The shift of the focus of modern politics from government rule to governance is the logical result of the demise of the state; and the political development trend of “less government rule and more governance” is in line with the historical prediction of Marxism that the state will gradually wither away.

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