Vejas Liulevicius: evaluation

Transcript context

…How did he conceive of a revolution, potentially a violent revolution stabilizing itself into something where the working class was able to rule? That’s where things become a good deal less detailed in his and Engels accounts. The answer that they proposed in part was this is for the future to determine, so all of the details will be settled later. I think there was allied to this was a tremendous confidence in some very 19 century ideas about how society could be administered and what made for orderly society in a way where if the right infrastructure was in place, you might expect society to kind of run itself without the need for micromanagement from above. And hence, we arrive at Marx’s tantalizing promise that there will be a period where it will be necessary to have centralized control and there might have to be, as he puts it, despotic inroads against property in order to bring this revolution to pass. But then afterwards, the state, because it represents everybody rather than representing particular class interests that are in conflict with other classes, the state will eventually wither away, so there won’t be need for it. Now, that’s not to say that pure stasis arrives or that the stabilization equals being frozen in time. It’s not as if that is what things will look like. But instead, the big issues will be settled and henceforth people will be able to enjoy lives of, as he would consider it, in authentic freedom without necessity, without poverty as a result of this blessed state that’s been arrived at. Despotic inroads against property. Did he elaborate on the despotic inroads?…

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