My topic is Marxist and Austrian class analysis.
I want to do the following.
First, I will present a series of theses
that constitute the hardcore of the Marxist theory of history.
I claim that all of them are essentially correct.
And then I will show how these true theses
are derived in Marxism from a false starting point.
And finally, I want to demonstrate
How Austrianism in the Mises-Rothbard tradition can give a correct, but categorically different
explanation of their validity.
Let me begin with the hardcore of the Marxist belief system.
The history of mankind is the history of class struggles.
It is the history of struggles between a relatively small ruling class and a larger class of the
exploited.
The primary form of exploitation is economic. The ruling class expropriates parts of the
productive output of the exploited or, as Marxists say, it appropriates a social surplus
product and uses it for its own consumptive purposes. Second, the ruling class is unified
by its common interest in upholding its exploitative position and maximizing its exploitatively
appropriated surplus product. It never deliberately gives up power or exploitation income. Instead,
any loss in power or income must be wrestled away from it through struggles whose outcome
ultimately depends on the class consciousness of the exploited, that is, on whether or not
and to what extent the exploited are aware of their own status and are consciously united
with other class members in common opposition to exploitation.
Third, class rule manifests itself primarily in specific arrangements regarding the assignment
of property rights or in Marxist terminology in specific relations of production.
In order to protect these arrangements or production relations, the ruling class forms
and is in command of the state as the apparatus of compulsion and coercion.
The state enforces and helps reproduce a given class structure through the administration
of a system of class justice, and it assists in the creation and the support of an ideological
Superstructure Designed to Lend Legitimacy to the Existence of Class Rule.
Fourth, internally the process of competition within the ruling class generates a tendency
toward increasing concentration and centralization.
A multipolar system of exploitation is gradually supplanted by an oligarchic or monopolistic
one.
Fewer and fewer exploitation centers remain in operation, and those that do are increasingly
integrated into a hierarchical order.
And externally, that is, as regards the international system, this internal centralization process
will lead to imperialist interstate wars and the territorial expansion of exploitative
rule.
5. With the centralization and expansion of exploitative rule gradually approaching its ultimate limit of world domination, class rule will increasingly become incompatible with the further development and improvement of productive forces.
Economic stagnation and crises become more and more characteristic and create the so-called objective conditions for the emergence of a revolutionary class consciousness of the exploited.
The situation becomes ripe for the establishment of a classless society, the withering away of the state, or the replacement of government of men over men by the administration of things.
and, as its result, unheard of economic prosperity. All of these theses can be given a perfectly
good justification, as I will show. Unfortunately, however, it is Marxism which subscribes to
all of them that has done more than any other ideological system to discredit their validity
in deriving them from a patently absurd exploitation theory.
Now what is this Marxist theory of exploitation?
According to Marx, such pre-capitalist social systems as slavery and feudalism are characterized
by exploitation.
There is no quarrel with this, for after all the slave is not a free laborer and he cannot
The interest of the slave and that of the slave owner are indeed antagonistic. The same is true as regards the interest of the feudal lord who extracts a land rent from a peasant who works on land homesteaded by himself.
The same is true as regards the interests of the feudal lord who extracts a land rent from a peasant who works on land homesteaded by himself, that is, by the peasant.
The lord's gains are the peasant's losses.
And it is also undisputed that slavery as well as feudalism indeed hampers the development of productive forces.
Neither slave nor serf will be as productive as they would be without slavery or serf them.
But the genuinely new Marxist idea is that essentially nothing is changed as regards exploitation under capitalism.
That is, if the slave becomes a free laborer or if the peasant decides to farm land homesteaded by someone else and pays rent in exchange for doing so.
To be sure, Marx, in the famous Chapter 24 of the first volume of his Capital, titled
The So-called Original Accumulation, gives a historical account of the emergence of capitalism,
which makes the point that much or even most of the initial capitalist property is the
result of plunder, enclosure and conquest.
And similarly, in chapter 25, on the modern theory of colonialism, the role of force and violence in exporting capitalism to the, as we would now say, third world, is heavily emphasized.
Admittedly, all this is generally correct, and insofar as it is, there can be no quarrel with labeling such capitalism exploitative.
Yet, one should be aware of the fact that Marx here is engaged in a trick. In engaging
in historical investigations and arousing the reader's indignation regarding the brutalities
underlying the formation of many capitalist fortunes, he actually sidesteps the issue
at hand. He distracts from the fact that his thesis is really an entirely different one,
Namely, that even if one were to have a clean capitalism, so to speak, that is, one in which the original appropriation of capital was the result of nothing else but homesteading, work and savings, the capitalist who hired labor to be employed with this capital would nonetheless be engaged in exploitation.
Indeed, Marx considered the proof of this thesis his most important contribution to economic analysis.
What, then, is his proof of the exploitative character of a clean capitalism?
It consists in the observation that the factor prices, in particular the wages paid to laborers by the capitalist, are lower than the output prices.
The laborer, for instance, is paid a wage that represents consumption goods which can be produced in three days, but he actually works five days for his wage and produces an output of consumption goods that exceeds what he receives as remuneration.
The output of the two extra days, the surplus value in Marx's terminology, is appropriated by the capitalist. Hence, according to Marx, there is exploitation.
Now what is wrong with this analysis? The answer becomes obvious once it is asked why the laborer would possibly agree to such a deal.
He agrees because his wage payment represents present goods, while his own labor services represent only future goods.
And he values present goods more highly.
After all, he could also decide not to sell his labor services to the capitalist and then reap the full value of his output himself.
But this would of course imply that he would have to wait longer for any consumption goods to become available to him.
In selling his labor services, he demonstrates that he prefers a smaller amount of consumption goods now over a possibly larger one at some future date.
On the other hand, why would the capitalist want to strike a deal with the laborer?
Why would he want to advance present goods, that is, present money, to the laborer in exchange for services that bear fruit only later?
Obviously, he would not want to pay out, for instance, $100 now if he were to receive the same amount in one year's time.
In that case, why not simply hold on to it for one year and receive the extra benefit of having actual command over it during the entire time?
Instead, he must expect to receive a larger sum than $100 in the future in order to give up $100 now in the form of wages paid to the laborer.
He must expect to be able to earn a profit or, more correctly, an interest return.
And he is constrained by time preferences, the fact that an actor invariably prefers earlier over later goods in yet another way.
If one can obtain a larger sum in the future by sacrificing a smaller one in the present, why then is a capitalist not engaged in more savings than he actually is?
Why does he not hire more laborers than he does, if each one of them promises an additional interest return?
The answer again should be obvious, because the capitalist is a consumer too and cannot help being one.
The amount of his savings and investing is restricting the necessity that he, too, like the laborer, requires a supply of present goods large enough to secure the satisfaction of all those wants, the satisfaction of which during the waiting time is considered more urgent than the advantages which a still greater lengthening of the period of production would provide.
Now, what is wrong with Marx's theory of exploitation, then, is that he does not understand the phenomenon of time preference as a universal category of human action.
That the laborer does not receive his full worth, so to speak, has nothing to do with exploitation,
but merely reflects the fact that it is impossible for man to exchange future goods against present ones, except at a discount.
Contrary to the case of slave and slave master, where the latter benefits at the expense of the former, the relationship between the free laborer and the capitalist is a mutually beneficial one.
The laborer enters the agreement because, given his time preference, he prefers a smaller amount of present goods over a larger future one.
and the capitalist emphasis, because given his time preference, he has a reverse preference order and ranks a larger future amount of goods more highly than a smaller present one.
Their interests are not antagonistic, but harmonious.
Without the capitalist expectation of an interest return, the laborer would be worse off having to wait longer than he wishes to wait.
And without the laborer's preference for present goods, the capitalist would be worse off having to resort to less roundabout and less efficient production methods than those which he desires to adopt.
Nor can the capitalist wage system be regarded as an impediment to the further development of the forces of production, as Marx claims.
If the laborer were not permitted to sell his labor services and the capitalist to buy them, output would lower because production would have to take place with relatively reduced levels of capital accumulation.
Under is through outstanding, producing and or savings. In each case it is brought about with the expectation that it will lead to an increase in the output of future goods.
The value an actor attaches to his capital reflects the value he attaches to all expected future incomes attributable to its cooperation and discounted by his rate of time preference.
If, as in the case of collectively owned factors of production, an actor is no longer granted exclusive control over his accumulated capital and hence over the future income to be derived from its employment, but partial control instead is assigned to non-homesteaders, non-producers and non-savers, the value for him of the expected income and hence that of the capital goods is reduced.
is used. His effective rate of time preference will rise. There will be less homesteading
of resources whose scarcity is recognized and less saving for the maintenance of existing
and the production of new capital goods. The period of production, the roundaboutness of
the production structure will be shortened and relative impoverishment will result.
If Marx's theory of capitalist exploitation and his ideas on how to end exploitation and
establish universal prosperity are false to the point of being ridiculous, it is clear
that any theory of history which can be derived from it must be false too. Or, if it should
be correct, it must have been derived incorrectly. Instead of going through the lengthier task
and the risk of explaining all of the flaws in the Marxist argument as it sets out from its Theory of Capitalist Exploitation and ends with a Theory of History which I presented earlier, I will take a shortcut here.
I will now outline in the briefest possible way the correct Austrian Misesian-Rothbardian Theory of Exploitation.
I will then give an explanatory sketch of how this theory makes sense out of the class theory of history and highlight along the way some key differences between this class theory and the Marxist one and also point out some intellectual affinities between Austrianism and Marxism stemming from their common conviction that there does indeed exist something like exploitation and a ruling class.
The starting point for the Austrian exploitation theory is plain and simple, as it should be. Actually, it has already been established through the analysis of the Marxist theory.
Exploitation characterized the relationship between slave and slave master, and between serf and feudal lord.
But no exploitation was found possible under a clean capitalism.
Now what is the principal difference between these two cases?
The answer is this. The recognition or non-recognition of the homesteading principle. The peasant under feudalism is exploited because he does not have exclusive control over land that he homesteaded and the slave because he has no exclusive control over his own homesteaded body.
If, contrary to this, everyone has exclusive control over his own body, that is, everyone is a free laborer, and acts in accordance with the homesteading principle, there can be no exploitation.
It is logically absurd to claim that a person who homesteads goods not previously homesteaded by anybody else, or who employs such goods in the production of future goods, or who saves presently homesteaded or produced goods in order to increase the future supply of goods, could thereby exploit anybody. Nothing has been taken away from anybody in this process, and additional goods have actually been created.
And it would be equally absurd to claim that an agreement between different homesteaders, savers and producers regarding their non-exploitatively appropriated goods or services could possibly contain any foul play then.
Instead, exploitation takes place whenever any deviation from the homesteading principle occurs.
It is exploitation whenever a person successfully claims partial or full control over resources which he has not homesteaded, saved or produced, and which he has not acquired contractually from a previous producer-owner.
Exploitation is the expropriation of homesteaders, producers and savers by late coming non-homesteaders, non-producers, non-savers and non-contractors.
It is the expropriation of people whose property claims are grounded in work and contract by people whose claims are derived from thin air and who disregard others' works and contracts.
Needless to say, exploitation defined in this way is in fact an integral part of human history.
One can acquire and increase wealth either through homesteading, producing, saving or contracting,
or by expropriating homesteaders, producers, savers or contractors.
There are no other ways. Both methods are natural to mankind.
Alongside homesteading, producing and contracting, there have always been non-productive and non-contractual property acquisitions.
And in the course of economic development, just as the producers and contractors can form firms, enterprises and corporations,
so can exploiters combine to large-scale exploitation enterprises, to governments and states.
The ruling class is initially composed of the members of such an exploitation firm, and with a ruling class established over a given territory and engaged in the expropriation of economic resources from a class of exploited producers, the center of all history indeed becomes the struggle between exploiters and the exploited.
History, then, correctly told, is essentially the history of the victories and defeats of the rulers in their attempt to maximize exploitatively appropriated income and of the ruled in their attempts to resist and reverse this tendency.
It is in this assessment of history that Austrians and Marxists agree, and why a notable intellectual affinity between Austrians and Marxist historical investigations exists.
Both oppose a historiography which recognizes only action or interaction economically and morally all on a par.
And both oppose a historiography that instead of adopting such a value-neutral stand,
thinks that one's own arbitrarily introduced subjective value judgments have to provide the foil for one's historical narratives.
Rather, history must be told in terms of freedom and exploitation, parasitism and economic impoverishment, private property and its destruction. Otherwise, it is told false.
While productive enterprises come into or go out of existence because of voluntary support or its absence, a ruling class never comes to power because there is a demand for it, nor does it abdicate when abdication is demonstrably demanded.
One cannot say by any stretch of the imagination that homesteaders, producers, savers and contractors have demanded their expropriation.
They must be coerced into accepting it, and this proves conclusively that the exploitation firm is not in demand at all.
Nor can one say that a ruling class can be brought down by abstaining from transactions with it in the same way as one can bring down a productive enterprise.
For the ruling class acquires its income through non-productive and non-contractual transactions, and thus is unaffected by boycotts.
Rather, what makes the rise of an exploitation firm possible, and what alone can in turn bring it down, is a specific state of public opinion, or, in Marxist terminology, a specific state of class consciousness.
An exploiter creates victims, and victims are potential enemies. It is possible that this resistance can be lastingly broken down by force in the case of a group of men exploiting another group of roughly the same size.
However, more than force is needed to expand exploitation over a population many times its own size.
For this to happen, a firm must also have public support. A majority of the population must accept the exploitative actions as legitimate. This acceptance can range from active enthusiasm to passive resignation.
But it must be acceptance in the sense that a majority must have given up the idea of actively or passively resisting any attempt to enforce non-productive and non-contractual property acquisitions.
The class consciousness must be low, undeveloped and fuzzy.
Only as long as this state of affairs lasts, is there still room for an exploitative firm to prosper, even if no actual demand for it exists.
Only if and insofar as the exploited and expropriated develop a clear idea of their own situation,
and are united with other members of their class through an ideological movement which gives expression to the idea of a classless society where all exploitation is abolished, can the power of the ruling class be broken?
Only if and insofar as the majority of the exploited public becomes consciously integrated into such a movement and accordingly displays a common outrage over all non-productive or non-contractual property acquisitions shows a common contempt for everyone who engages in such acts and deliberately contributes nothing to help them make successful, not to mention actively trying to obstruct them,
The gradual abolishment of feudal and absolutist rule, and the rise of increasingly capitalist societies in Western Europe and the United States, and along with this unheard of economic growth and rising population numbers, was the result of an increasing class consciousness among the exploited who were ideologically molded together
through the doctrines of natural rights and liberalism.
In this, Austrians and Marxists agree.
They disagree, however, on the next assessment.
The reversal of this liberalization process
and steadily increased levels of exploitation in these societies
since the last third of the 19th century
and particularly pronounced since World War I
are the result of a loss in class-consciousness. In fact, in the Austrian view, Marxism must accept much of the blame for this development by misdirecting attention from the correct exploitation model of the homesteader-producer-saver-contractor versus the non-homesteader-producer-saver-contractor to the fallacious model of the wage-earner versus the capitalist, thereby muddling things up.
The establishment of a ruling class over an exploited one many times its own size by coercion and the manipulation of public opinion, that is, a low degree of class consciousness among the exploited, finds its most basic institutional expression in the creation of a system of public law superimposed on private law.
The ruling class sets itself apart and protects its position as a ruling class by adopting a constitution for their firm's operation.
On the one hand, by formalizing the internal operations within the state apparatus as well as its relations vis-à-vis the exploited population, a constitution creates some degree of legal stability.
The more familiar and popular private law notions are incorporated into constitutional and public law, the more conducive this will be to the creation of favorable public opinion.
On the other hand, any constitution and public law also formalizes the exemptory status of the ruling class as regards the homesteading principle.
It formalizes the right of the state's representatives to engage in non-productive and non-contractual property acquisitions and the ultimate subordination of private to public law.
Class justice, that is a dualism of one set of laws for the rulers and another for the ruled, comes to bear in this dualism of public and private law
and in the domination and infiltration of public law over and into private law.
It is not because private property rights are recognized by law, as Marxists think, that class justice is established.
Rather, class justice comes into being precisely whenever a legal distinction exists between a class of persons acting under and being protected by public law
Law and another class acting under and being protected instead by some subordinate private law.
More specifically then, the basic proposition of the Marxist theory of the secular is false.
The state is not exploitative because it protects the capitalist's property rights,
but because it itself is exempt from the restriction of having to acquire property productively
In spite of this fundamental misconception, however, Marxism, because it correctly interprets
the state as exploitative, contrary for instance to the public choice school which sees it
as a normal firm among others, is on to some important insights regarding the logic of
state operations.
For one thing, Marxism recognizes the strategic function of redistributive state policies.
As an exploitative firm, the state must at all times be interested in a low degree of
class consciousness among the ruled.
The redistribution of property and income, a policy of DVD et impera, is the state's
means with which it can create divisiveness among the public and destroy the formation
of a unifying class consciousness of the exploited.
Furthermore, the redistribution of state power itself through democratizing the state constitution
and opening up every ruling position to everyone and granting everyone the right to participate
in the Determination of State Personnel and Policy is a means for reducing the resistance
against exploitation as such.
Secondly, the state is indeed as Marxists see it the great center of ideological propaganda
and mystification.
Exploitation is really freedom, taxes are really voluntary contributions, non-contractual
And finally, Marxists are also correct in noticing the close association between the
The State and Business, especially the banking elite, even though the explanation for it
is faulty.
The reason is not that the bourgeois establishment sees and supports the state as a guarantor
of private property rights and contractualism.
On the contrary, the establishment correctly perceives the state as a very anti-thesis
to Private Property that it is and takes a close interest in it for this reason.
The more successful a business, the less it will excel, but the larger also the potential
gains that can be achieved if it can come under government special protection and is
exempt from the full weight of capitalist competition.
This is why the business establishment is interested in the state and its infiltration.
The ruling elite in turn is interested in close cooperation with the business establishment
because of its financial powers.
In particular, the banking elite is of interest because as an exploitative firm, the state
naturally wishes to possess complete autonomy for counterfeiting.
By offering to cut the banking elite in on its own counterfeiting machinations and allowing
By allowing them to counterfeit on top of its own counterfeited notes under a system of fractional reserve banking, the state can easily reach this goal and establish a system of state-monopolized money and cartelized banking controlled by its central bank.
With this direct counterfeiting connection with the banking system and by extension the bank's major clients, the ruling class in fact extends far beyond the state apparatus to the very nervous centers of civil society.
Not that much different, at least in appearance, from the picture that Marxists like to paint of the cooperation between banking, business elites and the state.
Competition within the ruling class and among different ruling classes brings about a tendency toward increasing concentration.
Marxism is right in this. However, its faulty theory of exploitation again leads it to locate the cause for this tendency in the wrong place.
Marxism sees such a tendency as inherent in capitalist competition. Yet it is precisely so long as people are engaged in a clean capitalism that competition is not a form of zero-sum interaction.
The homes that are the producer, saver and contractor do not gain at another's expense.
Their gains either leave another's physical possessions completely unaffected or they
actually imply mutual gains, as in the case of all contractual exchanges.
Capitalism thus can account for increases in absolute wealth, but under its regime no systematic
tendency toward relative concentration can be said to exist.
Instead, zero-sum interactions characterize not only the relationship between the ruler
and the ruled, but also between competing rulers.
The competition defined as non-productive and non-contractual property acquisitions is only possible as long as there is anything that can be appropriated.
Yet if there were free competition in the business of exploitation, there would obviously be nothing left to expropriate.
Thus, exploitation requires monopoly over some given territory and population.
And the competition between exploiters is by its very nature eliminative and must bring about a tendency toward relative concentration of exploitation firms as well as a tendency towards centralization within each exploitative firm.
The development of states rather than capitalist firms provides the foremost illustration of this tendency.
There are now a significantly smaller number of states with exploitative control over much larger territories than in previous centuries.
And within each state apparatus there has in fact been a constant tendency toward increasing the powers of the central government at the expense of its regional and local subdivisions.
Yet outside the state apparatus a tendency toward relative concentration has also become
apparent and for the same reason.
Not as should be clear by now because of any trade inherent in capitalism but because the
ruling class has expanded its rule into the midst of civil society through the creation
of a state banking business alliance and in particular the establishment of a system of
of Central Banking
If a concentration and centralization of state power then takes place, it is only natural
that this be accompanied by a parallel process of relative concentration and cartelization
of banking and industry.
Along with increased state powers, the associated banking and business establishments powers
of eliminating or putting economic competitors at disadvantage by means of non-productive
or non-contractual expropriation increases.
Business concentration is the reflection of the statization of economic life.
The primary means for the expansion of state power and the elimination of rival exploitation
centers is war and military domination. Interstate competition implies a tendency toward war and
imperialism. As centers of exploitation, their interests are by nature antagonistic. Moreover,
with each of them internally in command of the instrument of taxation and absolute counterfeiting
It is possible for the ruling classes to let others pay for their wars.
Naturally, if one does not have to pay for one's own risky ventures, but can force others to do so,
one tends to be a greater risk-taker and more trigger-happy than one otherwise would be.
Marxism, contrary to much of the so-called bourgeois social sciences, gets the facts right.
There is indeed a tendency toward imperialism operative in history, and the foremost imperialist powers are indeed the most advanced capitalist nations.
Yet the explanation is once again faulty. It is a state, as an institution exempt from the capitalist rules of property acquisitions, that is by nature aggressive.
And the historical evidence of a close correlation between capitalism and imperialism only seemingly contradicts this.
It finds its explanation easily enough in the fact that in order to come out successfully from interstate wars, a state must be in command of sufficient, in relative terms, of sufficient economic resources.
Other things being equal, the state with more ample resources will win. As an exploitative firm, a state is by nature destructive of wealth and capital accumulation. Wealth is produced exclusively by civil society, and the weaker the state's exploitative powers, the more wealth and capital society accumulates.
Thus, paradoxical as it may sound at first, the weaker or the more liberal a state is internally, the further developed capitalism is.
A developed capitalist economy to extract from makes a state richer, and a richer state then makes for more and more successful expansionist wars.
It is this relationship that explains why initially the states of Western Europe, and in particular Great Britain, were the leading imperialist powers,
and why in the 20th century this role has been assumed by the United States.
And a similarly straightforward yet once again entirely non-Marxist explanation exists for the observation always pointed out by Marxists
that the banking and business establishment is usually among the most ardent supporters of military strengths and imperial expansion.
It is not because the expansion of capitalist markets requires exploitation,
but because the expansion of state-protected and privileged businesses requires that such protection be extended also to foreign countries
and that foreign competitors be hampered through non-contractual and non-productive property acquisitions in the same way or even more so than internal competition.
Specifically, the business elite supports imperialism if this imperialism promises to lead to a position of military domination of one's own allied state over another state.
For then, from a position of military strength, it becomes possible to establish a system of, as one might call it, monetary imperialism.
The dominating state will use its superior power to enforce a policy of internationally coordinated inflation.
Its own central bank sets a pace in the process of counterfeiting, and the central banks of the dominated states are ordered to use its currency, the currency of the dominating state, as their own reserve currency and inflate on top of it.
This way, along with the dominating state, its associated banking and business establishment
as the earliest receivers of the counterfeit reserve currency can engage in an almost costless
expropriation also of foreign property owners and income producers.
A double layer of exploitation of a foreign state and a foreign elite on top of a national
The Federal State and a national elite is imposed on the exploited class in the dominated territories, causing prolonged economic dependency and relative economic stagnation vis-a-vis the dominant nation.
It is this very uncapitalist situation that characterizes the status of the United States and the U.S. dollar
and that gives rise to the quite correct charge of U.S. economic exploitation and dollar imperialism.
Now, I come to the last thesis.
The increasing concentration and centralization of exploitative powers leads to economic stagnation,
impedes the development of productive forces and thereby creates the objective conditions for its ultimate demise and the establishment of a classless society capable of producing unheard of economic prosperity.
Contrary to Marxist claims, this is not of course the result of any historical laws.
In fact, there exists no such thing as historical laws as Marxists conceive of them.
Nor is it the result of a tendency for the profit rate to fall with an increased organic composition of capitals, of capital as Marxists phrase it.
is an increase in the proportion of constant capital as compared with variable capital.
Instead, the likelihood of crises that promotes a development of a higher degree are briefly commented.
Exploitation is destructive of wealth formation, yet in the competition of exploitative firms,
that is of states less exploitative ones because they are in command of more
ample resources will win out over more exploitative ones. Hence the process of
economic imperialism specifically of US imperialism initially has a relatively
State rule becomes increasingly recognized as incompatible with the further development of productive forces and economic growth.
Anti-status social pressures mount and bring about a process of withering away the state.
Contrary to the Marxist model, however, if and insofar as this occurs, it will not mean social ownership of means of production.
In fact, not only is social ownership economically inefficient, as I've already explained earlier.
Moreover, it is in fact incompatible with the idea that the state is withering away.
in a way, because if means of production are owned collectively, and if it is realistically assumed that not everybody's idea as to what to do with these means happens to coincide as if by a miracle, then it is precisely socially owned factors of production which require state action.
That is, they require state action in order to impose one person's will on another disagreeing person's will.
Instead, the withering away of the state then, and this is the end of exploitation,
means the establishment of a pure private property society ordered by nothing but private law.