In a recent discussion a comrade described how, in State and Revolution, Lenin explained that since class society began, the State has been an arm of the rulers to repress the masses. Engels explained that the state began as an armed group separate from the masses to defend the private property of the rising exploitive class. Slavery, feudalism and capitalism improved their state apparatus by adding to this crucial armed element the ideological justifications of exploitation.
The capitalist state includes the police, courts, army, prisons, politicians, schools, and mass media. It guarantees the bosses' power over the masses through armed repression; it administers the bosses' policies, and wages the ideological struggle, using the mass media, schools and universities. The capitalist state will be destroyed by communist revolution. Communism will be the first system since pre-class society in which the majority will rule—all of us, the whole working class.
The way communist society will be organized is that our party, made up of millions of communist workers, will lead and organize every aspect of life, involving millions of other workers, eventually everyone, in carrying this out. Our mass party will lead in fighting for, implementing, defending and spreading communist ideas and production to meet workers' needs.
Everyone will have a say in collectively deciding and carrying out how and what we will produce, learn, fight, and how we will live. The Party, mobilizing masses, will guarantee the administration of society, the ideological struggle and development (learning) and also the fight against the enemies of the working class and to spread revolution, which will need a mass Red Army. All of those will be aspects of our state or government.
There were many questions. Will we have courts? Jails? A White House or Kremlin? Most thought that we will not have any of these. Instead, we communist workers will mobilize more and more workers to resolve problems and deal with anti-social behavior. Leadership and all other meetings will be at work, in homes and neighborhoods, not special office buildings. We will all share in deciding and carrying out what we decide.
Eventually, when the enemies of the working class have been eliminated everywhere, the need for armed force will decrease until it isn't needed. When Marx talked about the state "withering away" under communism, this is probably what he meant. But even once force is not needed (which will take a long time), we will still need a mass party to lead and guarantee the practical and ideological development of everyone and of society. That will be the state.
We encourage other comrades to share their ideas about how we will organize communist society.