The Withering Away of Politics

After 1917, we didn't see the withering away of the state.  Instead, what we saw was the withering away of politics.  

In the era of the bourgeois mode of production, the real movement in politics is the global proletariat's self-conscious seizure and taking power over the means of production - the bourgeoisie being disproportionately (though not completely) male, adult, of European ethnic background, and so on, and the global proletariat being disproportionately (though not completely) female, young, of non-European ethnic background, and so on.  I emphasize that this is a political struggle, that is, that this struggle is a struggle for power: the essence of this struggle is that its goal is for the workers themselves, in free association, to be the decision-makers.  It is not merely a struggle for "stuff," that is, for material goods.  And I emphasize that the defining goal of this struggle is that the workers themselves become the decision-makers - not a party, not the state, and certainly not one person, one autocratic decision-maker.

Why did union membership decline in the 1920s?  Why did workers stop joining unions?  Because it was no longer in their rational interest to do so.  They had nothing to gain - no power to gain - from doing so.  The unions were no longer struggling for worker power, but merely, at most, a more advantageous position under the power of the capitalists - whether those capitalists waved red flags or not.