Comrade, I think you are more optimistic than I about the necessity of a state. Maybe it's just doomerism from living in the USA, but I can't imagine a socialist state "outliving its usefulness". IMO unless you have something (a state) actively stopping people from reinstating capitalism/fascism/whatever, they'll crop back up and doom any utopian project because all it takes is not being able to stop one sufficiently motivated asshole.
If revolution happens within our lifetimes, there's no way a socialist state outlives its usefulness on that timescale, in the best case scenario where nothing goes wrong and capitalism is extinguished everywhere. The dissolution of the class distinctions and withering away of the state would have to happen over the course of many generations. It's not until the revolutionary generation is long-dead that the nonexistence of "sufficiently motivated assholes" is ensured.
Abolition of class hierarchy happens at the same time a mature socialist state has outlived its usefulness and finishes withering away.
Comrade, I think you are more optimistic than I about the necessity of a state. Maybe it's just doomerism from living in the USA, but I can't imagine a socialist state "outliving its usefulness". IMO unless you have something (a state) actively stopping people from reinstating capitalism/fascism/whatever, they'll crop back up and doom any utopian project because all it takes is not being able to stop one sufficiently motivated asshole.
If revolution happens within our lifetimes, there's no way a socialist state outlives its usefulness on that timescale, in the best case scenario where nothing goes wrong and capitalism is extinguished everywhere. The dissolution of the class distinctions and withering away of the state would have to happen over the course of many generations. It's not until the revolutionary generation is long-dead that the nonexistence of "sufficiently motivated assholes" is ensured.