How free?1

This paper is a critique of the Marxian idea of a future stateless utopia. It is an immanent critique. Were one to start from non-Marxist assumptions, detailed argument would scarcely be necessary. Non-Marxists just take it for granted that any organized modern society foreseeable from the present world must necessarily involve state-type institutions of governance. My aim here is to show that, even thinking from within the Marxist tradition, the idea of a stateless utopia is not sustainable, unless as a blind act of faith