Capitalism is the most violent social order that has ever existed: It drove peasants off the land to become factory fodder, enslaved 12 million Africans, slaughtered at least 20 million indigenous people the world over – and that was just to get itself up and running. It then gave us a century of war costing 170 million lives and famines taking a further 40 million – not to mention the carnage from its “unavoidable” crises like the Great Depression.

The institution that has instigated and legalised the overwhelming majority of this violence – both military and economic – is the state. And today its onward march is promising us another “century of war”.

Yet despite all the evidence to the contrary there exists a pervasive myth that the state plays the role of an arbiter, sitting above society and mediating between the competing interests of all citizens in the name of the law. An elaborate set of theatrics performed by learned, wig-wearing gentlemen shroud this “rule of law” in a timeless and immutable veil. So for most people, the state is actually not considered an obstacle to a better society – the obstacle arises when it fails to maintain its “independence”, when it is corrupted by dubious characters or taken over by special interests.

To dispel this myth, we have to understand that the state is not just an instrument or a tool which can be picked up and wielded by all and sundry. Rather, it is the expression of existing class relationships. The state is the primary instrument for defending the power of the capitalist ruling class.

For example, take any large business. It will have a perimeter fence or some external boundary, while internally there exist differing social layers – the workers (producing profit), the capitalists (who figure out how to get more profit out of the workers so as to gain advantage over rival firms) and a layer of functionaries, security and managers (who are employed to oversee and discipline the workers).

We have, then, a place which is territorially defined, driven by competition, internally divided into a class hierarchy with decision-making concentrated at the top and the lower layers subject to the surveillance and control of a security force. This is the basic model of the modern company and of the state.

So just as a company might specialise in its most profitable area of business and “downsize” other departments, so might a state provide business incentives and organise the national economy in order to be a “global competitor”.

Just as a company will try to squeeze more out of its employees and increase productivity, so will a state pass laws designed to reduce the minimum wage, deregulate the labour market and so on.

Just as a company will sign business agreements with some and drive others to the wall, so states sign off on trade deals, erect tariff walls and bomb the crap out of each other.

In short, just as the capitalist employs a layer of functionaries to manage the business, so does the national capitalist class as a whole organise in a state to manage their collective interests. So the state serves the dual function of maintaining the rule of capitalists over workers and of organising the competition between different sections of the global ruling class. In the last instance, these are the primary tasks of the state.

The fact that the state performs other functions might seem to run counter to these assertions. Surely the fact that we have health, education and welfare services provided by the state shows that it can have a progressive character? Well, in some countries it is incumbent upon companies to provide health benefits and retirement pensions to employees. But this doesn’t change the character of those companies. A company is neither progressive nor conservative – it is simply the site of the exploitation of workers.

Similarly, the construction of the welfare state was about as progressive as a slave owner who stops using the whip both out of fear of the slave and desire for more profit. Granted, it is a good thing that the ruling class can be forced to collectively chip in for our maintenance. But through the state playing a role in the reproduction of our lives, it also served to strengthen itself by obscuring its own class nature and encouraging us to identify with the established order.

Further, through the “generosity” of state-run education and welfare, the ruling class gains the ability to mould our ideas, and to more closely control our lives by putting conditions on the provision of welfare – like making it difficult for young people to become independent from their parents or incentives for women to stay in the home.

Its role in protecting us from “criminals” can also lead people to think of the state and its police force as a necessary evil. Yet what do the cops really do?

A report from the Police Studies Institute in Britain observed that “for a police officer, patrolling tends to be boring … [and] aimless. A considerable amount of police behaviour can best be understood as a search for some interest, excitement or sensation.”

No other social layer has this magical ability to make doing nothing appear necessary. Yet when they do act, there is no mistaking where their directives come from. You’ll see cops chasing down petty thieves in the street, yet protecting murderous thugs like George Bush when he pops in for a visit. Aborigines will get locked up for being drunk, while Governors General make a handy living out of it. And you can bank on the fact that no James Hardie executive has yet copped a frisking.

It is here that the argument about “independence” and “impartiality” comes in. Surely if only the laws were applied consistently and equally for all people, rich or poor, black or white, then things might be better?

It’s a nice idea, but if you think about it, the laws can never be applied equally. “Theft” is against the law. But “theft” doesn’t include the act of stealing labour time from workers, or taking land from indigenous people. Nor does it include depriving us of our dignity as we queue in Centrelink for the privilege of justifying why our very existence should be sustained for yet one more fortnight. “Theft” can’t be applied equally because it is designed to allow for the thieving habits of an entire class. The same is true of the entire set of laws we are subject to.

The Belgian Marxist Ernest Mandel once wrote that “the state is, above all, the permanent institutions … everything that is ‘free’ of the influence of universal suffrage”. He was pointing out that the constituency of a state is not its citizens, but the capitalist class. So when we get our opportunity to vote every few years, anything of genuine consequence will not find its way on to our ballot paper – the powerful will not let the powerless set the terms of trade if they can avoid it.

Socialists’ attitude to the modern state, therefore, is the same as our attitude to capitalism – we want to get rid of it. Its laws, its institutions and the wigs it uses to dress them up can all bugger off. We’ll create our own and look snazzy to boot.