Richard, I don't confuse class with wealth, I am saying that economic class is the base on which social and cultural behaviour is built. Hungry people don't worry about whether they hold their knife and fork properly or like an american. Class (you mean cultural behaviour) differences exist because there are differences in the relationships to the means of production (class as I understand it). If cultural distinctions are dissolving (because cultural commodities, e.g. clothes, restaurants, etc., are relatively cheaper) despite increased inequality, then all well and good but it doesn't take away the antagonism between labour and capital and the power of the rich over the rest.

The state has arisen out of, and functions to preserve, the minority control of economic power, it is, and can only be, a centralised power structure accordingly. Where production is controlled democratically, producers freely associate and production organised according to need (socialism) the need for compulsion and a sorting out the mess caused by capitalist production (the state) is negated.

When there are a majority of people who understand what socialism is and how socialist production is organised then we can use the machinery of government to abolish minority economic power and thus the state without the anarchy of unorganised production or unfettered capitalist production.

TerryK, thanks I have read it, in fact I went to a meeting where we tore it apart for an afternoon. You can't just throw 'simplistic to the point of naivety, dreadfully bigoted, full of cartoonesque stereotypes and totally devoid of any literary merit' without saying why you think so and expect to be taken seriously. Yes, there is a little bit of sexism in it (but nothing compared to most novels written at that time) and OK it isn't the best written novel, but considering the manuscript was found in a box and the author was not a professional writer who didn't see the final draft it is fair enough to make allowances. In my opinion, from talking to people about socialism and from watching the Nimrods and Graball D'Enclosedlands of this world in action he gets it off to a tee, which I presume is why they are still publishing it and while lots of people think it's a brilliant book.