Even those who are convinced of the feasibility and desirability of moving beyond the Age of States to an earthly “republic of ends” might wonder if statelessness is, in fact, a viable political ideal. Rousseau's despair of the possibility of establishing a just state in real history provides a cautionary note. If Rousseau was right, the damage already done to the mentality of human beings and therefore to their wills is irreversible. By instituting de facto states, the inhabitants of the state of nature concocted a seeming remedy for the affliction diagnosed in The Second Discourse. But this palliative has altered the condition of humankind beyond the possibility of a genuine cure. Rousseau's deeply pessimistic reading of the world as it is deserves serious attention, as do the convergent judgments of conservative and liberal philosophers. Nevertheless, there is reason to think that humanity can move beyond the Age of States; that the road from here to there, however difficult to traverse, is not insurmountably blocked.

It would be foolhardy to aim for a definitive theoretical defense of this contention. Institutional arrangements, by their nature, are too closely linked to peculiarities of time and place for general considerations to be decisive. What follows, therefore, are only reflections on one sustained attempt, the most important to date, to broach this problem in theory and practice: the project for revolutionizing the state pursued by Marxists committed expressly to the end of the state under communism.