"The State, then," Engels says on another page of the same work, "did not exist from all eternity. There have been societies without it, that had no idea of any State or public power.[29] At a certain stage of economic development, which was of necessity accompanied by a division of society into classes, the State became the inevitable result of this division. We are now rapidly approaching a stage of evolution in production, in which the existence of classes has not only ceased to be a necessity, but becomes a positive fetter on production. Hence, these classes must fall as inevitably as they once arose. The State must irrevocably fall with them. The society that is to reorganize production on the basis of a free and equal association of the producers, will transfer the machinery of the State where it will then belong--into the Museum of Antiquities by the side of the spinning wheel and the bronze ax."[30] In another work, he says: "The first act by virtue of which the State really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society--the taking possession of the means of production in the name of Society--this is, at the same time, its last independent act as a State. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The State is not abolished. _It dies out._"[31] It is thus seen that, according to the teaching of historical materialism, the State is destined, when it becomes the State of the working-class, to remove its own foundation--economic inequality--and thus, to commit suicide. Many of those, who have witnessed with mingled consternation and amusement the strenuous efforts of Mr. Roosevelt and the frantic zeal of Mr. Hearst to enlarge the scope of governmental action to cover every conceivable field of human activity from spelling to beef-canning, will hail with delight Engels' tidings that the State is to "die out." The thesis, that the realization of the socialist ideal involves the atrophy of Religion, the metamorphosis of the Family, and the suicide of the State, would now appear to be sufficiently demonstrated.