Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, a contemporary of Karl Marx and the original anarchist in the socialist movement, held that the power of capital and the power of the state were synonymous, so the proletariat could not emancipate itself through the use of state power. This absolute negativism was shared by Michael Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin, though there were substantial differences between them on details of strategy and policy.

A later trend known as anarcho-syndicalism held that trade unions were to become the revolutionary instruments in the hands of the proletariat and also the basic units of the socialist order replacing the state. Lenin summed up the differences between the Marxist and the anarchist viewpoints on the question of the state in the following words :
“The distinction between the Marxists and the anarchists is this :

The former, while aiming at the complete abolition of the state, recognise that this aim can only be achieved after classes have been abolished by the socialist revolution, as the result of the establishment of socialism, which leads to the withering away of the state. The latter want to abolish the state completely overnight, not understanding the conditions under which the state can be abolished.

The former recognise that after the proletariat has won political power, it must completely destroy the old state machine and replace it by a new one consisting of an organisation of the armed workers, after the type of the Commune. The latter, while insisting on the destruction of the state machine, have a very vague idea of what the proletariat will put in its place and how it will use its revolutionary power. The anarchists even deny that the revolutionary proletariat should use the state power, they reject its revolutionary dictatorship.
The former demand that the proletariat be trained for revolution by utilising the present state. The anarchists reject this.” (From The State And Revolution)
In our, that is the pre-revolutionary context, the third distinction is particularly important. Marxists believe that the revolutionary proletariat, while guarding against legalism and parliamentary opportunism, can — and in normal circumstances, should — utilise the parliamentary institutions and other suitable state fora to propagate its views and to prepare the masses for revolution. Anarchists (and anarcho-militarists like the PWG and the MCC in our country) reject such political struggle involving the masses and they usually concentrate, instead, on isolated actions and terror-tactics.

As regards the first distinction, the phrase “after classes have been abolished ... as the result of the establishment of socialism” refers to mature, full-fledged socialism, to its second stage, or communism.