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The Marxist Theory of the State

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2010

Graeme Duncan
Graeme Duncan
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia
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Extract

Marx did not approach the state in answer to some such broad and abstract philosophical question as: What is the state? Nor did he offer a full sociological or historical or analytic account of state institutions and functions, and there are hence clear and substantial dangers in extrapolating to all or most conditions an account which is, in large part, specific to bourgeois society. Failing a comprehensive and formal treatise on politics and the state, Marx's own discussion consists of a number of scattered and not altogether consistent general observations and some detailed investigation of the role and character of the state in particular historical situations. It seems sensible, then, to begin an elucidation of his account of the state with a comment on the nature of his interest in the subject. Why did he need a theory of the state? At what points does it become important to his explanatory and his revolutionary doctrines?

Type
Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 14: Marx and Marxisms , September 1982 , pp. 129 - 143
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 1982

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References

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17 Ibid., 72.

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