Editing State (polity) (section)

===Marxist perspective===
{{Main|Marx's theory of the state}}
[[Karl Marx|Marx]] and [[Frederick Engels|Engels]] were clear in that the goal of communism was a [[classless society]] in which the state would have [[Withering away of the state|"withered away"]], replaced only by "administration of things".<ref>[http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/index.htm ''Frederick Engels'' – Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. 1880] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070206061617/http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/index.htm |date=6 February 2007 }} Full Text. From ''[[Historical Materialism]]'': "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...Socialized production upon a predetermined plan becomes henceforth possible. The development of production makes the existence of different classes of society thenceforth an anachronism. In proportion as anarchy in social production vanishes, the political authority of the State dies out. Man, at last the master of his own form of social organization, becomes at the same time the lord over Nature, his own master&nbsp;– free."</ref> Their views are found throughout their [[Marx/Engels Collected Works|Collected Works]], and address past or then-extant state forms from an analytical and tactical viewpoint, but not future social forms, speculation [[utopian socialism|about which]] is generally antithetical<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Paden |first=Roger |date=2002 |title=Marx’s Critique of the Utopian Socialists |url=https://files.libcom.org/files/marxs-critique-of-the-utopian-socialists-2002-paden.pdf |journal=Utopian Studies |volume=13 |issue=2 |pages=67–91 |via=libcom.org}}</ref> to groups considering themselves Marxist but who – not having conquered the existing state power(s) – are not in the situation of supplying the institutional form of an actual society. To the [[Marxism#Dispute that the Soviet Union was Marxist|extent that it makes sense]], there is no single "Marxist theory of state", but rather several different purportedly "Marxist" theories have been developed by adherents of Marxism.<ref name="flint-taylor-139">Flint & Taylor, 2007: p. 139</ref><ref>Joseph, 2004: [https://books.google.com/books?id=ic5UOphbKHsC&pg=PA15 p. 15] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160506134017/https://books.google.com/books?id=ic5UOphbKHsC&pg=PA15 |date=6 May 2016 }}</ref><ref>Barrow, 1993: p. 4</ref>

Marx's early writings portrayed the bourgeois state as parasitic, [[base and superstructure|built upon the superstructure]] of the [[economy]], and working against the public interest. He also wrote that the state mirrors [[social class|class]] relations in society in general, acting as a regulator and repressor of class struggle, and as a tool of political power and domination for the ruling class.<ref>{{cite book |author=Smith, Mark J. |title=Rethinking state theory |publisher=Psychology Press |year=2000 |isbn=978-0-415-20892-5 |page=176 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hFCpqJwuv1QC&pg=PA176|url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160503213154/https://books.google.com/books?id=hFCpqJwuv1QC&pg=PA176 |archive-date=3 May 2016}}</ref> The ''[[Communist Manifesto]]'' claims the state to be nothing more than "a committee for managing the common affairs of the ''[[bourgeoisie]]''."<ref name="flint-taylor-139" />

For Marxist theorists, the role of the modern bourgeois state is determined by its function in the global capitalist order. [[Ralph Miliband]] argued that the ruling class uses the state as its instrument to dominate society by virtue of the interpersonal ties between state officials and economic elites. For Miliband, the state is dominated by an elite that comes from the same background as the capitalist class. State officials therefore share the same interests as owners of capital and are [[interlocking directorate|linked to them]] through a wide array of social, economic, and political ties.<ref name="AUTOREF8" />

[[Gramsci, Antonio|Gramsci's]] theories of state emphasized that the state is only one of the institutions in society that helps maintain the [[hegemony]] of the ruling class, and that state power is bolstered by the [[false consciousness|ideological domination]] of the institutions of civil society, such as churches, schools, and mass media.<ref>Joseph, 2004: [https://books.google.com/books?id=ic5UOphbKHsC&pg=PA44: p. 44] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160729054430/https://books.google.com/books?id=ic5UOphbKHsC&pg=PA44: |date=29 July 2016 }}</ref>