Short notes on Marxist theory of state
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Karl Marx's ideas about the state can be divided into three subject areas: pre-capitalist states, states in the capitalist (i.e. present) era, and the state (or absence of one) in post-capitalist society. Overlaying this is the fact that his own ideas about the state changed as he grew older, differing in his early pre-communist phase, the "young Marx" phase which predates the unsuccessful 1848 uprisings in Europe, and in his mature, more nuanced work.
In Marx's 1843 Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, his basic conception is that the state and civil society are separate; however, he already saw some limitations to that model:
“The political state everywhere needs the guarantee of spheres lying outside it.”“He as yet was saying nothing about the abolition of private property, does not express a developed theory of class, and "the solution [he offers] to the problem of the state/civil society separation is a purely political solution, namely universal suffrage." (Evans, 112)”
By the time he wrote The German Ideology (1846), Marx viewed the state as a creature of the bourgeois economic interest. Two years later that idea was expounded in The Communist Manifesto
“
The executive of the modern state is nothing but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.
”
This represents the high point of conformance of the state theory to an economic interpretation of history: The forces of production determine peoples' production relations; their production relations determine all other relations, including the political.("Determines" is the strong form of the claim, Marx also uses "conditions". Also, even "determination" is not causality, and some reciprocity of action is admitted.) The bourgeoisie control the economy, therefore they control the state. The state, in this theory, is an instrument of class rule.
In Marx's 1843 Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, his basic conception is that the state and civil society are separate; however, he already saw some limitations to that model:
“The political state everywhere needs the guarantee of spheres lying outside it.”“He as yet was saying nothing about the abolition of private property, does not express a developed theory of class, and "the solution [he offers] to the problem of the state/civil society separation is a purely political solution, namely universal suffrage." (Evans, 112)”
By the time he wrote The German Ideology (1846), Marx viewed the state as a creature of the bourgeois economic interest. Two years later that idea was expounded in The Communist Manifesto
“
The executive of the modern state is nothing but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.
”
This represents the high point of conformance of the state theory to an economic interpretation of history: The forces of production determine peoples' production relations; their production relations determine all other relations, including the political.("Determines" is the strong form of the claim, Marx also uses "conditions". Also, even "determination" is not causality, and some reciprocity of action is admitted.) The bourgeoisie control the economy, therefore they control the state. The state, in this theory, is an instrument of class rule.
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