The Capitalist State.

Abstract

determinations of the 'present state' and assess their implications too. Thus Marx stressed that, regardless of the specific forms of the modern state, it stood on the ground of capitalist relations of production. He also stressed elsewhere that it was the historic mission of the communist movement to abolish not merely the present capitalist state but also to end the separation of the state and civil society in all its forms. This suggests that an adequate theoretical analysis of the state must consider not only its economic determinations but also those rooted in the distinctive organisation of the state as well as in the social division of labour between officialdom and people. That Marx himself was interested in such issues is evident not only from his early remarks on the separation between the state and civil society (in addition to Marx, 1843a and 1843b, see especially the comments on state and administration in Marx, 1844b, pp. 192, 197–200) but also from his argument that the Paris Commune involved an assault on the very form of the state rather than one or another variant of the state form (Marx, 1871). It is also clear from his little– remarked discussion of the conditions and manner in which Louis Bonaparte succeeded (albeit temporarily) in displacing the principal contradiction in France 31 Marx and Engels on the State from the opposition between bourgeoisie and proletariat to the opposition between officialdom and people (Marx, 1858b, passim, for commentary, see Draper, 1977, pp. 453–463, and Gulijew, 1977, pp. 41–42). That these comments are secondary in terms of the general thrust of the founding fathers' work on the state and, in relation to Marx's observations on the 'rule of the praetorians', little–remarked, does not mean that they can safely be ignored in the development of state theory. Indeed, as is argued in the concluding chapter, it is vital to include such determinations in a full analysis of the state. But we must first consider how the approaches that received greater emphasis in the work of Marx and Engels have been taken up and deployed in more recent Marxist theories.