state (n.) is a modern phenomenon characterized by civil society having been cut off from (or abstracted from) social life. It emerged as an effect of the…

Karl Marx on State

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States, as great engines, move slowly. Francis Bacon

an imagined political community and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign,' that is, imagined as a well-defined territory under the rule of a person or an assembly.

States are great engines moving slowly. Francis Bacon

By the time he wrote Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche had come to view the state as 'the coldest of all monsters' (Za, I: 'Of the New Idol') and German culture under the Second Reich as pretty much a lost cause. (Diethe 261)

is a modern phenomenon characterized by civil society having been cut off from (or abstracted from) social life. It emerged as an effect of the private spheres themselves having become abstracted from social life.

If class, in this sense, is a modem phenomenon, then so is the state, the final social form wish to examine in this chapter. Once again, this is not to deny that forms of ' public ' governance and authority existed prior to capitalism, nor even that they were ordinarily controlled by ruling ' classes' (in Marx's .. wider sense of that term). 'fhe question is again one of forms. And here Marx is categorical: the political constitution as such is brought into being only where the private spheres have won an independent existence. Where trade and landed property are not free and have not yet become independent, the political constitution too does not yet exist. .. . the abstraction of the state as such belongs only to modern times, because the abstraction of private life belongs only to modem times. The abstraction of the political state is a modem product. (I 843a:3 l-2) It is, he argues, through 'the emancipation of private property from the community' that 'the state has become a separate entity, beside and outside civil society' (1846a:79).

is based on a contradiction between public and private life, between universal and particular interests. For this reason, the state must confine itself to formal, negative activities.

The state is based on this contradiction. It is based on the contradiction between public and private life, between universal and particular interests. For this reason, the state must confine itself to formal, negative activities. Karl Marx

is not something that actually exist. It is an ideological artifact, an illusion, attributing unity and structure to the disunited and structureless.

Ralph Miliband's (1969: 49) famous claim that 'the 'state' . . . does not, as such, exist.' Shades here of things written long ago. Philip Corrigan and Derek Sayer (1985: 7) remind us that Marx (1967) believed the state to be 'in an important sense an illusion . . . : [it] is at most a message of domination an ideological artifact attributing unity, structure and independence to the disunited, structureless and dependent workings of the practice of government.' (Comaroff 2000:322)

is simply the executive committee of the ruling class.

The state is the executive committee of the ruling class. Karl Marx

's existence is inseparable from the existence of slavery.

The existence of the state is inseparable from the existence of slavery. Karl Marx

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