State

The state, in Marxist theory, is the instrument of class rule — the organized machinery by which one class maintains its dictatorship over other classes. Far from being a neutral arbiter standing above society (as liberal theory claims), the state under capitalism is described by Marx and Engels as "a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie."

Classical Marxist position

• Marx, in The Civil War in France (1871), concluded from the experience of the Paris Commune that the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes; the state apparatus must be broken and replaced by a semi-state that begins to wither away.
• Engels, in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884), traced the state's historical emergence to the division of society into classes, arguing it is not eternal but a product of class antagonisms.
• Lenin systematized this in The State and Revolution (1917): the state is "a special organization of force," the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie under capitalism and the dictatorship of the proletariat under socialism.

Infrared and the MAGA Communist movement

Haz Al-Din and Infrared have emphasized the state against both libertarian and "anti-statist" left currents. Key lines of argument:

• The state is not merely an instrument of a class economically defined but the political being of the nation — the form in which a people's common interest achieves actuality. This draws on Hegel's account of the state in the Philosophy of Right.
• Against "Anglo" right-libertarianism (see Anglo Box), which treats the state as an external parasite on civil society, Infrared argues that the free market itself presupposes and depends upon state power.
• The American state's constitutional tradition is treated as a potential vessel for proletarian politics — hence the American Communist Party's positioning as patriotic socialism rather than anti-American negation.

See also

• Class
• Communism, State and Class
• Dictatorship of the proletariat

References

Infrared transcript catalog — search "state" for primary-source discussion.