The State Is Nothing But An

Engels wrote this in his introduction to the 1891 edition of Karl Marx's The Civil War in France — a work analyzing the Paris Commune of 1871, published on the Commune's 20th anniversary. The introduction synthesizes Marx's and Engels's mature theory of the state as an instrument of class domination rather than a neutral arbiter of social interests. Engels argues that even the democratic republic, despite appearing to rise above class, remains a machine through which one class manages the common affairs of the bourgeoisie. Lenin later treated this passage as the cornerstone of his own theory in The State and Revolution (1917).