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Home > TheoryErnest Mandel Archive >  The Marxist Theory of the State

The Marxist Theory of the State

 

The state is still a major bone of contention among left-wing and radical forces in the global justice and anti-war movements. Ernest Mandel goes back to basics.
 
The Marxist Theory of the State - Introduction
Every branch of knowledge has a central concept that expresses the fundamental feature or function of the sector of reality it investigate and deals with. The pivotal category of political science is the state. - read article...
The Marxist Theory of the State - Part 1
The state did not always exist. Certain sociologists and other representatives of academic political science are in error when they speak of the state in primitive societies. What they are really doing is identifying the state with the community. In so doing, they strip the state of its special characteristic. - read article...
The Marxist Theory of the State - Part 2
Through the struggle waged by the labour movement certain institutions of the bourgeois state become both more subtle and more complex. - read article...
The Marxist Theory of the State - Part 3
When we say that the state remains in existence up to and including the transitional society between capitalism and socialism, the question arises whether the working class still needs a state when it takes power. - read article...

News from the FI, the militant left and the social movements

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We, the participants at the Istanbul ESF, affirming that we have a strong engagement aganist all war and occupation and that we are for a politial resolution of the Kurdish issue, have made the following resolution : - read article...
Morocco
The FSE demands the release of the imprisoned students
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We have learned with immense sadness of the death of our comrade Denise Comanne, last Friday May 28, following a mild heart attack, just after she had participated in a solidarity activity with the people of the Democratic Republic of Congo. - read article...
Kazakhstan
May 2010
On April 27th, Ainur Kurmanov, journalist and political militant, was sentenced to a fortnight’s imprisonment for having reported on a strike picket. The picket was organized by the oppositional social movement "Kazakhstan 2012" to protest against the eviction of the poor from their homes. - read article...
Fourth International
April 2010
Declaration of the Fourth International on Thailand: There must be an end to repression, the censure of the media and the denial of democratic freedoms. The rights to organise, freely associate, strike and demonstrate must be respected. - read article...
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