A moment’s foray into the now substantial annals of Marxist state theory
will reveal that whilst Marxists may well rely implicitly upon certain
conceptions and understandings of the state, they are notoriously bad at
consigning these to the page. This makes it somewhat difficult to identify
any analytically precise Marxist definition of the state as an object of
inquiry, let alone one that is commonly agreed upon. Family resemblances
in the assumptions which inform Marxist conceptions of the state can
nonetheless be identified – indeed, these can be crystallized into four rather
different conceptions of the state.