Consequently, this chapter aims to provide an assessment of the contribution
of Marxism to our understanding of the state whilst charting, albeit
in a stylized way, the development of Marxist and neo-Marxist approaches
to the study and analysis of the state from Marx and Engels, via Lenin and
Gramsci, Miliband and Poulantzas to a range of contemporary authors,
notably Block and Jessop. The argument unfolds in three sections. In the
first we consider why it is that Marxists require a theory of the state and
how Marxists have conceptualized this focus of their attention. The second
section traces the development of the Marxist theory of the state through
the work of the founding fathers, its reformulation by Lenin and Gramsci,