Category:State

Hegel’s State
The state is the fruition of the absolute spirit, because it is an idea that transcends civil society (all mundane, contentious economic relations between men) and establishes a political sphere where all men are capable of recognizing each other equally as citizens.

Marx’s Critique of Hegel’s state
The Hegelian state transcends civil society, but in so doing, leaves the inequalities inherent in civil society intact. The state is therefore in contradiction with civil society and cannot work. (This is why rich people, even though formally “equal” have greater power in political affairs than the poor.)  Citizenship is an untenable abstraction.

Marx’s state
The bourgeois state (e.g. France and the US) is only capable of being a “police state” which protects the rich from the poor (protects life, liberty and property). In so doing, it maintains man’s alienation from himself. True freedom only comes once the state has been abolished.