t it was self-perpetuating. The state was, necessarily, extremely repressive because a majority cannot be controlled by a minority unless strong repressive measures are used. In his view, the repressive state would not end without armed rebellion by the majority. Marx and Engels basically saw the state as a temporary manager of class conflict. Lenin saw the state as the expression of armed force needed for one class to control another.
Engels held that, arising from the need for a manager of class conflict, the state is able to appropriate public power to itself. This power is, in turn, maintained by taxes and by contracting public (governmental) debt. This combination of means allows the state's officials to stand above the rest of society and to have their position sanctioned by the imposition of laws. The state arises to manage class conflict but, since this is still conflict, it is the "most powerful, economically dominant class, which, through the medium of the state, becomes also the politically dominant class" (Engels 104). In the most sophisticated state, the democratic republic, this dominance is exercised indirectly, "but all the more surely", in the corruption of officials of the state and in the partnerships that develop between the state apparatus and the Stock Exchange (Engels 105).
Lenin, however, believed that the classes were "irreconcilably antagonistic" (117). In Lenin's opinion, Engels needed the example of a true revolution to see where he had underestimated the severity of class conflict. As
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