Of three versions of the relationship between the state and power, Marx's and Engels' version, Lenin's variation of Marxism, and Weber's theory, none perfectly fits the current state of affairs in the United States. The first Marxist version offers insights into the nature of collusion between capital interests and government. The Leninist version has the least to offer, since it concentrates so heavily on extreme repression. Weber's ideas offer the best vehicle for analyzing the state in America. Weber considered both internal and external pressures on domestic politics and, therefore, covered more ground in assessing the nature of the state's power.
Two conceptions of the nature of the state exist in Marxist theory. The first is that proposed by Marx and Engels. Roughly, this view is that the state is, as Engels puts it, "a product of society at a certain stage of development" (103). The state was needed at the capitalist stage of development to manage the conflict between the capital and labor. Class warfare would not result because the state was managing to maintain a state of equilibrium between the classes. Engels believed that public power (the use of force) was a necessary component of the state, but thought this too was temporary. He believed that the state's need for coercion would dissipate as it progressed toward socialism. This was a progressive view, in which the belief in history prevailed. Marx and Engels firmly believed that the state would be transformed into a socialist state as a part of inevitable historical progress. The second view in Marxism (excluding neo-Marxist analysis, which offers several others) was that formulated by Lenin. Lenin claimed that the state was necessarily repressive. In his view, the state consisted of the coercion of the majority class (the proletariat) by the minority class (owners of capital). Lenin insisted that this was the inevitable arrangement of any state and th...