Preface
Class society and the state
The state: a product of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms
Special bodies of armed men, prisons, etc.
The state: an instrument for the exploitation of the oppressed class
The "withering away" of the state, and violent revolution
The experience of 1848-51
The eve of revolution
The revolution summed up
The presentation of the question by Marx in 1852
Experience of the Paris Commune of 1871. Marx's analysis
What made the communards' attempt heroic?
What is to replace the smashed state machine?
Abolition of parliamentarism
Organisation of National Unity
Abolition of the parasite state
Supplementary explanations by Engels
The housing question
Controversy with the anarchists
Letter to Bebel
Criticism of the draft of the Erfurt Programme
The 1891 preface to Marx's The civil war in France
Engels on the overcoming of democracy
The economic basis of the withering away of the state
Presentation of the question by Marx
The transition from captialism to communism
The first phase of communist society
The higher phase of communist society
The vulgarisation of Marxism by opportunists
Plekhanov's controversy with the anarchists
Kautsky's controversy with the opportunists
Kautsky's controversy with Pannekoek
Postscript