Engels and the state

In my preparation for writing the second chapter of my book on the ‘socialist state’, I am rereading Engels very carefully. In the end, that is my method boiled down to its most basic: the old humanist adage to ‘go back to the texts’.

Given that there is always a tendency to jump to conclusions about someone’s position – especially if that person is Engels – I have been studying his many writings on the state from the 1880s, after Marx’s death. Plenty of themes here, including his efforts to...