Friedrich Engels: The State as a ‘Separated Public Power’

A perfect society, a perfect ‘State [Staat]’, are things which can only exist in the imagination [Phantasie]. On the contrary, all successive historical states [Zustände] are only transitory stages in the endless course of development of human society (Engels 1886 [1990], 359, 1886 [2011], 126).

The following material comprises an initial draft concerning Engels’s thoughts on actually existing states. It will eventually form part of a chapter in a book called The Socialist State: Philosophica...