This chapter focuses on one aspect of the debate between Marxism and liberalism by examining them as theories of the state. Marxism could be compared with other traditions of state theory but liberalism has been selected here because these constitute "the two most central traditions of contemporary political thought".¹ They are compared as rival accounts of the contemporary state simply because this is a central question in political thought. The objective in bringing these two perspectives into direct confrontation is to illuminate areas of continuity and discontinuity and thereby contribute to an assessment of the state of play of the Marxist-liberal debate in relation to the state.