The present article proposes an abstract theory of the capitalist State, with no reference to any particular historical formation, within what has come to be called "the derivationist theory of the State". The State is considered here as a specific socio-political formation of capitalist society, responsible for capitalism's maintenance and conditions of reproduction. The social basis of capitalism is the (contradictory) separation of capital and labor; in order to carry out this separation, capitalism, by means of the State, effects a separation between society and economy, in such a way as to enable capitalists to expropriate workers labor power (and the wealth produced by it) without using the force (violence) that would be required to do so. It is this separation that acts as the contradictory basis on which the relationships for the bourgeois project of the freedom and equality of citizenship are founded. In theoretical and historical terms, politics are not subordinate to economics, as if the State were a mere and simple super-structure of capital; furthermore, there are other social contradictions that have not been created by capitalism (such as those of gender and race) yet the capitalist State does impose specific conditions on them and thus acts in their configuration.
State; capitalism; theory; dominant class; expropriation of work's force