 Marx offers no unified theoretical account of the state in capitalist society. Instead his remarks on this topic are scattered across the course of his activist life, and deeply embedded in discussions of contemporary events, events which most modern readers will know very little about. Providing some initial order to that complexity, Jon Elster helpfully identifies three different models in Marx’s writings of the relationship, in capitalist society, between the political state, on the one hand, and the economically dominant class, on the other. (The next three paragraphs draw heavily on Elster 1985: 409–437.)