Marx's theory of the state however, he already saw some limitations to that model: By the time he wrote "The German Ideology" (1846), Marx viewed the state as a creature of the bourgeois economic interest. Two years later that idea was expounded in "The Communist Manifesto" This represents the high point of conformance of the state theory to an economic interpretation of history: The forces of production determine peoples' production relations; their production relations determine all other relations, including the political. ("Determines" is the strong form of the claim, Marx also uses "conditions". Also, even "determination" is not causality, and some reciprocity of action is
The Communist Manifesto entered political-science syllabuses in universities, which would only expand after the Second World War. For its centenary in 1948, its publication was no longer the exclusive domain of Marxists and academicians; general publishers too printed the "Manifesto" in large numbers. "In short, it was no longer only a classic Marxist document," Hobsbawm noted, "it had become a political classic "tout court"." Even after the collapse of the Soviet Bloc in the 1990s, the "Communist Manifesto" remains ubiquitous; Hobsbawm says that "In states without censorship, almost certainly anyone within reach of a good bookshop, and certainly anyone within reach of a