The state is not just a tool in the hands of the capitalists, but flesh of the flesh of class society in its totality. It therefore cannot be instrumentalized as a ready-made machine by the working class in its political struggle to overcome capital as a self-contradictory totality. On the contrary, through its independent organizations and parties the working class politicizes the problem of the state as it assumes responsibility for capital as a self-contradiction of social relations. It does so in the course of exercising power in the dictatorship of the proletariat—by developing historically new institutions, such as the Commune or workers’ councils (soviets). These new institutions are characterized by the principle of the electability and revocability of all officials who undertake to carry out public duties, without any separation of powers and without independent bureaucratic, judicial, or armed bodies and mechanisms. Once the old state machine is smashed, these new institutions will allow, for the first time in history, serious political engagement with the problem of the state, putting on the agenda the possibility of its historical transcendence.