The instrument of the State is complicated and hard to understand. It’s made of multiple parts, with lots of things going on at one time. This makes it seem like the individual mechanisms are unrelated, but they’re actually working toward the same end: class domination. The State has a grip on people that is sticky and hard to disentangle because it controls things as diverse as healthcare and street paving.
Across borders and time periods, the State has perpetuated class domination. However, despite its flexibility, the State isn’t amorphous and incoherent. It’s possible to talk about “the State” and “statism”, across place and time, through different forms of governments and regimes. Because the State is polymorphous, not amorphous, its multiple forms perpetuate the myth that there must be one perfected form of state rule that will lead us to liberation rather than domination. But since it’s an instrument of class domination, that’s what the State does, no matter what form it might take.
