What does Marxism say about the relationship between the bourgeois state and the class struggle? This is the question that guides this work. It is on this basis that the reflections of those who founded the so-called Marxist tradition, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, are retrieved. The theoretical-practical extensions promoted by Vladimir Lenin, Antonio Gramsci and Nicos Poulantzas are also emphasised. An examination of the works of these theorists reveals a complex and radically critical response to this question. Complex because they all mobilise different concepts to establish the parameters that are essential to a dialectical and concrete understanding of this relationship. And radically critical because they are reflections that shed light on the historical and contradictory aspects concealed by bourgeois ideology, especially on the general interests pursued by the state.