From the Marxist-Leninist perspective, the state is analyzed as a product of class society and an instrument of class domination. This view, most prominently articulated by Vladimir Lenin in his 1917 work [State and Revolution](https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/), synthesizes Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ theories of the state with the practical demands of proletarian revolution. Lenin’s analysis emphasizes the necessity of overthrowing the capitalist state and replacing it with a transitional dictatorship of the proletariat as a step toward the eventual "withering away" of the state under communism.