The State is a book by German sociologist Franz Oppenheimer first published in Germany in 1908. Oppenheimer wrote the book in Frankfurt am Main during 1907, as a fragment of the four-volume System of Sociology, an intended interpretative framework for the understanding of social evolution on which he laboured from the 1890s until the end of his life. The work summarizes Oppenheimer's general theory on the origin, development and future transformation of the state. The State, which Oppenheimer's missionary zeal pervades, was widely read and passionately discussed in the early 20th century. It was well received by—and influential on—as diverse an audience as Zionist settlers in Palestine (halutzim), American and Slavic communitarians, West German Chancellor Ludwig Erhard, and anarcho-capitalists like Murray Rothbard.

Franz Oppenheimer was a German Jewish sociologist and political economist, who published also in the area of the fundamental sociology of the state.