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In this article, I argue for a Marxian approach to critical terrorism studies. The methodological approach of critical terrorism studies focuses on the ways in which particular sets of state managers and/or agents working in conjunction with them are more or less directly implicated in specific terrorist ‘events’, but my contention – which complements an insight made by Richard Jackson – is that there is a need for more theory-laden analyses of the deeper, structural causes of state terrorism. I address this issue by advocating more sustained engagement with broader political–economic issues, and in particular to the ways in which capitalist development, capitalist imperialism and international class dynamics intersect not just to enable state terrorism but to actively produce it.