A fully understanding of the relationship between the state and society cannot be separated from a historical examination of the semantics of “society”. In fact, the generation of an independent and complete concept of “society” has gone through a long process. The classical community is the common source of “society” and “state”, and the expansion of industrial and commercial activities has led to the differentiation of the classical community, resulting in the distinction between “society” and “state”. Hegel’s translation of the concept of civil society from the Scottish Common Senses School empties the norms of human order and highlights the practical bonds of group subsistence and livelihood. Marx inherited Hegel’s concept of civil society to meet human needs, suspended the commercial exchange characteristics of “society”, shifted the core of the concept of “society” to production, and presented the historical aspect of “society” based on the level of productivity development. On the one hand, social forms reflect the form of ownership of the means of production. On the other hand, the state needs to maintain specific forms of ownership that are connected by social forms. Therefore, both social form and national nature have historical dimensions, and the relationship between the state and society is not a static pattern of strength or weakness, but a dynamic process of interaction between the “economic foundation” and the “superstructure” centered on the form of ownership. The analysis of the semantics of “society” indicates that Marx truly realized the paradigm revolution of the “state-society” theory.