The State and Revolution

by V. I. Lenin

• ISBN13: 9780140184358
• ISBN10: 014018435X
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1993-05-04
• Publisher: Penguin Random House

Summary

In July 1917, when the Provisional Government issued a warrant for his arrest, Lenin fled from Petrograd; later that year, The October Revolution swept him to supreme power. In the short intervening period he spent in Finland, he wrote his impassioned, never-completed master work on The State and Revolution ... This powerfully argued book offers both the rationale for the new regime and a wealth of insights into Leninist politics. It was here that Lenin justified his personal interpretation of Marxism, savaged his opponents and set out his trenchant views on class conflict, the lessons of earlier revolutions, the dismantling of the bourgeois state and the replacement of capitalism by the, dictatorship of the proletariat. The result, as Robert Service suggests in his stimulating Introduction, is 'a choral ode to action, intolerance, combat and collectivism, the anthem of Bolshevism in its revolutionary era'. Immediately established as a standard text, it was selectively cited by leaders from Stalin to Gorbachev in support of programmes which differed in important ways. As both historical document and political statement, its importance can hardly be exaggerated.

Table of Contents

Preface to First Edition	p. 5
Preface to Second Edition	p. 6
Class Society and the State	p. 7
The State as the Product of the Irreconcilability of Class Antagonisms	p. 7
Special Bodies of Armed Men, Prisons, etc.	p. 10
The State as an Instrument for the Exploitation of the Oppressed Class	p. 12
The "Withering Away" of the State and Violent Revolution	p. 15
The Experiences of 1848-1851	p. 21
On the Eve of Revolution	p. 21
Results of the Revolution	p. 24
The Formulation of the Question by Marx in 1852	p. 29
Experiences of the Paris Commune of 1871: Marx's Analysis	p. 32
In What Does the Heroism of the Communards Consist?	p. 32
What is to Replace the Shattered State Machinery?	p. 35
The Destruction of Parliamentarism	p. 39
The Organisation of National Unity	p. 44
Destruction of the Parasite-State	p. 47
Supplementary Explanations by Engels	p. 49
The Housing Question	p. 49
Polemic Against the Anarchists	p. 51
Letter to Bebel	p. 54
Criticism of the Draft of the Erfurt Programme	p. 57
The 1891 Preface to Marx's Civil War in France	p. 62
Engels on the Overcoming of Democracy	p. 66
The Economic Base of the Withering Away of the State	p. 69
Formulation of the Question by Marx	p. 69
Transition from Capitalism to Communism	p. 71
First Phase of Communist Society	p. 75
Higher Phase of Communist Society	p. 78
Vulgarisation of Marx by the Opportunists	p. 86
Plekhanov's Polemic Against the Anarchists	p. 86
Kautsky's Polemic Against the Opportunists	p. 87
Kautsky's Polemic Against Pannekoek	p. 93
Postscript to First Edition	p. 101
Explanatory Notes	p. 102
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