The State and Revolution
Author | Vladimir Lenin |
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Original title | Государство и революция |
Country | Russian Republic |
Language | Russian |
Genre | Nonfiction |
Publication date | 1917 |
Media type |
Part of a series on |
Leninism |
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The State and the Revolution: The Marxist Doctrine of the State and the Tasks of the Proletariat in the Revolution (Russian: Государство и революция. Учение марксизма о государстве и задачи пролетариата в революции, romanized: Gosudarstvo i revolyutsiya. Ucheniye marksizma o gosudarstve i zadachi proletariata v revolyutsii) is a book written by Vladimir Lenin and published in 1917 which describes his views on the role of the state in society, the necessity of proletarian revolution, and the theoretic inadequacies of social democracy in achieving revolution to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Background
Lenin began the composition of an early draft of The State and Revolution while in exile in Switzerland in 1916, under the title "Marxism on the State".[1]
"
By November 25, the 1917 Constitutional Assembly was elected with a majority of positions going to the Socialist Revolutionary Party, which had made a right-ward turn after the revolution with most of the Left-SRs joining the Bolshevik party. In one of the most controversial actions of the early Soviet government, the constitutional convention was dissolved on January 20, 1918.
Synopsis
The State and Revolution is considered to be Lenin's most important work on the state and has been called by
Lenin's direct and simple definition of the State is that "the State is a special organisation of force: it is an organisation of violence for the suppression of some Social class."
To decide once every few years which member of the ruling class is to repress and crush the people through parliament – this is the real essence of bourgeois parliamentarism, not only in parliamentary-constitutional monarchies, but also in the most democratic republics.
— Vladimir Lenin, The State and the Revolution
Citing
Lenin especially defends Marx's theory of
During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred, and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their deaths, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names, to a certain extent, for the ‘consolation’ of the oppressed classes, and with the object of duping the latter, while, at the same time, robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge, and vulgarizing it. Today, the bourgeoisie and the opportunists within the labour movement concur in this doctoring of Marxism. They omit, obscure, or distort the revolutionary side of this theory, its revolutionary soul. They push to the foreground and extol what is, or seems, acceptable to the bourgeoisie. All the social-chauvinists are now ‘Marxists’ (don’t laugh!). And more and more frequently, German bourgeois scholars, only yesterday specialists in the annihilation of Marxism, are speaking of the ‘national-German’ Marx, who, they claim, educated the labour unions, which are so splendidly organised for the purpose of waging a predatory war![7]
The State and Revolution describes the inherent nature of the State as a tool for class oppression, the creation of a social class's desire to control the other social classes when politico-economic disputes cannot otherwise be peacefully resolved; whether a
- The anarchists propose the State's immediate abolishment; Lenin counter-proposes that such idealism is pragmatically impossible, because the proletariat would need to crush the bourgeois resistance through a mechanism, and that is the state.
- Were the State immediately abolished, without the “conditions leading to the arising of the State” being abolished as well, a new State would appear, and the socialist revolution would have been for naught.
In the event, the
Thus, following Marx's conclusions on the Paris Commune, which Lenin took as his model.[3] Lenin declared that the task of the Revolution was to smash the State. Although for a period under communism, "there remains for a time not only bourgeois right but even the bourgeois State without the bourgeoisie,"[3][8] Lenin believed that after a successful proletarian revolution the state had not only begun to wither, but was in an advanced condition of decomposition. But Lenin also called the state "the armed and ruling proletariat" so McLellan asks whether this, too withers? Yes, according to McLellan, "in so far as it was in any way a power separate from and opposed to, the masses"[9] Lenin had little to say of the institutional form of this transition period. There was a strong emphasis on the dictatorship of the proletariat: "A Marxist is solely someone who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is what constitutes the most profound distinction between the Marxist and the ordinary petty (as well as big) bourgeois. This is the touchstone on which the real understanding and recognition of Marxism is to be tested."[10]
Editions in English
- Lenin, Vladimir. State and Revolution. Aziloth Books, London. 2017. ISBN 978-1614271925[11]
- ibid, ed. ISBN 978-0140184358[12]
- ed. Christman, Henry M. Essential Works of Lenin: What is to be Done and other Writings. Bantam Books, New York, 1966. ISBN 9780486253336.
- Tucker, Robert C, ed. (1975). The Lenin Anthology. Norton. OCLC 643594933.
Footnotes
- ^ Tucker 1975, p. 311.
- ISBN 978-0-902308-71-8.
- ^ a b c d e McLellan 1979, p. 98.
- ISBN 978-0-394-71261-1.
- ^ V. Lenin Selected Works (Moscow, 1960), vol. 2, p.320
- ^ Lenin's Selected Works, p.338
- ^ Lenin, V. The State and Revolution, Ch. 1 (1917)
- ^ Lenin, Selected Works, vol.2, p.381
- ^ McLellan 1979, p. 99.
- ^ Lenin, Selected Works, vol. 2, p.328
- ISBN 978-0140184358.
- ISBN 9780140184358.
Sources
- McLellan, David (1979). Marxism after Marx: an introduction. Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-333-18155-3.
Further reading
- The Day After the Revolution(originally titled: Lenin 2017). Verso. 2017.
- Althusser, Louis. Lenin and Philosophy: and other essays by Louis Althusser. Monthly Review Press. New York, 2017.
- Becker, Brian. How "The State and Revolution" Changed History. Liberation School, 2018.
- Evans, Alfred B. (1987). "Rereading Lenin's State and Revolution". Slavic Review. 46 (1): 1–19. JSTOR 2498617.
- Barfield, Rodney (1971). "Lenin's Utopianism: State and Revolution". Slavic Review. 30 (1): 45–56. JSTOR 2493442.
- Daniels, Robert V. (2007). The Rise and Fall of Communism in Russia. Yale University Press. JSTOR j.ctt1npvv1.
- Singh, Rustam (1989). "Restoring Revolutionary Theory: Towards an Understanding of Lenin's 'The State and Revolution'". Economic and Political Weekly. 24 (43): 2431–2433. JSTOR 4395530.
- Krausz, Tamás (2015). Reconstructing Lenin: An Intellectual Biography. NYU Press. JSTOR j.ctt130hjw9.
- Daniels, Robert V. (1953). "The State and Revolution: A Case Study in the Genesis and Transformation of Communist Ideology". American Slavic and East European Review. 12 (1): 22–43. JSTOR 3004254.
- Townshend, Jules (1999). "Lenin's 'The State and Revolution': An Innocent Reading". Science & Society. 63 (1): 63–82. JSTOR 40403770.
- Levine, Norman (1985). "Lenin's Utopianism". Studies in Soviet Thought. 30 (2): 95–107. S2CID 144891961.