State and Revolution

(subtitle: The Marxist Theory of the State and the Tasks of the Proletariat in the Revolution), a work in which V. I. Lenin developed the Marxist theory of the state (Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 33, pp. 1–120).

The materials for this work, in the form of extensive excerpts from the works of K. Marx and F. Engels, as well as from articles and books by K. Kautsky, A. Pannekock, and E. Bernstein, with Lenin’s notes, additions, and conclusions, were prepared by him in Switzerland in January and February 1917 (see ibid., pp. 121–307). According to the initial plan, the book was to consist of seven chapters, but Chapter Seven was never written. Only the plan for this chapter entitled “The Experience of the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917” (see ibid., pp. 323–24) has been preserved. The book was written during the period of preparation for the October Socialist Revolution, when the problem of the state and the proletariat’s relation to it acquired a special importance, both theoretically and in a practical, political respect.. Written amid underground conditions (near the Razliv station and in Helsingfors) in August and September 1917, it was first published in May 1918 in Petrograd by the Life and Knowledge Publishing House. During the years of Soviet power State and Revolution has been published 232 times (as of Jan. 1, 1971). It has been printed in 58 languages (including 32 languages of the peoples of the USSR and 26 foreign languages) with a total of 9,212,000 copies, and it has been published in more than 30 countries of the world. Preparatory materials, entitled Marxism on the State, were published in 1930 in the XIV Lenin Collection and issued separately in 1931, 1932, 1933, 1934, and 1958.

In State and Revolution Lenin set forth and examined all the basic positions and conclusions of Marx and Engels on the state; he defended the Marxist theory of the state, especially the proletarian state, in the struggle against the opportunists at the Second International. He developed this theory further, summing up the experience of the international workers’ movement and the experience of the revolutionary struggle of the Russian proletariat up through the beginning of the 20th century. Relying on the works of Marx and En-gels, Lenin revealed the class nature of the state, the prerequisites for its origin, and its role in the class-antagonistic society as a weapon of the dictatorship of the exploiting classes. Lenin demonstrated that, although the forms of the contemporary bourgeois state are different, their essence is the same: the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Lenin showed how in the process of studying the experience of the Revolution of 1848 and the Paris Commune (1871) the views of Marx and Engels on the state machinery of a bourgeois society developed, and how they conceived the formation of the machinery of a proletarian state and its functions. Also from a class-oriented point of view, the book resolves the problem of the proletariat’s relation to the state, the need to abolish the old bourgeois state machinery in the course of the socialist revolution and to create a new and higher type of state. Lenin argued against the opportunists, who distorted the Marxist theory of the state and who denied the dictatorship of the proletariat. Lenin proved the necessity for the dictatorship of the proletariat for the entire historical period of the transition from capitalism to socialism: “A Marxist is solely someone,” emphasized Lenin, “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 should be tested” (ibid., p. 34).

Lenin’s further development of the Marxist theory of the state consists of an analysis of the class nature of the contemporary bourgeois state, a disclosure of the ways and means to attain the dictatorship of the proletariat and the establishment and strengthening of the proletarian state. Lenin also gives a definition of the proletarian state’s goals and problems, providing the groundwork for the guiding and directing role of the Communist Party in building socialism and explaining the prerequisites for the withering away of the state. Lenin noted that under conditions of state monopoly capitalism there occurs “an unusual strengthening of the ‘state machine,’ an unheard of increase in its official and military apparatus” (ibid., p. 33). He dispelled the petit-bourgeois illusion about the possibility of the gradual transformation of a capitalist society into a socialist one without a revolution. Lenin indissolubly connected the creation of a socialist-type state with the victory of proletarian democracy, which would ensure the attraction of the broadest masses of toilers, led by the working class, into administering the state. This, he indicated “must inevitably be a state that is democratic in a new way (for the proletariat and propertyless classes in general) and dictatorial in a new way (against the bourgeoisie)” (ibid., p. 35). Summing up the experience of the revolutionary struggle of the Russian proletariat, Lenin revealed the class nature of the soviets, which during the course of the socialist revolution are transformed into organs of state power (see ibid., p. 114). In Lenin’s opinion the proletarian republic must be constructed on the basis of the principle of democratic centralism, which has nothing in common with the bureaucratic centralism of the contemporary bourgeois state.

The book discloses the genuinely democratic nature of the proletarian state. Lenin considered the proletarian state to be a necessary condition for the building of socialism. Lenin fully shared Marx’ criticism of bourgeois parliamentarianism; he deepened and broadened this criticism, based on the analysis of new facts relating to the parliamentary practice of imperialist states. Nevertheless, he saw the solution not in abolishing representative institutions but rather in transforming them, following the example of the Paris Commune, from “talk-shops” into “working” institutions. Emphasizing the necessity of the proletarian state for the building of socialism, Lenin developed and made more specific the theory of Marx and Engels concerning the two phases of communist society. He pointed out that the differences between the two phases were determined by the level of development of productive forces and by the degree of economic, political, and cultural maturity. Lenin perspicaciously defined the role and place of the state under the conditions of victorious socialism and the transition from’the first to the higher phase of a communist society. “Until,” he wrote, “the ‘higher’ phase of communism arrives, the socialists demand the strictest control by society and by the state over the measure of labor and the measure of consumption” (ibid., p. 97). Lenin revealed the bases for the withering away of the state; he linked this process with the building of the higher phase of communism, with overcoming the contradiction between physical and mental labor and between city and village, and with the process of the merging of nations.

Lenin’s book State and Revolution played an enormous role in the theoretical and ideological armament of the Bolshevik Party, the Russian proletariat, and the international communist and workers’ movement. The fundamental ideas that Lenin developed in this and other works written during the first period of the Soviet power’s existence laid the foundation for the Communist Party’s activity in establishing and strengthening a socialist state and in building a communist society. They are being used to the present day by the fraternal Communist and workers’ parties in their struggle for democracy and socialism.