 Cover of a Russian first edition | |
| Author | Vladimir Lenin |
|---|---|
| Original title | Государство и революция |
| Language | Russian |
| Genre | Nonfiction |
Publication date | 1917 |
| Publication place | Russian Republic |
| Media type | |
The State and 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 byVladimir Lenin and published in 1917 which describes his views on the role of thestate in society, the necessity ofproletarian revolution, and the theoretic inadequacies ofsocial democracy in achievingrevolution to establish thedictatorship of the proletariat.
Lenin began the composition of an early draft ofThe State and Revolution while in exile in Switzerland in 1916, under the title "Marxism on the State".[1]
"Soviets", legislative bodies of workers and peasants, were thede facto governments ofPetrograd and many smaller cities. The Russian public was deeply upset with the continuation of Russia's involvement inWorld War I and the continued economic difficulties that it brought on. On November 7, theCongress of Soviets officially elected a coalition ofBolsheviks,Socialist Revolutionaries andMensheviks to govern. Through theRed Guards, paramilitary organizations of revolutionary workers, sailors, and soldiers, the Soviet government was able to storm theWinter Palace and officially abolish theProvisional Government. The revolution was not uniformly accepted among all Russians; resistance and disruption would occur routinely leading up to theRussian Civil War. A particular issue that Lenin covers inThe State and Revolution was the right of nations to secession ("the right to self-determination"); during the composition of this book, theMensheviks of Georgiadeclared independence soon after the Revolution, forming theDemocratic Republic of Georgia.
By November 25, the1917 Constitutional Assembly was elected with a majority of positions going to theSocialist 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.
The State and Revolution is considered to be Lenin's most important work on the state and has been called byLucio Colletti "Lenin's greatest contribution to political theory".[2] According to theMarxologistDavid McLellan, "the book had its origin in Lenin's argument withBukharin in the summer of 1916 over the existence of the state after a proletarian revolution. Bukharin had emphasised the 'withering' aspect, whereas Lenin insisted on the necessity of the state machinery toexpropriate the expropriators. In fact, it was Lenin who changed his mind, and many of the ideas of State and Revolution, composed in the summer of 1917 – particularly theanti-statist theme – were those of Bukharin".[3][4]
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 someSocial class."[3][5] Hence his denigration even ofparliamentary democracy, which was influenced by what Lenin saw as the recent increase ofbureaucratic and military influences:[3][6]
To decide once every few years which member of theruling class is to repress and crush the people through parliament – this is the real essence ofbourgeois parliamentarism, not only in parliamentary-constitutional monarchies, but also in the mostdemocratic republics.
— Vladimir Lenin,The State and the Revolution
CitingFriedrich Engels andKarl Marx, Lenin investigatestheoretical questions about the existence of the State after theproletarian revolution, addressing the arguments ofanti-authoritarians,anarchists,social democrats, andreformists, in describing the progressive stages of societal change—the revolution, establishing “the lower stage of communist society” (the socialist commune), and the “higher stage of communist society” that will yield a stable society where personal freedom might be fully expressed.
Lenin especially defends Marx's theory ofcommunism, andMarxism generally; to wit, when old revolutionaries die, thebourgeoisie are not content with labelling them “enemies of the state”, because that would attractpolitical radicals, so they attack therevolutionaries’theoretic writings by ascribing to them an (anti-revolutionary)social-democratic mediocrity contrary to “the revolutionary nature of Marx”; suchbourgeoisintellectuals are the “revisionists” who transform a human being into anabstraction:
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 harmlessicons, 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 therevolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge, and vulgarizing it. Today, thebourgeoisie 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 thesocial-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 theinherentnature of the State as a tool for classoppression, the creation of asocial class's desire to control the other social classes when politico-economic disputes cannot otherwise be peacefully resolved; whether adictatorship or ademocracy, the State remains the social-control means of theruling class. Even in ademocratic capitalist republic, the ruling class never relinquish political power, maintaining it via the “behind-the-scenes” control ofuniversal suffrage—an excellent deception that maintains theidealisticconcepts of “freedom and democracy”; hence,communist revolution is the sole remedy for suchdemagogy:
In the event, theproletariat through thedictatorship of the proletariat would establish a communal State (per the 1871Paris Commune model), then gradually suppress the dissentingbourgeoisie, in achieving thewithering away of the State as its institutions begin to “lose their political character”.
Thus, following Marx's conclusions on theParis 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 onlybourgeois 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 ordinarypetty (as well as big) bourgeois. This is the touchstone on which the real understanding and recognition of Marxism is to be tested."[10]
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