State and Revolution was a pamphlet written by Vladimir Lenin in August - September, 1917. It describes the proletarian revolution with a major focus on the role of the State. Lenin spends much of the pamphlet explaining the differences between Anarchists and Communists and refuting the arguments of petty bourgeoisie opportunists. He also argues for the necessity of maintaining the State during the dictatorship of the proletariat. He claimed Marx's first mature work was The Poverty of Philosophy (1847). A pamphlet is an unbound booklet (that is, without a hard cover or binding). ... Lenin redirects here. ... 1917 (MCMXVII) was a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar (see link for calendar) or a common year starting on Tuesday of the 13-day slower Julian calendar. ... A state is a set of institutions that possess the authority to make the rules that govern a society, having internal and external sovereignty over a definite territory. ... The dictatorship of the proletariat is a term employed by Karl Marx in his 1875 Critique of the Gotha Program that refers to a transition period between capitalist and communist society in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat. The term refers to a... ‘Young Marx’ is one half of the concept in Marxology that Karl Marx’s intellectual development can be broken into two board categories, the other being ‘Mature Marx’. There is disagreement though as to when Marx thought began to mature, Lenin claimed Marxs first mature work as “The Poverty... The Poverty of Philosphy is a book by Karl Marx published in Paris and Brussels in 1847. ...

In Lenin's State and Revolution, Lenin clears up theoretical questions about the existence of the state after the proletarian revolution, citing frequently from Engels and Marx. In both a witty and intelligent language he deconstructs the arguments of "Anti-Authoritarians", Anarchists, Social Democrats, and Reformists. The various stages of the progression of the revolution are discussed - the Revolution itself, the setting up of the socialist commune which he also called the "Lower stage of communist society", and then lastly the "higher stage of communist society" in which cyclic stabilization is achieved, and individual freedom is allowed to be expressed at it's fullest.

Lenin also provides a devestating defense of Marx, both in Marx's theory of Communism and in the truthful existence of Marx's theory itself. Lenin said that, when old revolutionaries die that the bourgeois are not content with labeling them enemies of the state - for that would still attract some radicals. Instead, Lenin says, they try to discredit their writings, "desentsitize" them, to "prove" how "infact" they were actually social-democratic, and to discredict "the revolutionary nature of Marx". He labeled those who do so "Revisionists".

Lenin also talks extensively about the State and its nature in itself. He says the state, at all times, is a tool for class oppression, which is where he agrees with the anarchists. The State was a creation out of the desires of groups of people to control each other, when their disputes and desires could not be halted in any other way. The State, whether it is a dictatorship or a democracy, will always remain a tool for the working class. Using Dialectics, he says that even in a democratic capitalist republic, the ruling class will never lose power as it will mantain a complete stranglehold on the state, using "Behind-the-scenes" actions instead of open actions in these stages. Universal Suffrage, he says, is the best form of cloak for the ruling class, as it mantains a idealistic shade of freedom and democracy when in truth it isn't.

Lenin claims then that the only "remedy" for these ills is Socialist Revolution, and that is where he breaks off with the anarchists. Being a materialist, he disagrees on two points with the Anarchists:

1.) Anarchists say the abolishment of the state immediatly is a ideal. Lenin acknowledges that such a thing is impossible, as the proletariat will immediatly set up its own state, and any way to intervene would prove fatal.

2.) If immediatly the state was abolished without the "conditions leading to the arising of the state" being so, then a new state would simply pop up and the revolution would have been useless.

So thus he says the proletariat will naturally make its own communal-state (Based off the Paris Commune of 1871), and then proceed slowly to supress the bourgeois dissenters. He then says, as Marx did, that the state will "wither away", as the institutions begin to "lose their political character" and decay away till one day its gone, but the change was so gradual and slow that no new power-hungry person(s) take it up again, and neither would the armed population let them.

"While the State exists there can be no freedom, when there is freedom there can be no state"

External link

• http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/