The State and Revolution

The State and Revolution by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin is a text written in 1917, which stands as it is written in the subtitle, engaged in the teaching of Marxism by the State and the Tasks of the Proletariat in the Revolution. He is considered one of the classics of socialism and as one of the key writings on the theory of the state.

Formation

State and Revolution was written August-September 1917 by Lenin in a tabernacle in the Finnish exile. Was first published the text of a brochure in 1918 in Soviet Russia.

Content

The work is divided into six chapters. Lenin bases its statements on numerous texts by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, among others The Poverty of Philosophy and The Civil War in France. Lenin's main thesis is that the State in its capacity as a "tool for the exploitation of the oppressed class ," " the product and the manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms is".

According to Lenin, the bourgeois state is shattered in a ( necessarily violent ) revolution. In a second phase the proletariat conquered state power. The purpose of the conquest of state power is the management of the means of production and the necessary suppression of the former ruling class. In this phase, the still existing state should represent the most perfect form of democracy. Since he is no longer used at that time as exploitation instrument and thus its purpose is relieved, he dies forcibly. With him dies the democracy, since this is a form of the state. After the death of the non-coercive association of free producers, so communism is emerging. The authoritative content in Lenin's theses is that of the conquest of state power and the subsequent withering of the state. On the historical underpinnings Lenin regarded the revolution of 1848 and later analyzed the experience of the Paris Commune. The fifth chapter describes the basis of Marx, Lenin, as the transition is vonstattengehen from capitalism to socialism or communism. In the last chapter he deals with the views of Plekhanov and Kautsky, both of which were once respected theorist in his eyes, but had the " opportunism " favored and thus provide for a flattening of Marxism.