Written by Lenin in August-September 1917, The State and Revolution provides a definitive presentation of the Marxist theory of the state. Here, Lenin explains that, stripped of all non-essentials, the state is in the final analysis “groups of armed men”: … CHAPTER I. Lenin and the Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party reinforced this distinction in 1918, the year after they seized power in… 3. In State and Revolution (1917), Lenin asserted that socialism corresponds to Marx’s first phase of communist society and communism proper to the second. THE EXPERIENCE OF 1848-51 26 1. Lenin published the pamphlet The State and Revolution in order to display his own political theories, developed from Marxism, known as Leninism. Written in Lenin's characteristically clear and incisive style, this book is a cornerstone of revolutionary Marxism. 2. Class Society and the State. This was not an abstract question. In the pamphlet, Vladimir Lenin discusses the critical need for a revolution in Russia, but also for insurrection to spread throughout the world. 4. The State and Revolution describes 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. After every revolution, which marks an advance in the class struggle, the purely coercive character of the state power stands out in bolder and bolder relief. State and Revolution was written by Lenin in the summer of 1917, during the momentous year of revolution in Russia. Paul Vernell looks at Lenin's answer. The Second Empire consolidated this. Can the state be taken over because it is a neutral space or does it have to be overthrown? Written in the summer of 1917, in the heat of the Russian Revolution, Lenin’s State and Revolution is a key work of Marxism. I can’t say it hit me as in the same way as say, reading Nabokov or Joyce, but it did hit me. Lenin wrote the notes for The State and Revolution while still in hiding and finished it in August 1917 when the Russian Revolution was, in his words, "completing the first stage of its development." His hopes seemed justified initially. The Eve of the Revolution 2. It addresses the central problem of all revolutions: that of state power and which class is to hold it. He somewhat reinterprets the idea, and makes prominent the idea of the "dictatorship of the proletariat". The State as the Product of the Irreconcilability of Class Antagonisms Special Bodies of Armed Men, Prisons, etc. One of the most formative of the books I read after leaving University in my early twenties was Lenin’s State and Revolution.. The Presentation of the Question by Marx in 1852 In State and Revolution, Lenin addresses the Marxist notion that the state will whither away. The State as an Instrument for the Exploitation of the Oppressed Class 4. 3. He had planned to finish it with an analysis of the Russian Revolution, but in a postscript, he says ". The State as an Instrument for the Exploitation of the Oppressed Class The "Withering Away" of the State and Violent Revolution 5 9 13 17 Chapter II THE STATE AND REVOLUTION. The state cannot be neutral. The Revolution in Summary 3. After the revolution of 1848-49, state power became “the national war instruments of capital against labour”. The "Withering Away" of the State and Violent Revolution. The State and Revolution made clear that Lenin – unlike anarchists – expected the Revolution to be an easy affair, with minimal resistance. The “Withering Away” of the State and Violent Revolution Chapter II: The State and Revolution—The Experience of 1848-51 1. “ the national war instruments of capital against labour ” was written Lenin! 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