The State and Revolution
by Vladimir Lenin · Государство и революция
Assigned by 1 of the 9 reading lists, catalogue entry only
- Written
- 1917
- Form
- Political theory
- Language
- Russian
- Length
- Short · 120 ppunder 120 pages
- Difficulty
- Demanding3 of 5 for a first-year reader
We recommendThe State and RevolutionPenguin Classics, 1992Prints the pamphlet on its own with an introduction placing it between the February and October revolutions.
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Written in hiding in Finland in the months before the October revolution, and published in 1918. Lenin sets out to recover what he says Marx and Engels actually taught about the state against the socialists who had blunted it. The state, he argues, is not a neutral referee but an instrument by which one class holds down another, so the working class cannot take over the existing machinery of parliament, army and bureaucracy: it must smash it and replace it with something on the model of the Paris Commune. That replacement is the dictatorship of the proletariat, a state of armed workers which, as classes disappear, withers away.
No reading guide yet
The catalogue entry above is complete: the dates, the form, the themes and every program that assigns The State and Revolution are verified against each program's published list.
What is missing is the part that takes real work: the summary, the key passages, and a recommended translation. The edition named below is the one most programs assign, so the buy links are useful already.
