In July 1917, when the Provisional Government issued a warrant for his arrest, Lenin fled from Petrograd; later that year, the October Revolution swept him to supreme power. In the short intervening period he spent in Finland, he wrote his impassioned, never-completed masterwork The State and Revolution. This powerfully argued book offers both the rationale for the new regime and a wealth of insights into Leninist politics. It was here that Lenin justified his personal interpretation of Marxism, savaged his opponents and set out his trenchant views on class conflict, the lessons of earlier revolutions, the dismantling of the bourgeois state and the replacement of capitalism by the dictatorship of the proletariat. As both historical document and political statement, its importance can hardly be exaggerated.Translated and edited with an introduction by Robert Service
Part 1 Class society and the state: the state as the product of the irreconcilability of class contradictions; special bodies of armed men, prisons, etc.; the state as an instrument for the exploitation of the oppressed class; the withering away of the state and violent revolution. Part 2 The state and revolution - the experience of 1848-51: the eve of the revolution; the revolution in summary; the presentation of the question by Marx in 1852. Part 3 The state and revolution - the experience of the Paris Commune of 1871 - Marx's analysis: what was heroic about the Communards' attempt?; with what is the smashed state machine to be replaced?; the eradication of the parliamentarianism; organization of the unity of the nation; the destruction of the parasite state. Part 4 Continuation - supplementary clarifications by Engels: the housing question; the polemic with the anarchists; letter to Bebel; critique of the draft of the Erfurt Programme; the 1891 Preface to Marx's The Civil War in France ; Engels on the overcoming of democracy. Part 5 The economic basis for the withering away of the state: the presentation of the question by Marx; the transition from capitalism to Communisim; the first phase of Communist society; the higher phase of Communist society. Part 6 The vulgarization of Marxism by the opportunists: Plekhanov's polemic with the Anarchists; Kautsky's polemic with the opportunists; Kautsky's polemic with Pannekoek. Part 7 The experience of the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917.
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