"State and Revolution", V.I. Lenin

The book The State and Revolution was written by Vladimir Lenin, a communist revolutionary. At the time the pamphlet was completed in September 1917, the future of the Russian Revolution after the February Revolution was uncertain. During this period, a provisional government operated in Russia, which included socialists in alliance with bourgeois forces. Vladimir Lenin became leader of the Russian Republic until 1918 (Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic) and then leader of the Soviet Union until 1924. Under his leadership, the Soviet Union became a socialist state ruled by the Russian Communist Party.

Lenin published the pamphlet The State and Revolution to present his own political theories, developed from Marxism and known as Leninism. In the pamphlet, Vladimir Lenin talks about the critical need for a revolution in Russia, as well as the fact that the uprising must spread throughout the world. Lenin stated: "The state is an organ of class domination, an organ for the oppression of one class by another." He believed that the existing state could not be rebuilt, it "must be broken (and) smashed", causing a revolution. Lenin intended to write the second part of the pamphlet to further discuss his political theories. However, participation in the revolution in Russia did not allow him to do this.

Lucio Colletti, an Italian Western Marxist philosopher and professor of philosophy at many Italian universities, once stated that The State and Revolution was Lenin’s "greatest contribution to political theory".

In Leninism Unfinished: The Rise and Return of a Revolutionary Doctrine, Paul Le Blanc, professor of history at La Roche College, analyzes The State and Revolution and Leninism. “If too few thoughtful, humane people are ready to pave the revolutionary socialist path into the future, then political freedom, true democracy, a decent life for all people, not to mention the survival of human culture and planet Earth, may not be part of the future”

Sean Harkin, writer and political activist, wrote that “in The State and Revolution, Lenin synthesizes many aspects of Marxist theory with a brilliant grasp of the dialectical method to make a powerful argument for revolutionary socialism.”

The central philosophy of Leninism, the theory expounded in The State and Revolution by Lenin himself, is actually borrowed. The pamphlet’s main argument is that Marx was basically right about his ideas about, you guessed it, the state and the need for revolution.

With regard to the state, Lenin discusses Marx and Engels and agrees with their conclusions about the existence of a caste system in the governments of the Earth. He further argues that in Russia the state system was essentially corrupted socialism, where professional socialists began to work for the interests of the bourgeois elite. The proletariat is the ordinary people of Russia, of which there are a lot. The basic premise is that when the interests of the bourgeoisie are at the head of the government, which, according to Lenin, is happening more or less everywhere on earth, it becomes necessary to push the state towards absolute destruction through revolution.

When Marx talked about revolution, he spoke of the apparent rise of the underclass, but Lenin changed that argument in his pamphlet. For Lenin, the efforts of communism were ideas worth spreading, and as a citizen of the Earth, Lenin wanted his utopian vision to benefit everyone. Therefore, the idea was born that Russian communism should be imposed first on its own population, and then on Europe. Lenin expresses an academic interest in the globalized communist utopia.

It is a short pamphlet, less than 100 pages, but full of philosophy and discourse on the future of communism. Here are the main ideas and those that determined the history of Russia, as well as the history of the Earth.

Vladimir Lenin

Speaker and Russian politician whose radical approach to Marxism led him to be elected to the highest office after the Russian Revolution he helped start.

Marx and Engels

Much of the preliminary discussion in the pamphlet openly concerns the writings of the founders of communist philosophy, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The two were thinkers and writers who worked together on The Communist Manifesto, creating the political parties we know as communism and socialism. Lenin was a purist and treated socialists as heretics in the cause of communism.

Bourgeoisie

An elite class formed from successful businessmen, the upper middle class, whose monetary value allows them to represent their interests in the government.

Proletariat

Simple man, worker. As individuals, they usually have a lower income, but as a class, they treat the interests of the bourgeoisie like a slave class.

Themes

State

Engels emphasizes: “But in order for these antagonisms, these classes with conflicting economic interests not to swallow themselves and society in a fruitless struggle, it became necessary to have a power, as it were, standing above society, which would mitigate the conflict and keep it within the framework of “order”; and with this power emerging from society, but standing above it and more and more alienated from it, is the state.

The existence of the state is explained by the ill will that exists between different classes in society. Therefore, if classes could resolve their antagonisms and interests, the state would be indispensable. The state prevents the conflicts that might arise if the various classes were left to their own devices. However, the state does not eliminate antagonisms.

The revolution

Engels describes: “The proletariat seizes state power and turns the means of production into state property. But in doing so it abolishes itself as a proletariat, abolishes all class distinctions and class antagonisms, and abolishes the state as a state. Until now, society, operating under conditions of class antagonisms, has needed the state, that is, the organization of a specific exploiting class to maintain its external conditions of production.

Here Engels endorses the revolution of the proletariat, which will expand the possibilities of the exploited individuals. Engels argues that the revolution will put an end to the oppression suffered by the proletariat by the ruling class that controls the factors of production. Moreover, the revolution will eliminate the existence of classes in society, causing the death of the state. The main forms of oppression to be eradicated as a result of the revolution include "slavery, serfdom or bondage, wage labor".

Marxism

Lenin writes: “By educating a workers’ party, Marxism educates the vanguard of the proletariat, capable of seizing power and leading the entire people towards socialism, directing and organizing a new system, being a teacher, guide, leader of all the working and exploited people in organizing their social life without the bourgeoisie and against bourgeoisie."

Marxism will eradicate opportunism that encourages the exploitation of the working class. This ideology is designed to solve the shortcomings of capitalism by ensuring the connection of the representatives of the working class with the masses. Marxism gives the proletariat the opportunity to enter into relationships that will limit the exploitation to which it is subjected under capitalism.

In chapter II, Lenin turns his attention directly to the differences he has with Marx. According to Lenin, the "Communist Manifesto" is purely theoretical. Lenin says: “Marx did not indulge in utopias; he expected that the experience of the mass movement would provide an answer to the question of what concrete forms this organization of the proletariat as the ruling class would take.” In other words, Marx saw the world as a dynamic conflict between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Lenin, on the other hand, believes that a communist utopia can be achieved through the complete, brutal destruction of the ruling class. Everything suddenly looked like another French Revolution, and Lenin was their Robespierre.

Marx’s "Communist Manifesto" was a commentary on the French Revolution, an analysis of the nature of the revolution, and a philosophical commentary on the earth’s caste systems. Essentially, the communist sees the caste systems of any society as the source of evil in that culture.

Lenin agrees with this idea, but believes that Marx does not carry it through to the end. Marx was satisfied with the concepts as dynamic realities, but Lenin wants to see a utopia shaped by the imposition of communism. He views communism as a force that must compete with all other forms of government, and he even goes so far as to say that communism must be supported in governments around the world. This is the beginning of the conflict between Russia and America, as it sees capitalism as the greatest evil of the modern world, while the philosophy of American thinkers was doing the same in the opposite direction.

As a literary work, it’s rather informal, but it’s still a philosophical discourse, so it’s academic, citing sources, citing first-hand accounts, and the like. But as a historical artifact, one could easily argue that The State and Revolution helped determine the entire outcome of geopolitics for almost 100 years. In many ways, Lenin created the Russia we know today.