Autorentext

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known by the alias Lenin (1870–1924), was a Russian communist revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He played a leading role in the Bolshevik revolution of October 1917 and was one of the founders of the new revolutionary state.

Klappentext

Lenin’s booklet The State and Revolution struck the world of Marxist theory like a lightning bolt. Written in the months running up to the October Revolution of 1917, Lenin turned the traditional socialist concept of the state on its head, arguing for the need to smash the organs of the bourgeois state to create a ‘semi-state’ of soviets, or workers’ councils, in which ordinary people would take on the functions of the state machine in a new and radically democratic manner. This new edition includes a substantial introduction by renowned theorist Antonio Negri, who argues for the continued relevance of these ideas.

Zusammenfassung
Lenin's most important and controversial theoretical text

Inhalt

Introduction by Antonio Negri

Preface to First Edition
Preface to Second Edition

1: Class Society and the State
The State: A Product of the Irreconcilability of Class Antagonisms
Special Bodies of Armed Men, Prisons, etc.
The State: An Instrument for the Exploitation
of the Oppressed Class
The ‘Withering Away’ of the State,
and Violent Revolution

2: The Experience of 1848–51
The Eve of Revolution
The Revolution Summed Up
The Presentation of the Question by Marx in 1852

3: Experience of the Paris Commune of 1871. Marx’s Analysis
What Made the Communards’ Attempt Heroic?
What Is To Replace the Smashed State Machine?
Abolition of Parliamentarism
Organization of National Unity
Abolition of the Parasite State

4: Supplementary Explanations by Engels
The Housing Question
Controversy with the Anarchists
Letter to Bebel
Criticism of the Draft of the Erfurt Programme
The 1891 Preface to Marx’s The Civil War in France
Engels on the Overcoming of Democracy

5: The Economic Basis of the Withering Away of the State
Presentation of the Question by Marx
The Transition from Capitalism to Communism
The First Phase of Communist Society
The Higher Phase of Communist Society

6: The Vulgarization of Marxism by Opportunists
Plekhanov’s Controversy with the Anarchists
Kautsky’s Controversy with the Opportunists
Kautsky’s Controversy with Pannekoek

Postscript