Letters from Tomis

Book Review

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/

Introduction

Vladimir Lenin’s State and Revolution remains one of the most forceful, incisive, and ideologically transformative texts in the canon of Marxist political theory. Written in the shadow of the Bolshevik Revolution, during the summer of 1917 while Lenin was in hiding, the work serves as both a theoretical clarification and a polemical intervention. More than a restatement of Marxist orthodoxy, it is a revolutionary manifesto that reclaims the radical core of Marx and Engels’ teachings on the state and posits the dictatorship of the proletariat not as an incidental phase, but as the sine qua non of socialist transformation. This review seeks to explore the philosophical coherence, historical urgency, and enduring political significance of this vital text, offering a glowing assessment of its contribution to revolutionary thought and praxis.

Historical and Political Context

Written amidst the unfolding crisis of the Russian Provisional Government and in anticipation of a second revolution, State and Revolution was both a response to the betrayals of Social Democracy in Europe and a theoretical preparation for proletarian power in Russia. The Second International had, by Lenin’s account, abandoned the revolutionary spirit of Marxism in favor of reformist accommodation. In response, Lenin sought to reestablish Marx’s theory of the state as inherently coercive, as “a special organization of force” arising out of irreconcilable class antagonisms.

By returning to the primary texts—particularly The Civil War in France and The Critique of the Gotha Programme—Lenin excoriates the “opportunists” for mutilating Marx’s legacy. For Lenin, the suppression of the bourgeoisie by a workers’ state was not merely a tactical option but an essential stage in the abolition of all class society.

Theoretical Contributions

Lenin’s central thesis is stark and uncompromising: the bourgeois state cannot be seized and repurposed for proletarian aims—it must be smashed and replaced by a new form of state, the proletarian dictatorship. Against the parliamentary cretinism of the Mensheviks and the liberal gradualism of the German SPD, Lenin insists that the Paris Commune offers the model for proletarian rule: a state stripped of bureaucracy, standing army, and privilege, run by workers directly elected and subject to immediate recall.

This vision stands in radical contrast to both anarchism and social-democracy. Against the anarchists, Lenin affirms the necessity of a state structure during the transition to communism—“the proletariat needs the state only temporarily,” he writes, “and only to suppress the resistance of the exploiters.” Against the reformists, he insists that the existing state cannot be gradually democratized into socialism because it is not a neutral instrument but the crystallization of bourgeois class rule.

Lenin’s engagement with Marx’s notion of the “withering away of the state” is particularly noteworthy. Far from abandoning this teleological goal, Lenin situates it within a dialectical process: only after the proletarian state has extinguished the resistance of the ruling class and abolished class distinctions can the state itself become obsolete. Here, Lenin is at his most dialectical and most authentically Marxist—he refuses moralistic shortcuts or utopian illusions, offering instead a sober but resolute path through necessity toward emancipation.

Literary and Polemical Power

The prose of State and Revolution is animated by Lenin’s characteristic clarity, urgency, and invective. He is relentless in exposing the falsifications of Marx by social-democratic theorists, particularly Kautsky, whom he skewers as a “renegade.” Yet beyond polemic, there is also an intellectual generosity in the text—a rigorous, even pedagogical, return to primary sources. Lenin quotes Marx and Engels at length, contextualizes their work historically, and clarifies their implications for the present revolutionary moment. The structure is tightly logical, the tone didactic yet never patronizing, and the rhetorical style is crisp and devastatingly precise.

Enduring Relevance

Over a century after its publication, State and Revolution continues to resonate—not merely as a historical artifact but as a living document for revolutionary strategy. In an era marked by neoliberal decay, ecological catastrophe, and deepening inequality, Lenin’s insistence on the class character of the state remains profoundly instructive. The democratic socialist revival of the 21st century—while welcome—often flirts with the very illusions Lenin warned against: the idea that capitalism can be reformed out of existence through parliamentary means alone.

Moreover, the militarization of police, mass surveillance, and corporate control of electoral systems all confirm Lenin’s core insight: that the modern state serves the preservation of capitalist order, and that revolutionary change will necessarily confront its apparatus of violence.

For militants, scholars, and students of Marxism, State and Revolution offers not only theoretical illumination but strategic guidance. It remains perhaps the most lucid exposition of the dictatorship of the proletariat ever written and one of the few that situates the withering away of the state not as an abstraction, but as the concrete culmination of class struggle.

Conclusion

Lenin’s State and Revolution is a masterwork of political theory and revolutionary strategy. It combines theoretical rigor with uncompromising militancy, reclaims Marx from opportunist revisionism, and maps the terrain of proletarian transformation with analytical precision. Its arguments remain vital, its provocations necessary, and its lessons as urgent in the 21st century as they were in 1917. Any serious study of socialist revolution must begin—and end—with Lenin’s uncompromising reaffirmation: the state must be smashed, and a new workers’ power must be born.