State and Revolution

Vladimir Lenin was born in 1870 and was one of the most influential people of the 20th century. He became a Russian revolutionary, a communist politician, the principal leader of the October Revolution, the first head of the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic and, from 1922, the first de facto leader of the Soviet Union.

• 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.