Lenin outlines in The State and Revolution the Marxist position on the state, its origins, and what its purpose is. He then shows the need for revolution, and the need to replace the state with a workers’ democratic dictatorship – a workers’ state. The leader of the Russian revolution found time during 1917 to write a crucial text on the Marxist position on the state, and the tasks of the proletariat during and after the social revolution. He was driven by the practical needs of the revolution in Russia at the time: to show that the opportunists (i.e., the Social-Democrats, Kautskyian-centrists, etc) had distorted Marxism and to refute the anarchist claims that all states are reactionary.
Archive for category The State
Whenever we challenge the multimillionaire corporations that rule the world, against every march, every protest, every picket, boycott, strike, and action… there is an organized force trained, prepared, and waiting to block us, smother and stop us. What is this force? Revolutionaries call it the State.
Who is the State?
It’s the police that threaten us, move us on, caution us, batter us, arrest us, and imprison us. It’s the judges who try and condemn us, even though they know nothing about how we live and never will. The faceless civil servants, bureaucrats, and lawyers who pore over documents and draft complicated laws to isolate, stifle, and stamp on any resistance to the power of big capital. And there’s the last deadly line of defense for the system, the army – a killing machine waiting to spring unthinkingly into action when their paymasters’ dirty work needs to be done. So how did the State come into being? What makes it tick? How can it be abolished?