Notes on The State and Revolution by Lenin

• Lenin wrote State and Revolution to formalize the proper Marxist understanding of the state, distinguishing it from the interpretations of Karl Kautsky and Eduard Bernstein.
• During this period, misinterpretations of Marx’s views on the state were widespread, primarily advocating reformist ideas that the state was a neutral actor in society that could be gradually reformed. Capitalism itself was reinterpreted by European Marxists as something that could be reformed away through labor unions and regulations.
• Lenin brought the state back to its original Marxist meaning: the ultimate tool of class struggle.
• Lenin noted a historical pattern: “What is now happening to Marx’s theory has, in the course of history, happened repeatedly to the theories of revolutionary thinkers and leaders of oppressed classes fighting for emancipation. During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the ‘consolation’ of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it.”
• As Lenin expertly pointed out, the state was a result of class antagonism, where a class on top used the state as a tool to exercise its power over a class on the bottom. Therefore, a state is a manifestation of class antagonism.
• The ruling classes exercise their power through armed forces that are alienated from society itself (e.g., prisons, police, jails). This is seen as such a natural process that most people take for granted how unique the creation of police states and standing armies is to most of human history.
• As class struggle becomes more acute, the repressive apparatuses of states grow more powerful. In the last 50 years since the “War on Drugs,” this has exploded to never-before-seen levels, exemplified by Palantir, ICE, and militarized police forces.
• For Lenin, the democratic republic, rather than being proof that there were ways to regulate capitalism, was in fact the most effective way capitalism exercised its power. “A democratic republic is the best possible political shell for capitalism, and, therefore, once capital has gained possession of this very best shell, it establishes its power so securely, so firmly, that no change of persons, institutions or parties in the bourgeois-democratic republic can shake it.”
• Just as the state arose out of a specific period of human history—class society—it will be destroyed and done away with when class society is no longer needed.
• While Marx and Engels envisioned that after the proletariat seized the state it would wither away, revisionists misinterpreted their ideas to mean that the state naturally withered away without revolution. However, Lenin stressed that a violent revolution is necessary for the establishment of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat (DOTP) and the subsequent withering away of the state.
• The proletariat, organized as the ruling class, would take control of all the means of production (MOP) that the bourgeoisie owned; this is what the dictatorship of the proletariat would entail.
• One interesting idea Lenin had was that the DOTP, from its onset, would begin withering away or would already be in the process of doing so.
• Marxism is not just the recognition of class struggle; even the bourgeoisie would happily admit that class struggle exists. “Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat.”
• Important to all of this are the Paris Commune and Marx and Engels’ interpretations of it. To Marx, the Paris Commune, which had gotten rid of its standing army and police force and replaced them with workers’ organizations, demonstrated how to “smash the state.”
• “Marx did not indulge in utopias; he expected the experience of the mass movement to provide the reply to the question as to the specific forms this organization of the proletariat as the ruling class would assume and as to the exact manner in which this organization would be combined with the most complete, most consistent ‘winning of the battle of democracy.’”
• Marx saw within the Paris Commune the purest form of democracy, with government officials, armies, and policemen abolished or relegated to complete societal control.
• Lenin very poignantly pointed out that parliamentarism was never going to be the full answer. While it could be a useful tool, ultimately the revisionists were wrong in the idea that they could ever gain full power through it, as the state would always be run by the bourgeoisie. No matter how many socialists got elected, nothing would change through the parliamentary route.
• Lenin would also adhere to the idea that Marxists had to be scientific and materialist, that the bureaucracy and state could not be wholly gotten rid of overnight, but the old institutions could be smashed and begin to transition into full communism.
• Lenin agreed with anarchists’ ultimate goal of getting rid of the state but saw the state as a temporary, necessary tool that would only disappear with the abolition of classes themselves.
• For Marx and Engels, the democratic republic with universal suffrage and local regional rule was an early preview to the dictatorship of the proletariat before the workers seized power for themselves, and in fact, they would advocate for a similar one to America and France in Germany. And to them, the commune, where all government officials were subject to recall and election, was an important step in proletarian democracy, but that the state and democracy itself would ultimately wither away as class society no longer needed a state.
• The DOTP, as a democratic form far more democratic than any liberal democracy, is needed to transition from capitalism to communism.
• In this stage (DOTP), which Marx dubbed the lower phase of communism, it would still retain aspects of the old capitalist system but would have common ownership of the means of production (MOP), and distribution of goods based on how much work people put into society, with some of their wealth taken for a common fund.
• Full communism also assumes big leaps in production, automation, and technological advancement, which allow for the end of the division of labor and making labor something enjoyable rather than a necessity.
• Full communism necessitates a moneyless, classless, stateless society. To achieve this, class antagonism would need to be eliminated, huge leaps in the productive forces that eliminate scarcity would be needed, and people would need to learn a ‘communist culture.’
• People would need to learn a ‘communist culture’ because, essentially, they would get whatever they needed when they needed it without money. This would necessitate them not over-consuming and ‘overfishing’ the common stock.
• “But the scientific distinction between socialism and communism is clear. What is usually called socialism was termed by Marx the ‘first,’ or lower, phase of communist society…. The great significance of Marx’s explanations is that here, too, he consistently applies materialist dialectics, the theory of development, and regards communism as something which develops out of capitalism.”

Source

Lenin, V. I. State and Revolution. Marxists Internet Archive. 1917. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/.