State and revolution

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State and Revolution , 1970

State and Revolution is a text written by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin in 1917 , which, as it is written in the subtitle, deals with the doctrine of Marxism of the state and the tasks of the proletariat during the revolution . He is considered one of the classics of socialism and one of the central writings on state theory .

Emergence

State and Revolution was written by Lenin from August to September 1917 in a tabernacle in Finland, which at that time still belonged to Russia. The text was first published as a brochure in 1918 in Soviet Russia .

content

The work is divided into six chapters. Lenin bases his presentations on numerous texts by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels , and others. a. The Misery of Philosophy and The Civil War in France . Lenin's main thesis is that the state in its function as a “tool for the exploitation of the oppressed class” is “the product and the expression of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms”.

According to Lenin, the immediate task of the working class is to conquer state power by smashing the bourgeois state in a (compulsorily violent) revolution. "To smash the state" specifically means the dissolution of its institutions: ministries, offices, parliament, police and military. These institutions, the staff of which, according to Lenin, are "connected by a thousand threads with the bourgeoisie" (on social background, worldview, immediate political and economic interests, etc.) are to be replaced by institutions that are under the direct control of the working class "Every cook," as he puts it, should offer the opportunity to participate in the management of the state. Lenin sees the prototypes of these institutions, which in their entirety should form the workers' state , in the soviets or workers' and soldiers' councils that had formed in Russia since the February Revolution .

The writing is therefore to be understood as a direct request to the workers and soldiers organized in councils to take over government functions. With this position, the Bolsheviks finally prevailed at the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets in November (according to the old October calendar), at which representatives of all Russian workers 'and soldiers' councils met. This is how the October Revolution came about : Congress declared the Provisional Government to be deposed, and attempts were made (largely unsuccessfully) to arrest members of the government via the Bolshevik military organization. There are commissariats formed, which should replace the ministries and departments of the former state. The Bolsheviks saw a confirmation of Lenin's thesis that there was nothing to be done with the old state apparatus in the violent conflicts that arose in the attempt to integrate the staff of the old state into the new institutions (such as the employees of the state bank) Working class itself should be mobilized. In the months that followed, the former civil servants were largely replaced by simple workers and soldiers, who hardly had any special qualifications, but were all the more enthusiastic.

The sense of the conquest of state power consists in the administration of the means of production and the necessary suppression of the once ruling class. In this phase, the still existing state should represent the most perfect form of democracy. Since at this point he no longer serves as an instrument of exploitation and is thus deprived of its purpose, he forcibly dies. With it, democracy also dies, since this is also a form of the state. After dying, the compulsory association of free producers , i.e. communism , develops . The decisive content in Lenin's theses is that of the conquest of state power and the subsequent withering of the state. For historical support, Lenin looks at the revolution of 1848 and later analyzes the experiences of the Paris Commune . In the fifth chapter Lenin uses Marx to describe how the transition from capitalism to socialism or communism will take place. In the last chapter he deals with the views of Plekhanov and Kautsky , who were both once respected theorists in his eyes, but who would have favored "opportunism" and thereby flattened Marxism.

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