Quotes from book
The State and Revolution

The State and Revolution
Vladimir Lenin Original title Государство и революция (Russian, 1918)

The State and Revolution , by Vladimir Lenin, describes the role of the State in society, the necessity of proletarian revolution, and the theoretic inadequacies of social democracy in achieving revolution to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Vladimir Lenin photo

“Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in the ancient Greek republics: freedom for the slave-owners.”

Vladimir Lenin book The State and Revolution

Source: The State and Revolution (1917), Ch. 5.

Vladimir Lenin photo

“During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes relentlessly persecute them, and treat their teachings with malicious hostility, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaign of lies and slanders. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to surround their names with a certain halo for the "consolation" of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping them, while at the same time emasculating the revolutionary doctrine of its content, vulgarizing it and blunting its revolutionary edge.'”

Vladimir Lenin book The State and Revolution

1.1, Essential Works of Lenin (1966)
(1917)
Source: The State and Revolution

Vladimir Lenin photo

“We are not utopians, we do not indulge in "dreams" of dispensing at once with all administration, with all subordination; these anarchist dreams… serve only to postpone the socialist revolution until human nature has changed. No, we want the with human nature as it is now, with human nature that cannot dispense with subordination, control and "managers."… The united workers themselves… will hire their own technicians, managers and bookkeepers, and pay them all, as, indeed, every state official, ordinary workmen's wages.”

Vladimir Lenin book The State and Revolution

§ 3.4, Essential Works of Lenin (1966), pp. 307-308
Source: The State and Revolution (1917)

Vladimir Lenin photo

“Federal Switzerlandization would be a huge step backwards for Germany. Two”

Vladimir Lenin book The State and Revolution

Source: The State and Revolution

Vladimir Lenin photo

“Complete self-government for the province [gubernia and region], district and community through bureaucrats elected by universal suffrage; the abolition of all local and provincial authorities appointed by the state.”

Vladimir Lenin book The State and Revolution

Source: The State and Revolution

Vladimir Lenin photo

“In a democratic republic, Engels continues, "wealth wields its power indirectly, all the more effectively," first, by means of the "direct corruption of the officials (America); second, by the means of "the alliance between the government and the Stock Exchange”

Vladimir Lenin book The State and Revolution

France and America
1.3: The State as an Instrument for the Exploitation of The Oppressed Class, Essential Works of Lenin (1966)
The State and Revolution (1917)

Vladimir Lenin photo

“Imperialism - the era of bank capital, the era of gigantic capitalist monopolies, the era of the transformation of monopoly capitalism into state-monopoly capitalism - has particularly witnessed an unprecedented strengthening of the "state machine" and an unprecedented growth of its bureaucratic and military apparatus, in connection with the increase in repressive measures against the proletariat in the monarchical as well as in the freest republican countries.”

Vladimir Lenin book The State and Revolution

2.2, Essential Works of Lenin (1966)
The State and Revolution (1917)

Vladimir Lenin photo

“The functionaries of our political organizations and trade unions are corrupted — or rather tend to be corrupted — by the conditions of capitalism and betray a tendency to become bureaucrats, i. e., privileged persons divorced from the people and standing above the people.”

Vladimir Lenin book The State and Revolution

Ch. 6 http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch06.htm
The State and Revolution (1917)

Vladimir Lenin photo

“We set ourselves the ultimate aim of abolishing the state, i. e., all organized and systematic violence, all use of violence against people in general. We do not expect the advent of a system of society in which the principle of subordination of the minority to the majority will not be observed.
In striving for socialism, however, we are convinced that it will develop into communism and, therefore, that the need for violence against people in general, for the subordination of one man to another, and of one section of the population to another, will vanish altogether since people will become accustomed to observing the elementary conditions of social life without violence and without subordination.”

Vladimir Lenin book The State and Revolution

Ch. 4 : Supplementary Explanations by Engels http://www.smirnov.demon.co.uk/socialism/writings/lenin/staterev/ch04.htm
The State and Revolution (1917)

Vladimir Lenin photo

“The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament!”

Vladimir Lenin book The State and Revolution

Source: (1917), Ch. 5 [Lenin, Vladmir Illych, The State and Revolution, 1917, https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch05.htm, Marx grasped this essence of capitalist democracy splendidly when, in analyzing the experience of the Commune, he said that the oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament!]

Vladimir Lenin photo

“The proletariat needs state power, a centralized organisation of force, an organisation of violence, both to crush the resistance of the exploiters and to lead the enormous mass of the population - the peasants, the petty bourgeoisie, and semi-proletarians - in the work of organising a socialist economy.”

Vladimir Lenin book The State and Revolution

1.1, The Lenin Anthology
The State and Revolution (1917)

Vladimir Lenin photo

“Democracy for the cast majority of the people, and suppression by force, i. e., exclusion from democracy, of the exploiters and oppressors of the people - this is the change democracy undergoes during the transition from capitalism to Communism.”

Vladimir Lenin book The State and Revolution

Marxism: Essential Writings, "The State and Revolution"
The State and Revolution (1917)

Vladimir Lenin photo

“The exploiting classes need political rule in order to maintain exploitation, i. e., in the selfish interests of an insignificant minority and against the interests of the vast majority of the people. The exploited classes need political rule in order completely to abolish all exploitation, i. e., in the interests of the vast majority of the people, and against the interests of the insignificant minority consisting of the modern slave-owners - the landlords and the capitalists.”

Vladimir Lenin book The State and Revolution

2.1, "The Eve of The Revolution", Essential Works of Lenin (1966)
The State and Revolution (1917)

Vladimir Lenin photo

“We are in favor of a democratic republic as the best form of state for the proletariat under capitalism; but we have no right to forget that wage-slavery is the lot of the people even in the most democratic bourgeois republic.”

Vladimir Lenin book The State and Revolution

§ 1.4, "The Withering Away of the State and Violent Revolution", Essential Works of Lenin (1966)
The State and Revolution (1917)

Vladimir Lenin photo

“Democracy is of great importance for the working class in its struggle for freedom against the capitalists. But democracy is by no means a boundary that must not be overstepped; it is only one of the stages in the process of development from feudalism to capitalism, and from capitalism to communism.”

Vladimir Lenin book The State and Revolution

5.4, Essential Works of Lenin (1966)
The State and Revolution (1917)

Vladimir Lenin photo

“The economic basis for the complete withering away of the state is such a high stage of development of communism at which the antithesis between mental and physical labour disappears, at which there consequently disappears one of the principal sources of modern social quality - a source, moreover, which cannot on any account be removed immediately by the mere conversion of the means of production into public property, by the mere expropriation of the capitalists.”

Vladimir Lenin book The State and Revolution

The Lenin Anthology, p.379
The State and Revolution (1917)

Vladimir Lenin photo

“A state arises, a special force is created in the form of special bodies of armed men, and every revolution, by destroying the state apparatus, demonstrates to us how the ruling class strives to restore the special bodies of armed men which serve it, and how the oppressed class strives to create a new organization of this kind, capable of serving not the exploiters but the exploited.”

Vladimir Lenin book The State and Revolution

1.2, Essential Works of Lenin (1966)
The State and Revolution (1917)

Vladimir Lenin photo

“In such circumstances, in view of the incredibly widespread nature of the distortions of Marxism, our first task is to restore the true doctrine of Marx on the state.”

Vladimir Lenin book The State and Revolution

1.1, Essential Workers of Lenin (1966)
The State and Revolution (1917)

Similar authors

Vladimir Lenin photo
Vladimir Lenin 336
Russian politician, led the October Revolution 1870–1924
Borís Pasternak photo
Borís Pasternak 40
Russian writer
Anna Akhmatova photo
Anna Akhmatova 99
Russian modernist poet
Joseph Stalin photo
Joseph Stalin 95
General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Nicholas II of Russia photo
Nicholas II of Russia 4
Emperor of All the Russias, Grand Duke of Finland and King …
Vitaly Ginzburg photo
Vitaly Ginzburg 2
Russian Physicist
Leon Trotsky photo
Leon Trotsky 106
Marxist revolutionary from Russia
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn photo
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 120
Russian writer
Vladimir Mayakovsky photo
Vladimir Mayakovsky 14
Russian and Soviet poet, playwright, artist and stage and f…
Wassily Leontief photo
Wassily Leontief 10
Russian economist