The State and Revolution [Paperback]

In July 1917, when the Provisional Government issued a warrant for his arrest, Lenin fled from Petrograd; later that year, the October Revolution swept him to supreme power. In the short intervening period he spent in Finland, he wrote his impassioned, never-completed masterwork The State and Revolution. This powerfully argued book offers both the rationale for the new regime and a wealth of insights into Leninist politics. It was here that Lenin justified his personal interpretation of Marxism, savaged his opponents and set out his trenchant views on class conflict, the lessons of earlier revolutions, the dismantling of the bourgeois state and the replacement of capitalism by the dictatorship of the proletariat. As both historical document and political statement, its importance can hardly be exaggerated.

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Introduction:
The Writing of the Book
The Contents
The Style
A Marxist Interpretation?
The Book and Political Theory
Political Conditions at the Time
The Book is Published
The Uses of the Book
The Book and Its Fate
THE STATE AND REVOLUTION
Preface to the First Edition
Preface to the Second Edition
Chapter I: Class Society and the State
1. The State as the Product of the Irreconcilability of Class Contradictions
2. Special Bodies of Armed Men, Prisons, Etc.
3. The State as an Instrument for the Exploitation of the Oppressed Class
4. The Withering Away of the State and Violent Revolution