The State and Revolution - Softcover

Lenin, Vladimir I

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1548885088 ISBN 13: 9781548885083

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2017

Synopsis

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 deaths, 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. Today, the bourgeoisie and the opportunists within the labour movement concur in this doctoring of Marxism. They omit, obscure, or distort the revolutionary side of this theory, its revolutionary soul. They push to the foreground and extol what is, or seems, acceptable to the bourgeoisie. All the social-chauvinists are now ‘Marxists’ (don’t laugh!). And more and more frequently, German bourgeois scholars, only yesterday specialists in the annihilation of Marxism, are speaking of the ‘national-German’ Marx, who, they claim, educated the labour unions, which are so splendidly organised for the purpose of waging a predatory war!

About this title

About the Author

V.I. Lenin was a leading member of the Bolshevik party in Russia from 1912 until his death in 1924, and is widely considered to have founded a distinct tradition in the struggle for revolutionary socialism, built from below. He is the author of celebrated works of theory such as State and Revolution, as well as widely misunderstood polemics like What is to be Done?

Todd Chretien is a frequent contributor to Socialist Worker and the ISR.

Edition details

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1548885088
• ISBN 13: 9781548885083
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 74