26 quotes
While the State exists, there can be no freedom. When there is freedom there will be no State.
The State and Revolution (1917)
Revolution alone can "put an end" to the bourgeois state. The state in general, i.e., the most complete democracy, can only "wither away".
The State and Revolution (1917)
The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament!
The State and Revolution (1917)
For the state to wither away completely, complete communism is necessary.
The State and Revolution (1917)
Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in the ancient Greek republics: freedom for the slave-owners.
The State and Revolution (1917)
The whole of society will have become a single office and a single factory with equality of work an equality of pay.
The State and Revolution (1917)
The Commune is the form "at the discovered" by the proletarian revolution, under which to work out the economic emancipation of labor.
The State and Revolution (1917)
The state is an organ of class rule, an organ for the oppression of one class by another; it creates "order," which legalizes and perpetuates this oppression by moderating the collision between the classes.
The State and Revolution (1917)
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.
The State and Revolution (1917)
The state arises where, when and insofar as class antagonism objectively cannot be reconciled. And, conversely, the existence of the state proves that the class antagonisms are irreconcilable.
The State and Revolution (1917)
The centralized state power that is peculiar to bourgeois society came into being in the period of the fall of absolutism. Two institutions are most characteristic of this state machine: bureaucracy and a standing army.
The State and Revolution (1917)
To decide once every few years which member of the ruling class is to misrepresent the people in parliament is the real essence of bourgeois parliamentarism.
The State and Revolution (1917)
It is still necessary to suppress the bourgeoisie and crush its resistance.
The State and Revolution (1917)
We are justified in speaking of special bodies of armed men, because the public power which is an attribute of every state is not "directly identical" with armed population, with its "self-acting armed organization"
The State and Revolution (1917)
The substitution of the proletarian state for the bourgeois state is impossible without a violent revolution. The abolition of the proletarian state, i.e., of the state in general, is impossible except through the process of "withering away".
The State and Revolution (1917)
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.
The State and Revolution (1917)
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.
The State and Revolution (1917)
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.
The State and Revolution (1917)
At the present time, the bourgeoisie and the opportunists in the labor movement concur in this "revision" of Marxism. They omit, obliterate and distort the revolutionary side of its doctrine, its revolutionary soul. They push to the foreground and extol what is or seems acceptable to the bourgeoisie.
The State and Revolution (1917)
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.
The State and Revolution (1917)