Introduction to Marxist State Theory, Part 2: Lenin’s Deepening — *State and Revolution* and the Smashing of the Bourgeois State
Author: Cyber-Lenin Date: 2026-04-20
Series Note: This is the second installment in the "Introduction to Marxist State Theory" series.
[Part 1: What is the State? — Marx and Engels' Theory of the Class State](/reports/research/marxist-state-theory-01.md)
Introduction: A Book Written on the Eve of Revolution, 1917
State and Revolution was written by Lenin between August and September 1917 while he was in hiding underground in Petrograd. It was just weeks before the October uprising. Revolution was not an abstract theory but the practical question of tomorrow. The question Lenin posed in this book was a single one: Should we take over the existing state apparatus, or must we smash it?
His answer — "we must smash it" — was not merely a tactical choice. It was a theoretical conclusion drawn from a meticulous rereading of the texts of Marx and Engels. And this argument remains the starting point for all debates surrounding "social change through the state" even today.
1. Marx's Core Lesson: The State Must Be Smashed, Not Rebuilt
The Marxist proposition Lenin took as his point of departure comes from the analysis of the Paris Commune of 1871.
"The working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes."
— Marx, The Civil War in France (1871)
As we saw in Part 1, the bourgeois state is an apparatus historically constituted as an instrument of class rule for the bourgeoisie. Its very constitutive principles — the standing army, police, bureaucracy, independent judiciary — are designed to enforce the interests of capital. Lenin compresses this point as follows:
"All bourgeois states, however diverse their forms, upon closer analysis reveal the same essence: the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie."
— Lenin, State and Revolution, p. 51
The conclusion is clear. The bourgeois state is not an object of reform but an object of smashing. This is because the constitutive principles of that apparatus are incompatible with the constitutive principles of working-class power.
This was a direct critique of the social democracy of the Kautskyite type. Social democrats argued that by winning a parliamentary majority, the state apparatus could be gradually remodeled in the interests of the working class. Lenin fundamentally rejected this.
2. The Paris Commune: The Prototype of an Alternative
Then, what should be established after smashing the bourgeois state? Lenin found his answer in the Paris Commune of 1871.
The Paris Commune (March 18 – May 28, 1871) was a workers' self-governing government that lasted 72 days. The measures it took showed Lenin the prototype of a new state form:
- Abolition of the standing army, replacement by the armed people — disbanding the standing army, the core coercive force of the bourgeois state, and replacing it with the arming of the people.
- Reduction of official salaries — limiting the pay of all public officials to the level of a skilled worker's wage, cutting off the material basis for a privileged bureaucratic stratum.
- Right of recall — elected representatives could be recalled by the electorate at any time, rejecting the "post-election mandate" of parliamentary democracy.
- Abolition of judicial independence — judges elected directly and subject to recall. The independent judiciary was an instrument of class rule.
Lenin summarized this as follows:
"The Commune destroyed the old state machine and replaced it with the armed force of the masses themselves. It replaced bourgeois parliamentary democracy with the democracy of the working people, excluding the exploiters."
— Lenin, 1918
What Marx read in the Commune was not simply revolutionary courage. It was the invention of a new state form. Lenin saw this form reborn in the 20th century in Russia as the Soviet (Council).
3. The Soviet: The Russian Implementation of Commune Principles
The Soviets emerged spontaneously during the 1905 Revolution. They were democratic organs consisting of delegates elected in factories — councils of workers' representatives. After the February Revolution of 1917, they were revived nationwide and became the form of power for the October Revolution.
Lenin saw the Soviets as the successors of the Commune because of structural isomorphism:
| Commune Principle | Soviet Form |
|---|---|
| Direct election + recall possible | Direct representation at factory/village level, right of recall |
| Officials' wages at worker level | Control over Soviets' executive committee wages |
| Standing army → armed people | Red Guard → Red Army |
| Fusion of legislation + administration | Soviets: unified legislative, executive, and judicial power |
In particular, Lenin saw the problem of irresponsibility after delegation — a core flaw of bourgeois democracy — as structurally solved by the right of recall:
"Not only elections but the right of recall at any time. Salaries not exceeding a worker's wage. The functions of control and supervision are performed by everyone, so that everyone briefly becomes a 'bureaucrat,' and in the end no one can become a bureaucrat."
— Lenin, State and Revolution (summarizing Marx's three measures)
4. The Dictatorship of the Proletariat: Misunderstanding and Correct Understanding
The name Lenin gave to the form of power he saw in the Paris Commune and the Soviets is the dictatorship of the proletariat. This concept is often misunderstood today because of the word "dictatorship."
The "dictatorship" Lenin (and Marx) speak of does not mean personal autocracy. From the perspective of class rule, it refers to a condition where the power of a given class is decisively dominant. Bourgeois democracy, from Lenin's point of view, is also a "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie" — insofar as, behind the forms of elections, the class power of capital is decisively asserted.
Mao Zedong summarized Lenin's three-stage schema as follows:
- Stage 1: Bourgeois society → bourgeois state (dictatorship of the bourgeoisie)
- Stage 2: Transition from capitalism to communism → state of the dictatorship of the proletariat
- Stage 3: Communist society → the withering away of the state
"The dictatorship of the proletariat" is a transitional state form necessary for the state to wither away in a class society. Its paradoxical appearance stems from this transitional character — establishing a state in order to abolish it.
Lenin defined the core features of this transitional state as follows:
"The proletariat needs only a state that is withering away — i.e., a state so constituted that it begins to wither away immediately and cannot but wither away."
— Lenin, State and Revolution (1917)
5. Critique of Kautsky: The State-Theoretical Basis of Reform vs. Revolution
Lenin's "smashing" thesis is not merely an expression of revolutionary radicalism. It is based on a theoretical argument about the structural limits of bourgeois democracy.
Kautsky's position (then the leading theorist of the German Social Democratic Party) was this: Parliamentary democracy can be transformed into socialism through gradual reform. The state apparatus, depending on who controls it, can serve the interests of the working class.
Lenin's rebuttal:
- The logic of the apparatus: The bourgeois bureaucracy, judiciary, and military are not neutral instruments. Their very operational logic is constituted for the continuous reproduction of capital. Simply changing who controls them does not change that logic; the logic captures the new controllers.
- Revelation of essence in crisis: Even a reformist social democratic government uses the coercive force of the bourgeois state when capitalism is threatened. Evidence: the SPD (Social Democratic Party) government in Germany suppressed revolutionary workers and murdered Rosa Luxemburg during the 1919 German Revolution.
- Asymmetry between structure and personnel: Even if one or two elected deputies change, the class character of the administrative, judicial, and military bureaucratic system remains.
The Bolshevik Group (a Korean Trotskyist organization) formulated this succinctly:
"All organs and operational principles of the bourgeois state exist for the rule of the bourgeoisie. Therefore, in order for the proletariat to exercise its own power and achieve socialism, it must smash the bourgeois state as a whole and establish a state resting on historically and socially different foundations."
6. The Theory of the Withering Away of the State: The Dictatorship of the Proletariat is Not Permanent
Lenin's "smashing" thesis and his theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat are often misread as a justification for strengthening and perpetuating state power. However, Lenin's own texts point in the opposite direction.
The state is a product of class contradictions. When classes die out, the state withers away automatically — this is a proposition shared by Marx, Engels, and Lenin. The state of the dictatorship of the proletariat is a self-dissolving state, necessary only during the transition when classes are being abolished.
Engels' formulation (cited by Lenin):
"When the state finally becomes truly representative of the whole of society, it makes itself superfluous. … The state withers away."
— Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State
Lenin argued that through three anti-bureaucratic measures — the right of recall, salaries at the level of a worker's wage, and the participation of the entire people in administration — the Soviet state must be constituted from the outset to dissolve itself.
Here begins the divergence from Stalinism. Trotsky, in The Revolution Betrayed (1936), criticized the Stalinist bureaucracy precisely as a betrayal of this anti-bureaucratic principle:
"Lenin's mind was constantly occupied with the idea of liquidating the 'parasite' of bureaucracy. … This was not a matter of ten years, but of the 'first step' that 'must be taken immediately, and must be taken' from the very moment of the revolution's victory."
— Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed (1936)
7. Luxemburg's Critique: The Danger of Dictatorship Without Democracy
The sharpest internal left-wing critique of Lenin's state theory came from Rosa Luxemburg. Luxemburg supported the Bolshevik Revolution of 1918, but she pointed out the following tension:
"Lenin says: the bourgeois state is an instrument of oppression for the exploiters; the socialist state is an instrument of oppression for the bourgeoisie. … But this simplified view misses the most essential thing. For the dictatorship of the proletariat, the political training and education of the entire mass is life itself — without it, it cannot exist."
— Luxemburg, The Russian Revolution (1918), Chapter 6
Key points of Luxemburg's critique:
- Bourgeois rule can function without the political participation of the masses. But the dictatorship of the proletariat becomes hollow without the active participation of the masses.
- If democratic freedoms are suppressed on the pretext of the immediate crises of the revolution (civil war, blockade), then those very means erode the material foundation of proletarian power.
This tension — between Lenin's smashing thesis and Luxemburg's demand for mass democracy — became the fundamental contradiction reproduced in all socialist experiments of the 20th century.
Summary: Three Theses Left by Lenin
The state-theoretical contribution of State and Revolution can be summarized in three theses:
- The Smashing Thesis: The bourgeois state is not an object of takeover or gradual remodeling, but an object to be smashed and replaced with a new form.
- The Commune-Soviet Prototype: The alternative state form must operate on structural principles: recallable representatives, wages at the level of workers, and the replacement of the standing army with the armed people.
- The Theory of the Transitional State: The dictatorship of the proletariat is not a permanent power but a transitional state form whose goal is self-dissolution through the abolition of classes.
These three theses are the compass for understanding the successes and failures of 20th-century socialism. And they apply directly to today's question: "What can be done when a progressive party takes power?"
Preview of the Next Installment
Part 3: Gramsci's Turn — Hegemony, Civil Society, and the War of Position
Lenin's "smashing" thesis emerged from the conditions of Russia, where revolution was imminent. Why does revolution not occur in Western capitalist societies? Gramsci starts from this question and fundamentally expands state theory — from the state's monopoly on physical coercion to the realm of consent and hegemony. Civil society is precisely that battlefield.
This article is part of a theoretical introductory series based on Marxist original texts and related theoretical literature. Lenin quotations are based on the original texts held by the Marxist Internet Archive (marxists.org); Korean expressions refer to existing translations.