The State and Revolution Quotes

“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 death, 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.”
― Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, The State and Revolution

“While the State exists, there can be no freedom. When there is freedom there will be no State.”
― Vladimir Lenin, Estado y revolución

“We are not utopians, we do not “dream” of dispensing at once with all administration, with all subordination. These anarchist dreams, based upon incomprehension of the tasks of the proletarian dictatorship, are totally alien to Marxism, and, as a matter of fact, serve only to postpone the socialist revolution until people are different. No, we want the socialist revolution with people as they are now, with people who cannot dispense with subordination, control, and "foremen and accountants".”
― Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, The State and Revolution

“In capitalist society, providing it develops under the most favorable conditions, we have a more or less complete democracy in the democratic republic. But this democracy is always hemmed in by the narrow limits set by capitalist exploitation and consequently always remains, in effect, a democracy for the minority, only for the propertied classes, only for the rich. Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in the ancient Greek republics: freedom for the slaveowners. Owing to the conditions of capitalist exploitation, the modern wage slaves are so crushed by want and poverty that “they cannot be bothered with democracy,” “cannot be bothered with politics”; in the ordinary, peaceful course of events, the majority of the population is debarred from participation in public and political life. The”
― Vladimir Lenin, State and Revolution: Fully Annotated Edition

“Take any parliamentary country, from America to Switzerland, from France to England, Norway and so forth - in these countries the real business of the 'state' is preformed behind the scenes and is carried on by the departments, chancelleries and General Staffs. Parliament itself is given up to talk for the special purpose of fooling the 'common people.”
― Vladimir Lenin , The State and Revolution

“Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich: this is the democratism of capitalist society.”
― Vladimir Lenin, The State and Revolution

“We do not at all disagree with the anarchists on the question of the abolition of the state as an aim.”
― Vladimir Lenin, The State and Revolution

“To decide once every few years which member of the ruling class is to repress and crush the people through parliament - such is the real essence of bourgeois parliamentarianism, not only in parliamentary-constitutional monarchies, but also in the most democratic republics.”
― Vladimir Lenin, The State and Revolution

“A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing that is possible. Revolution is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets, and cannons, i.e. extremely authoritarian means”
― Vladimir Lenin, The State and Revolution

“Revolution consists not in the new class commanding, governing with the aid of the old state machine, but in this class smashing this machine and commanding, governing with the aid of a new machine.”
― V. I. Lenin, State and Revolution: Fully Annotated Edition

“Under capitalism democratism is restricted, cramped, curtailed, mutilated by all the conditions of wage slavery and of the poverty and misery of the masses”
― Vladimir Lenin, The State and Revolution

“The state is a product and a manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms.”
― Vladimir Lenin, The State and Revolution

“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, The State and Revolution

“This is so true [...]”
― Vladimir Lenin, The State and Revolution

“But the subordination must be to the armed vanguard of all the exploited, of all the toilers, i.e., to the proletariat. Measures must be taken at once, overnight, to substitute for the specific methods of "official administration" by state officials the simple functions of "workmen and managers," functions which are already fully within the capacity of the average city dweller and can well be performed for "workmen's wages.”
― Vladimir Lenin, The State and Revolution

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

“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, State and Revolution

“A democratic republic is the best possible political shell for capitalism, and, therefore, once capital has gained possession of this very best shell (through the Palchinskys, Chernovs, Tseretelis and Co.), it establishes its power so securely, so firmly, that no change of persons, institutions or parties in the bourgeois-democratic republic can shake it.”
― Vladimir Lenin, State and Revolution

“the working class must break up, smash the “ready-made state machinery,” and not confine itself merely to laying hold of it.”
― Vladimir Lenin, The State and Revolution

“Federal Switzerlandization would be a huge step backwards for Germany. Two”
― Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, The State and Revolution

“The distinction between Marxists and the anarchists is this: (1) The former, while aiming at the complete abolition of the state, recognize that this aim can only be achieved after classes have been abolished by the socialist revolution, as the result of the establishment of socialism, which leads to the withering away of the state. The latter want to abolish the state completely overnight, not understanding the conditions under which the state can be abolished. (2) The former recognize that after the proletariat has won political power it must completely destroy the old state machine and replace it by a new one consisting of an organization of the armed workers, after the type of the Commune. The latter, while insisting on the destruction of the state machine, have a very vague idea of what the proletariat will put in its place and how it will use its revolutionary power. The anarchists even deny that the revolutionary proletariat should use the state power, they reject its revolutionary dictatorship. (3) The former demand that the proletariat be trained for revolution by utilizing the present state. The anarchists reject this.”
― Vladimir Lenin, State and Revolution

“Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in the ancient Greek republics: freedom for the slave-owners. Owing to the conditions of capitalist exploitation, the modern wage slaves are so crushed by want and poverty that “they cannot be bothered with democracy,” “cannot be bothered with politics”; in the ordinary, peaceful course of events, the majority of the population is debarred from participation in public and political life.”
― Vladimir Lenin, State and Revolution

“Apart from the title, however, I had no time to write a single line of the chapter; I was "interrupted" by a political crisis--the eve of the October revolution of 1917. Such an "interruption" can only be welcomed; but the writing of the second part of this pamphlet ("The Experience of the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917") will probably have to be put off for a long time. It is more pleasant and useful to go through the "experience of revolution" than to write about it.”
― V. I. Lenin (Author), The State and Revolution

“I had already drawn up the plan for the next, the seventh chapter, "The Experience of the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917". Apart from the title, however, I had no time to write a single line of the chapter; I was "interrupted" by a political crisis--the eve of the October revolution of 1917. Such an "interruption" can only be welcomed; but the writing of the second part of this pamphlet ("The Experience of the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917") will probably have to be put off for a long time. It is more pleasant and useful to go through the "experience of revolution" than to write about it.”
― V. I. Lenin (Author), The State and Revolution

“It is more pleasant and useful to go through the "experience of revolution" than to write about it.”
― V. I. Lenin (Author), The State and Revolution

“Every right is an application of the same measure to different people who, in fact, are not the same and are not equal to one another; this is why "equal right" is really a violation of equality, an injustice.”
― Vladimir Lenin, State and Revolution

“Every right is an application of the same measure to different people who, in fact, are not the same and are not equal to one another; this is why "equal right" is really a violation of equality, an an injustice.”
― Vladimir Lenin, State and Revolution

“Fyodor Dan who wrote cogently on The Origins of Bolshevism.”
― Vladimir Lenin, The State and Revolution

“Weber turned in despair to the notion that a charismatic leader might by force of personality be able to slow down the advance of bureaucracy. This was wishful thinking, and subsequent European history has shown that such leaders, far from inhibiting, actually tend to facilitate bureaucratic self-aggrandizement.”
― Vladimir Lenin, The State and Revolution

“there is no freedom and no democracy where there is suppression and where there is violence.”
― Vladimir Lenin, State and Revolution