Noah Goulet > Recent Status Updates

In part four, Lenin discusses the application of communism, the highest stage of socialism. Engels wrote that the state will wither away, and Lenin compares this to the anarchist abolition of the state. Because the state is an organ through which one class forces its will on another, the state disappears once class is dismantled.

In part three, Lenin addresses the question of who gains power in a worker's state. He mentions material conditions in both Russia and the West, and explains the distribution of powers in nations such as the Kerensky republic.

In part two, Lenin addresses the primary bodies through which one class forces its will upon another. These are the courts, the prisons, and the military. Lenin argues that the worker's state cannot simply use the state apparatus for their own agenda, but must instead replace the state machinery to serve the workers.

At the beginning of the text, Lenin justifies the existence of the state by citing "the irreconcilability of class antagonisms." Essentially, a state is a tool through which one class forces its will upon another, and a socialist state is based upon the assumption that the bourgeoisie will not relinquish its power willingly.