Renato Rojas’s Reviews > The State and Revolution > Status Update

Chapter V - Here Lenin through Marx and Engels criticizes the Lassallean notion of socialism as one in which wages are paid for the "full product of labor" as a reserve must be set aside for the reproduction of and expansion of production. Lenin ascribes the "lower phase of communism" to be synonymous with socialism. Socialism is not full equality but the ending of exploitation, certain inequalities will exist.

Chapter IV- This Chapter Lenin comments on various observations and criticisms Friedrich Engels makes of his Party the SPD in Germany in regards to their relation to the State. In a letter to Karl Kautsky he criticizes a Draft of the Efurt Programme which alludes to the peaceful seizure of power ignoring the political question of German absolutism.

Chapter III - With each particular historical event universal lessons reveal themselves, the Paris Commune is no different. The historic lesson learned here was the necessity of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat and the necessity to "smash" the state, and not merely take possession of it. He also begins to see the possibility of unity b/w workers & peasants