Fifteen days ago I started reading "State and Revolution" after discovering it was hella short! Yesterday, I managed to finish it! Today, I'm beginning "What Is to Be Done?" because it is also hella short!

I'll probably go back and read State and Revolution again at some point, just to reinforce its ideas. Here is my takeaways after finishing the book:

Clear definition of the state and its function. This was something I understood but couldn't fully articulate.

"The state is a product and a manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms. 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"

In reality, however, the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy. And at best it is an evil inherited by the proletariat after its victorious struggle for class supremacy, whose worst sides the victorious proletariat will have to lop off as speedily as possible, just as the Commune had to, until a generation reared in new, free social conditions is able to discard the entire lumber of the state.

The state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another. This is such a succinct description by Engels.

Lenin makes it clear that the process involved in his vision of revolution to communism is a long process, one that may even take generations to complete. The process being:

• Capitalism.
• proletarian revolution and smashing of the bourgeois state.
• implementation of the proletarian state and its dictatorship over exploitative forces.
• the socialist period, stamped with the birthmark of capitalist society.
• The withering away of the proletarian state, as state functions become simple "control and administration" operated by "foremen and accountants."
• Communism.

It's amusing to see not much has changed in the political landscape. We still have arguments today about using the current state system to "democratically" transform the state from capitalist to socialist. It's the same opportunism expressed back then. Lots of talk about "democratic republics" and just how compatible they are with capitalism. In his critique of the anarchists of his time, he accuses them of seeking "overnight" abolition of the state and not seeing the need to defend against bourgeois counter-revolution. I know very little about historical anarchism, so I'll have to take his word on that one. These kinds of reads also add more to my reading list. I'm now very interested in reading Marx's analysis of the Paris Commune.

Much of the book was stuff I already "understood," but it was nice to read where these ideas are rooted. The best part of the book for me, though, was Chapter 7. It ends abruptly, and the postscript after reads:

This pamphlet was written in August and September 1917. 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.

It is more pleasant and useful to go through the “experience of revolution” than to write about it.

My immediate thought was, "You did it. You fucking did it." It reads like a kind of walk-off into the sunset.

I look forward to reading the rest of his works. It was a very enjoyable read, even if I was a little lost in the history.