Rereading Lenin's State and Revolution

Abstract

State and Revolution has long seemed to be the most puzzling of Lenin's written works. The traditional view among western scholars has regarded State and Revolution as a Utopian fantasy that is completely out of character with the rest of Lenin's thought. The most prominent exponent of that viewpoint is Robert V. Daniels, who, in an influential article published in 1953, asserted that the ideas of State and Revolution were “permeated with an idealistic, almost Utopian spirit“ and who in a later work described State and Revolution as an “argument for Utopian anarchism” and a treatise in “revolutionary utopianism.“ Similar comments have been offered by a number of other authors. Alfred Meyer, though not dealing in detail with State and Revolution in his brilliant review of Lenin's thought, regards the essay as a reflection of the “dream of the ‘commune state'“ expressed in Lenin's statements from early 1917 through the first few months of 1918.