Chapter Three of State and Revolution is devoted to Lenin’s commentary on Marx’s analysis of the 1871 Paris Commune. It is divided into five parts. This article deals with parts 2 -5 of the chapter:
2. What Is To Replace The Smashed State Machine?
Chapter Three of State and Revolution is devoted to Lenin’s commentary on Marx’s analysis of the 1871 Paris Commune. It is divided into five parts. This article deals with the first part of the chapter:
1. What Made the Communards Attempt Heroic?
In Chapter Two of State and Revolution Lenin discusses the lessons of the European revolutionary movement of 1848-51. There are three sections to this chapter. The first section is entitled:
1. The Eve of the Revolution
Lenin points out that the first “mature” works of the Marxist world view were created on the “eve” of the 1848 upheaval — namely Marx’s 1847 work The Poverty of Philosophy, and Marx and Engel’s joint work The Communist Manifesto. Every educated person has read the latter work but the former may not be so well known.
Lenin discusses these two topics in section four of chapter one of The State and Revolution (1917). This section begins with a long quote from Engels’ 1870’s work Anti-Dühring. The quote begins with “The proletariat seizes state power and turns the means of production into state property to begin with. But thereby it abolishes itself as the proletariat, abolishes all class distinctions and class antagonisms and abolishes the state as state.”
