[BEST OF] State and Revolution: Marx, Lenin, & the Dictatorship of the Proletariat

Rev Left Radio

Breht O'Shea

Philosophy, Society & Culture, News, Politics

4.8 • 3.6K Ratings

🗓️ 12 May 2025

⏱️ 99 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

ORIGINALLY RELEASED Oct 11, 2018

In this episode, Alyson joins Breht to do a dive deep into Vladimir Lenin's State and Revolution, one of the most important texts in Marxist political theory. We break down Lenin's core arguments about the state as an instrument of class rule, the necessity of smashing the bourgeois state rather than reforming it, and the vision of a transitional workers' state on the path to communism. We also discuss the historical context of 1917, how Lenin draws from Marx and Engels, and why this work remains essential for understanding the nature of power, revolution, and socialist strategy today. This episode offers an accessible yet rigorous guide to one of Lenin's most influential works.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You have the emergence in human society of this thing that's called the state.
0:06.0	What is the state?
0:08.0	The state is this organized bureaucracy.
0:11.0	It is the police department.
0:14.0	It is the army, the Navy.
0:16.0	It is the prison system, the courts, and what have you.
0:19.0	This is a state. It is a repressive organization.
0:24.3	Hello everybody and welcome back to Revolutionary Left Radio.
0:27.9	I'm your host, Ann Comrade Red O'Shea, and today we have on Allison Escalante from our previous gender abolition, Michelle Foucault, and Marxism-Leninism episode to tackle state and revolution,
0:38.9	the monumental work of political theory written by Lenin in 1917 right before the October
0:45.2	Revolution. This is an incredibly important text and I think a good, interesting, formative
0:51.0	conversation between Allison and I on the topic. We also take it and apply it to
0:56.1	today and how this book is relevant for us today, et cetera. So I really think people will enjoy this
1:00.9	conversation. I had a hell of a time researching it and actually recording it. Allison is a friend of
1:06.1	mine, a really principled comrade, and so it's always fun to have these discussions with her and sort of
1:11.7	work through these ideas. So yeah, I hope you really enjoy it. Before we go into the episode, though,
1:16.3	I do want to mention the fact that Rev Left Radio is looking for a new logo. I think it's kind of time to
1:22.0	move on a little bit. The logo we had was sort of thrown together last minute in the early days of
1:27.3	the show and while it's
1:28.2	served as well, I'm kind of interested to see what other logos we can run with. If anybody creates
1:34.1	a logo for Rev Left submits it to us and we accept it, we put it up, we will pay you some money,
1:40.9	we will link to anything you want us to link to, whether that's your art or, Twitter page or whatever. We'll link to it in all the show notes. So every episode we release, we'll have whatever link you prefer, embedded in the show notes and giving you credit for creating the logo and then anything else you want to work out. Maybe we can figure something else out as well to sweeten the pot a little bit. So yeah, if you have any submissions for a new RevLeft logo and you want to kind of win this
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