Hard to know where to begin with a book like this. It's been a long while since I last read it, and a significant amount of academic study and development has taken place in the intervening years. It's also hard to know how one even applies something so pithy as a 'rating' to a book whose importance and influence of such a magnittude. There's little I can contribute which has not been said before, many times, and by far greater readers and thinkers than I. For me, there are two major points which we can take from this book:

The first is that this provides a fascinating and concise clarification of Marx and Engels' conception of the development of Capitalism into Communism and the relationship of the revolutionary proletariat to the state. Lenin convincingly shows, with substantial textual evidence from both the public writings and private correspondence of both Marx and Engels, what it is that Marxism has to say about these developments. The necessity to smash the state, to build upon its rubble a new structure which can ensure the dictatorship of the proletariat on something like the model of the Paris Commune, and that insofar as - over time - the ordinary duties of the state are taken up and enacted by individuals, with socialism eliminating the rule of hte bourgeoisie, the state as such will necessarily wither away.

The other point - or 'question' (or 'problematic?') - which I drew from this is about the kind of society illustrated here. And I don't mean the usual liberal cries of how 'authoritarian' it is, while completely glossing over the far more pervasive authoritarianism of the capitalist state. I'm really thinking about ideas and views I've derived from studying thinkers like Foucault (on power and authority), Deleuze (on the development of the state and the nomadic war-machine), Le Comité invisible, and thinkers within the Frankfurt School. It was prompted, at least in part, by the following passage:

"For when all have learned to administer and really independently administer social production, independently keep accounts and exercise control over the idlers, the gentlefolk, the swindlers and other such 'guardians of the traditions of capitalism', then any escape from this popular accounting and control will inevitably become so incredibly difficult, such a rare exception, and will probably be accompanied by so swift and serious a punishment (for the armed workers are practical people and not sentimental little intellectuals, and they will not scarcely allow anyone to mess around with them) that the necessity to observe the uncomplicated basic rules of all human intercourse will very soon become a habit.

And then the door will be opened wide for the transition from the first phase of communist society towards its higher phase, and simultaneously towards the complete withering away of the state."

Such a society could be summarised in a single sentence: A generalised panopticon. Yes, the state will indeed have withered away (if we adopt Lenin's definition, i.e. a specialised force and bureaucracy), because it will have been installed within every single one of our heads. Who needs a centralised state when each of us can simply perform the role ourselves in a decentralised and collective manner? Far more efficient, far less costly, far better for profits.

Who can read the following lines and not feel their revolutionary fervour reaching a tremendous peak?

"The whole of society will have become a single office and a single factory with equality of labour and equality of pay."

As if the problem was the lack of equal labour and equal pay, and not the very fact that the whole of society has already become nothing more than a single office and a single factory floor! Of course, Lenin does go on to clarify that this is only one step of progress towards further necessary progress - but I cannot see how this is progress at all. It seems still so caught up in the workerist spirit of Capitalism itself to prove any kind of stepping stone towards revolutionary and emancipatory change. It is a text entirely dominated by what we could today called workerism that was so prevalent at the time.

Capitalism's developments since Lenin's writings have not been so radical that Lenin cannot speak to us today - in particular, his critique of social democratic 'opportunists' resonates - but on this problematic he appears outmoded. Capitalism has already reduced society to nothing more than a single office and factory - these contemporary developments have been analysed brilliantly both in [b:Anti-Oedipus|17188217|Anti-Oedipus|Gilles Deleuze|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1394369559l/17188217.SY75.jpg|113899] and in [b:Empire|26694|Empire|Michael Hardt|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388196457l/26694.SY75.jpg|27374] - and it is precisely this remorseless workerism and bureaucratisation which is so oppressive today.

I do not want humanity to be free to work, and to be raised to diligently aspire to nothing more. I want humanity to be free from work and from the oppressive force of both the state and capitalism.

I do not mean this as a total repudiation of Lenin. The man was such a towering intellect it would be unforgivably arrogant of me to claim anything of the sort. And he doesn't simply "give us some useful ideas", he provides us with a powerful outline of what it means to be revolutionary. Perhaps we need to ask if the revolutionary task requires even more today, in a condition where we have seen that bureaucratism was in no way diminished - but in fact extended - across the Soviet Union and the rest of the developed western world.