"Lenin" was the revolutionary name that the man born "V. I. Ulyanov" adopted.
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Lenin wrote this, or at least the notes for it, in August & September, 1917, when he was in hiding from the Provisional (Kerensky; Social-Democratic) Government.
His fundamental claim is that a dictatorship of (and of course on behalf of) the proletariat was necessary after the overthrow of capitalism in order to lead into communism. Once the proletariat were forced to adhere to the new institutional arrangements, they could see the latter's virtues for themselves and behave accordingly afterwards without any need for coercion. Lenin also clarified the meaning of the catch-phrase, "the withering away of the state". He emphasizes that it doesn't mean the withering away of the bourgeois state, that is, the already-existing oppressive state set up to maintain the bourgeoisie. That state will have to be sharply ended by a proletarian revolution. ("The replacement of the bourgeois by the proletarian state is impossible without a violent revolution.") What replaces this oppressive state — in Lenin's terms, the dictatorship of the proletariat — is what will wither away.
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