The State and Revolution
by V.I. Lenin
Written in the summer of 1917, in the heat of the Russian Revolution, Lenin’s State and Revolution is a key work of Marxism. Here, Lenin explains that, stripped of all non-essentials, the state is in the final analysis “groups of armed men”: the army and the police, in defence of the ruling class. An understanding of the nature of the state is a necessary weapon in the hands of the working class.