In describing this book, when he wrote it in 1917, V. I. Lenin said, "We first of all survey the teachings of Marx and Engels on the state, dwelling with particular fullness on those aspects of their teachings which have been forgotten or opportunistically distorted. We then analyze specially the chief representative of these distorters, Karl Kautsky, the best known leader of the Second International (1889-1914), who has suffered such a pitiful political bankruptcy during the present war. Finally, we sum up, in the main, the experiences of the Russian Revolution of 1905 and particularly that of 1917. The revolution is evidently completing at the present time (beginning of August, 1917) the first stage of its development; but, generally speaking, this revolution can be understood in its totality only as a link in the chain of Socialist proletarian revolutions called forth by the imperialist war. The question of the relation of a proletarian Socialist revolution to the state acquires, therefore, not only a practical political importance, but the importance of an urgent problem of the day, the problem of elucidating to the masses what they will have to do for their liberation from the yoke of capitalism in the very near future."
