'The State and Revolution' is a book by Vladimir Lenin describing the role of the state in society, the necessity of proletarian revolution, and the theoretic inadequacies of social democracy in achieving revolution to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. Lenin's direct and simple definition of the State is that “the State is a special organization of force: it is an organization of violence for the suppression of some class.” Hence his denigration even of parliamentary democracy, which was influenced by what Lenin saw as the recent increase of bureaucratic and military influences: «To decide once every few years which member of the ruling class is to repress and crush the people through parliament — this is the real essence of bourgeois parliamentarism, not only in parliamentary-constitutional monarchies, but also in the most democratic republics.”
