The ICC has a two part essay on Lenin and their support and disagreement with his ideas: Part 1 Part 2 I have not read What Is to Be Done, The State and Revolution, or any of Lenin's other works and I really should before I engage in any discussion of Lenin's ideas. However, do those of you here who have read his works find these articles to be well sourced and researched? And is it possible, like they propose, to unite Lenin with Left Communism even though he was a fierce critic of Left Communism (see Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder).
State and Revolution was vital in going back over the real position of Marx and Engels on the state and restoring this to the revolutionary movement. Considering that Lenin wrote it while in semi-hiding after the July days it is amazingly well researched! At that point Lenin was clearly on the left of the party. Earlier on during the war, Bukharin and Pannekoek had put forward similar ideas - ie the need for the proletarian revolution to smash the bourgeois state and not take it over - and Lenin had criticised them, but in 1917 he recognised the validity of this position. The fact that he later regressed on many points doesn't alter this.
