The State and Revolution (1917), by Vladimir Lenin, describes 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 organisation of force: it is an organisation of violence for the suppression of some class." Lenin declared that the task of the Revolution was to smash the State.

This work is considered to be Lenin's most important contribution to political theory and has been called his greatest work on the state.