The subtitle of the book is "The Teaching of Marxism on the State and the Tasks of the Proletariat in the Revolution." In this work, Lenin develops the Marxist theory of the state. The book was written during the period of preparation for the October Revolution, when the issue of the state and the relationship of the proletariat to it had particular significance, both theoretically and immediately practically, politically.

In the first chapter, it is stated that the central position of Marxism on the state is that it is a product and expression of the irreconcilability of class contradictions, an instrument of class domination. In the second chapter, Lenin documents the necessity not only to conquer the state apparatus of the bourgeoisie but to smash it, adding that a Marxist is not someone who merely talks about class struggle but someone who recognizes that this struggle inevitably leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat. In the third and fourth chapters, Lenin analyzes the valuable experience from the Paris Commune of 1871. He examines key elements of workers' power during those two and a half months and characterizes the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat as a necessary condition for the construction of socialism. In the fifth chapter, Lenin analyzes the economic foundations of the withering away of the state and refers to the two stages of communist society.

The State and Revolution is a fundamental work of scientific communism. It captures the laws for the transition to the new socio-economic formation, the communist one, distinguishing also its lower stage, socialism. The revision of these laws marked the opportunism of the old social democracy as well as the new one (the "New Left"). The lack of deep awareness and therefore revolutionary politics based on the laws of revolution cost the communist movement opportunistic unpreparedness in facing the counter-revolution.