Between the “Common” of Auto-Institutionalization and the “Common” of Capital: 100 years of The State and Revolution

Abstract

This article analyses The State and Revolution in order to reveal the presence of a basic tension that also affects other Leninist writings from 1917 on. That tension refers to Lenin’s attempt to articulate two irreconcilable logics: the logic of “auto-institutionalization” or “institutional autonomy” as a political principle of the social revolution, and the logic of the production of the “common” by capital. That tension presents itself in the thought of Lenin in different ways and moments.