Additional Readings on Conclusions
The Peasant War in Germany
The worst thing that can befall a leader of an extreme party is
to be compelled to take over a government in an epoch when the movement
is not yet ripe for the domination of the class which he represents and
for the realisation of the measures which that domination would imply....
Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League
The rule of capital and its rapid accumulation is to be further counteracted, partly by a curtailment of the right of inheritance, and partly by the transference of as much employment as possible to the state. As far as the workers are concerned one thing, above all, is definite: they are to remain wage labourers as before. However, the democratic petty bourgeois want better wages and security for the workers, and hope to achieve this by an extension of state employment and by welfare measures; in short, they hope to bribe the workers with a more or less disguised form of alms and to break their revolutionary strength by temporarily rendering their situation tolerable.
1891 Introduction by Frederick Engels to The Civil War in France
From the outset the Commune was compelled to recognize that the
working class, once come to power, could not manage with the old state
machine; that in order not to lose again its only just conquered supremacy,
this working class must, on the one hand, do away with all the old repressive
machinery previously used against it itself,and, on the other, safeguard
itself against its own deputies and officials, by declaring them all, without
exception, subject to recall at any moment.
Critique of the Gotha Programme
Free state — what is this? It is by no means the aim of the workers, who have got rid of the narrow mentality of humble subjects, to set the state free. In the German Empire, the "state" is almost as "free" as in Russia. Freedom consists in converting the state from an organ superimposed upon society into one completely subordinate to it; and today, too, the forms of state are more free or less free to the extent that they restrict the "freedom of the state".