Marx, in the *18th Brumair*, writes that 'The executive power, in contrast to the legislative power, expresses the heteronomy of a nation, in contrast to its autonomy.' (in other words, not self-governing or self-determining)...
M, in the same work, refers twice to 'parliamentary cretinism' by which he means the self-deception of powerless assemblies vis-a-vis the executive...the legislature is 'contested terrain', thus he could call passage of the Ten Hours Bill in England not just a great practical accomplishment, but a victory for the principle of 'political economy of the working class.' (*Inaugural Address to the International Working Men's Association*)
M wanted executive power subjected to as many controls as possible: such authority in the Paris Commune, for example, was delegated to sub-groups of the assembly and subject to immediate recall...he writes, in *The Civil War in France*, that the Commune 'was to be a working, not a parliamentary body, executive and legislative at the same time.'...
rightly or wrongly, M opposed separation of powers...he refers, in *Crisis and Counter-Revolution*, to the 'worm-eaten theory of division of powers'...moreover, he calls the theory 'old constitutional folly' in *The Constitution of the French Republic* and goes on to say that the 'condition of a free government is not the division, but the unity of power.'
Michael Hoover