"The multiplicity of interpretations to which the Commune has been subjected, and the multiplicity of interests which construed it in their favor, show that it was a thoroughly expansive political form, while all the previous forms of government had been emphatically repressive. Its true secret was this:
[indented for emphasis] "It was essentially a working class government, the product of the struggle of the producing against the appropriating class, the political form at last discovered under which to work out the economical emancipation of labor.
"Except on this last condition, the Communal Constitution would have been an impossibility and a delusion. The political rule of the producer cannot co-exist with the perpetuation of his social slavery. The Commune was therefore to serve as a lever for uprooting the economical foundation upon which rests the existence of classes, and therefore of class rule. With labor emancipated, every man becomes a working man, and productive labor ceases to be a class attribute."
this combines the workers' state with smashing the pre-existing bourgeois state, no?
On 6/27/05, Richard Harris <rhh1 at clara.co.uk> wrote:
> "The Marxist tradition is that we must first conquer the state and use
> it to defend the revolution ..."
>
> _____________________
>
> As far as I'm aware, Marx only ever referred to smashing the state, never to
> the setting up of a 'workers' state' - see The Civil War in France and
> Critical Notes on the Article "The King of Prussia and Social Reform. By a
> Prussian"
>
> These were written years apart but offer the same account of the state.
>
...
> Am I wrong?
>
> Richard
> Canterbury, Kent.
-- Jim Devine "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.