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 that the 'working class cannot simply seize the available ready machinery of the State, and set it going for its own ends.'"

The words within the second inverted commas of this passage are borrowed by its authors from Marx's book on The Civil War in France. One fundamental and principal lesson of the Paris Commune, therefore, was considered by Marx and Engels to be of such enormous importance that they introduced it as a vital correction into the Communist Manifesto.

It is most characteristic that it is precisely this correction which has been distorted by the Opportunists, and its meaning probably is not clear to nine-tenths, if not ninety-nine hundredths, of the readers of the Communist Manifesto. We shall deal with it more fully further on, in a chapter devoted specially to distortions. It will be sufficient here to remark that the current, vulgar interpretation" of the famous formula of Marx here adduced consists in that Marx it is said, is here emphasizing the idea of gradual development in contradiction to a sudden seizure of power, and so on.

As a matter of fact, exactly the reverse is the case. What Marx says is that the working class must break up, shatter the "available ready machinery of the State," and not confine itself merely to taking possession of it.

On April 12, 1871—that is, just at the time of the Commune, Marx wrote to Kugelmann:

"If you look at the last chapter of my Eighteenth Brumaire, you will see that I declare the next attempt of the French Revolution to be not merely to hand over, from one set of hands to another, the bureaucratic and military machine—as has occurred hitherto—but to shatter it (Marx's italics—the original zerbrechen); and it is this that is the preliminary condition of any real people's revolution on the Continent. It is exactly this that constitutes the attempt of our heroic Parisian comrades." (Neue Zeit, xxi., 1901–2, p. 709.)

In these words, "to shatter the bureaucratic and military machinery of the State" is to be found, tersely expressed, the principal teaching of Marxism on the problems concerning the State facing the proletariat in a revolution. And it is just this teaching which has not only been forgotten, but has also been completely distorted by the prevailing Kautskian "interpretation" of Marxism!

As for Marx's reference to the Eighteenth Brumaire we have quoted the corresponding passage in full above.

It is interesting particularly to note two points in the passage