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 modern forms of the State, and such a complete transformation (Umwandlung) of their organization as is imagined by Marx and Proudhon, that is, the formation of a "national assembly from delegates of the provincial or district assemblies, which, in their turn, would consist of delegates from the Communes. So that the whole previous mode of national representation would vanish completely." (Bernstein, Fundamentals, pp. 184–136, German edition, 1899.)

It is really monstrous thus to confuse Marx's views on the "destruction of the State as parasite" with the federalism of Proudhon. But this is no accident, for it never occurs to the Opportunist that Marx is not speaking here at all of Federalism as opposed to Centralism, but of destruction of the old capitalist machinery of government which exists in all bourgeois countries.

The Opportunist cannot see further than the "municipalities" which he finds around him in a society of middle-class philistinism and "reformist" stagnation. As for a proletarian revolution, the Opportunist has forgotten even how to imagine it. It is amusing. But it is remarkable that this point of Bernstein's has not been disputed. Bernstein has been refuted often enough especially by Plekhanoff in Russian literature and by Kautsky in European, but neither made any remark upon this perversion of Marx by Bernstein.

The Opportunist has forgotten to such an extent how to think in a revolutionary way and how to reflect on revolution, that he attributes "Federalism" to Marx, mixing him up with the founder of Anarchism, Proudhon; and, although they are anxious to be orthodox Marxists and to defend the teaching of revolutionary Marxism, Kautsky and Plekhanoff are nevertheless silent on this point. Herein lies one of the roots of those banalities and platitudes about the difference between Marxism and Anarchism which are common to both Kautskians and Opportunists. These we shall discuss later.

There is no trace of Federalism in Marx's discussion of the experience of the Commune, quoted above. Marx agrees with Proudhon precisely on that point which has quite escaped the Opportunist Bernstein; while he differs from Proudhon just on the point where Bernstein sees their agreement. Marx concurs with Proudhon in that they both stand for the "demolition" of the contemporary machinery of government. This common ground of Marxism with Anarchism (both with Proudhon and with Bakunin), neither the Opportunists nor the Kautskians wish to see,