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 full and complete order and system in production. But, however closely much of an ordered plan they may yield, however closely capitalist magnates may estimate in advance the required extent of production on a national and even international scale, and however carefully and systematically they may regulate it, we still remain under Capitalism—Capitalism, it is true, in its latest phase, but still, undoubtedly, Capitalism. The nearness of such Capitalism to Socialism should be, in the mouth of real representatives of the proletariat, an argument for the nearness, ease, feasibility and urgency of the Socialist Revolution, and not at all one for tolerating a repudiation of such a revolution, or the attempts to make Capitalism look attractive, in which the Reformists are habitually engaged.

But to return to the question of the State, Engels makes here three valuable suggestions: in the first place, on the question of a Republic; secondly, on the connection between the problems of nationalities and the form of the State; and thirdly, on local self-government.

With regard to the question of a Republic, Engels made this point the gravamen of his criticism of the draft of the Erfurt program; and when we remember what an important part the Erfurt program has played in the International Social-Democracy, how it became the model for the whole of the Second International, it may, without exaggeration, be said that Engels criticized in this connection the opportunism of the whole Second International. "The political demands of the draft," Engels writes, "are vitiated by a great fault. They do not mention (Engels' italics) what ought certainly to have been said."

And, later on, he makes it clear that the German constitution is but a copy of the reactionary constitution of 1850, that the Reichstag is only, as Wilhelm Liebknecht put it, "the fig-leaf of Absolutism," and that to "wish to make all the means of production public property" on the basis of a constitution which has legalized the existence of petty States and the federation of petty German States, is an "obvious absurdity."

"It is dangerous to touch on this subject," Engels adds, knowing full well that it was impossible for police reasons to include in the program a demand for a Republic in Germany. But Engels does not simply rest content with this obvious consideration which satisfies "everybody." He continues:

"But the matter must, in one way or another, be pressed forward. To what an extent this is essential is shown particularly