...negation of existent political institutions. A new political form was necessary because "the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes" (CWF, 206). It appears at first that Marx sees the positive "working" existence of the Commune as a...

...Revolution to make way for a new political structure more adequate to that society, "the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes" (Marx 1871). From this perspective, we can certainly assert that the absolutist monarchy, the postrevolutionary...

...observation, originally enunciated by Marx in relation to the Paris Commune - that the working class could not 'simply lay hold of the ready-made State machinery, and wield it for its own purposes' - was elevated to ex-cathedra status by Lenin and decreed to mark the frontier between socialism and...

...Ever since Marx, it has been a central argument of revolutionary socialism that 'the working class cannot simply lay hold of the readymade state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes'.1* The existing state machinery — of parliamentary as well as of dictatorial regimes —...

...details become antiquated. One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz., that 'the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery,...own purposes.' (See The Civil War in France: Address by the General Council of the International Workingmen' s Association, 1871, where this point is further...

...passage from The Civil War in France, which begins with that Leninist favorite: "The working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes" (Marx 1974, 206). 37 This is so, Marx explains, because the centralized state power inherited by the...

...had to destroy and replace the structures and institutions of the bourgeois state: "The working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made State machinery, and wield it for its own purposes."119 This perception had wide ramifications for future socialist governments and was clearly...

...appealing expressly to the Address of the General Council and declaring that the workers could not simply lay hold of the ready-made State machinery and wield it for their own purposes. At a later date, and after the death of Marx, Engels was compelled to engage in...

...could progress any further: "One thing especially was proved by the Commune... that the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes." Repression of the Communards This republican, anticlerical and popular rebellion struck fear in both...

...France contains the important statement explaining the failure of the Commune that 'the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes' (Marx 1974a: 206). This indicates that although sections of the capitalist class may seek to use the...