Synopsis
A polemic against centralized state socialism, warning that even a workers' state becomes a new despotism over the people it claims to free.
Core passage idea
Paraphrase · Public domainA state run in the name of the people will still be a state, and any state inevitably rules the masses through a privileged minority.
It foresees that seizing state power, rather than abolishing it, recreates domination under new revolutionary masters.
To avoid a bubble
Pair with Karl Marx, The Civil War in France.
Reading note
Read it as a partisan argument inside the First International, attentive to its quarrel with Marxist strategy.
Best paired with
Karl Marx, The Civil War in France