The measures adopted by the Commune and emphasized by Marx are particularly noteworthy, ., the abolition of representation allowances, and of all monetary privileges in the case of officials, the reduction of the remuneration of all servants of the state to the level of “.†This shows more clearly than anything else the turn from bourgeois democracy, from the democracy of the oppressors to the democracy of the oppressed classes, from the state as a “special force†for the suppression of a given class to the suppression of the oppressors by the general force of the majority of the people—the workers, and the peasants. And it is precisely on this most striking point, perhaps the most important as far as the problem of the state is concerned, that the teachings of Marx have been most completely forgotten.
Karl Marx