olutionary period in Russia. Indeed, in the
years 1908 to 1917 Plechanoff showed himself to be half doctrinaire and
half philistine, walking, politically, in the wake of the bourgeoisie.

"We saw how Marx and Engels, in their polemics against the anarchists,
explained most thoroughly their views on the relation of the revolution
to the State. Engels, when editing in 1891, Marx's _Criticism of the
Gotha Program_, wrote that 'we'--that is, Engels and Marx--'were then in
the fiercest phase of our battle with Bakounine and his anarchists;
hardly two years had then passed since the Hague Congress of the
International' (the First). The anarchists had tried to claim the Paris
Commune as their 'own,' as a confirmation of their teachings, thus
showing that they had not in the least understood the lessons of the
Commune or the analysis of those lessons by Marx. Anarchism has given
nothing approaching a true solution of the concrete political problems:
are we to _break_ up the old State machine, and what shall we put in its
place?

"But to speak of _Anarchism and Socialism_, leaving the whole question
of the State out of account and taking no notice at all of the whole
development of Marxism before and after the Commune--that meant an
inevitable fall into the pit of opportunism. For that is just what
opportunism wants--to keep these two questions in abeyance. To secure
this is, in itself, a victory of opportunism."

The anarchist desire to abolish the State at one blow, and to abolish
money, etc., in much the same way, springs from their inability to
understand the institutions of capitalist society. To many of them the
State is simply the result of people having faith in authority. Give up
this belief and the State will cease to exist. It is a myth like God and
rests entirely on faith. The anarchist's desire for the abolition of the
State arises from entirely different concepts to that of the communists.
To these anarchist anti-authoritarians the State is simply bad. It is
the most authoritarian thing in sight. It interferes with individual
freedom and consequently is the greatest obstruction to "absolute
liberty" and other utopian desires of the champions of individualism.

Communists also want a society without a State but realize that such can
only come about when society is without classes. The aim of the
communist movement is to destroy the capitalist form of the State and
substitute a proletarian form during the time in