End of the first period of Revolution -- Duel between King and Assembly -- King bribes Mirabeau -- He finds tools among middle class -- Enemies of Revolution among all classes -- Period of plots and counter-plots -- The Fête of the Federation -- Meaning of the fête -- Joy of the people With the removal of the King and the Assembly from Versailles to Paris the first period--the heroic period, so to speak, of the Great Revolution--ended. The meeting of the States-General, the Royal Session of June 23, the Oath of the Tennis Court, the taking of the Bastille, the revolt of the cities and villages in July and August, the night of August 4, and finally the march of the women on Versailles and their triumphal return with the King as prisoner; these were the chief stages of the period. Now, when both the "legislative" and the "executive" power--the Assembly and the King--settled at Paris, a period of hidden...
In taking the State and its historic role as the subject for this study, I think I am satisfying a much felt need at the present time: that of examining in depth the very concept of the State, of studying its essence, its past role and the part it may be called upon to play in the future. It is above all over the question of the State that socialists are divided. Two main currents can be discerned in the factions that exist among us which correspond to differences in temperament as well as in ways of thinking, but above all to the extent that one believes in the coming revolution. There are those, on the one hand, who hope to achieve the social revolution through the State by preserving and even extending most of its powers to be used for the revolution. And there are those like ourselves who see the State, both in its present form, in its very essence, and in whatever guise it might appear, an obstacle to the social revolution, the greatest hindrance to t...