Bruno Leipold et al.: Marx's Social Republic: Radical Republicanism and the Socialist Political System
Marx spoke in high praise of the Paris Commune’s "storming heaven" and was convinced that "a new point of departure of world-historical importance has gained at last." However, Marx’s excitement stemmed not from the Commune’s moderate social policies, but from its popular democratic practices. These practices prompted Marx to rethink what kind of political institutions are required to realize and sustain socialism. As he stated, the Commune was "the political form at last discovered under which to work out the economical emancipation of labor." This article will argue that this political form was inherited from the republican tradition—influenced particularly by its radical and most democratic elements—and will provide a concrete interpretation across three dimensions. First, Marx advocated replacing representative government with a system of popular delegation, in which delegates are constrained by imperative mandates [1], the right of recall, and short terms of office. Second, he emphasized the supremacy of the legislature over the executive while criticizing the separation of powers. Third, he championed popular control over the state's administrative and repressive apparatuses.
The fundamental reason Marx insisted on these democratic political institutions lay in his firm conviction in the capacity of the masses for self-rule and self-management. Marx believed the Commune revealed that "plain working men" were capable of governing "modestly, conscientiously, and efficiently," thereby shattering the false claim that "governing privileges" should be reserved for the "ten thousand upper ten" [2] among the wealthy elite (their so-called "natural superiors"). He also regarded the following view as a "delusion": "the idea that administration and political governing were mysteries, transcendent functions only to be trusted to the hands of a trained caste." That is to say, Marx believed ordinary citizens possessed greater political decision-making and administrative capacities than a select elite. This belief aligns him with the radical republicans, distinguishing him from those strands of the republican tradition more inclined toward aristocracy and oligarchy.
Marx repeatedly referred to this polity encompassing democratic political institutions as the Social Republic. He believed the Commune had demonstrated that "in France, and in Europe, the Republic is only possible as a 'Social Republic'; that it must dispossess the capitalist and landowner class of the State machinery to substitute it by the Commune; that it openly avows 'Social Emancipation' as the great goal of the Republic and therefore guarantees that social transformation by the Communal organization." The term "Social Republic" became famous among radicals during the 1848 Revolution as part of the popular slogan "Democratic and Social Republic." This was the battle cry of socialists and republicans at the time, used to fight for a republic that would implement both universal male suffrage and measures addressing social problems beyond mere political reform. In Marx’s analysis, the Social Republic (along with related terms like the "Red Republic" and "Republic of Labor") was the form of the republic pursued by the working class, as distinguished from the "bourgeois republic."
The discussion of the Social Republic in this article is primarily based on Marx’s The Civil War in France and its two long drafts. Marx wrote this work to defend the Paris Commune against international vilification and to propagate his unique interpretation of the event. Based on Marx’s discussion of the Commune’s institutional features, we can sketch the general outlines of his ideal socialist political system. This discussion is merely a fragmented depiction of a socio-political system; it is certainly not a blueprint from which the basic institutions of a socialist polity can be directly extracted. However, there is much in his discourse on the Social Republic that is illuminating and thought-provoking, and both republicans and socialists can find valuable elements therein for reflecting on how political institutions ought to be constructed.
I. Popular Delegation and Representative Government
When the revolution of the Paris Commune broke out, power in Paris fell first into the hands of the Central Committee of the National Guard, an autonomous democratic body. Marx described with great passion the system the Central Committee used to elect its members, claiming that "never were elections more sifted, never delegates more fully representing the masses from which they had sprung," and he further praised the elective mechanism of the Commune Council. Marx believed these measures—including imperative mandates, the recall of delegates, and short terms of office—transformed an unaccountable system (in which representatives rule over the people) into one where delegates are subject to the supervision and control of the people.
The institutional mechanisms Marx accepted for constraining delegates conflict with one of the core principles of representative government. As Bernard Manin points out in his authoritative treatise on the subject, that core principle dictates that representatives are, to some extent, independent of the will of the people who elect them. Meanwhile, Manin notes that representatives are not entirely independent of voters, as they face pressure from citizens during their term and the possibility of failing to achieve re-election afterward. This means representatives have an incentive to act according to voter preferences, but the law does not require them to do so, thus granting them a degree of discretionary power. Manin outlines several constitutional mechanisms that could reduce this degree of discretion, focusing specifically on imperative mandates and the right of recall. Imperative mandates require delegates to obey the will of the voters, while the right of recall allows voters to sanction delegates immediately rather than waiting for the end of their term. Both measures limit the delegate's discretionary power, but "none of the representative governments established since the end of the 18th century has allowed imperative mandates... nor has any long practiced a system of permanent recall."
However, from the French Revolution to the revolution of the Paris Commune, there existed a long-standing tradition of radical republicanism that challenged this eventually triumphant, almost unconstrained model of representation. In various moments of republican constitutionalism, we find the more radical elements of this tradition expressing an alternative understanding of representation, viewing delegates merely as agents who are largely accountable. As early as 1774, Jean-Paul Marat, one of the key radicals of the French Revolution, suggested to the English people that their representatives should always act according to the people's instructions; otherwise, "what are our representatives but our masters?" These more radical views of representation re-emerged in the Commune Council, where members used the imperative mandates given to them by voters to justify their votes. Even after the failure of the Paris Commune, radical republicans launched an unsuccessful campaign to incorporate imperative mandates into the constitution of the Third Republic.
Marx inherited this tradition of radical constitutionalism. His influence from this tradition is evident in his defense of the Commune Council, in which he favored imperative mandates, the right of recall, and short terms of office. The Commune Council was praised because its members were "chosen by universal suffrage in the various wards of the town, responsible and revocable at short terms." Furthermore, the Commune Council proposed that local and regional communes send delegates to a national body, in which "every delegate [was] at any time revocable and bound by the mandat impératif (formal instructions) of his constituents." Marx also expressed aversion toward those representatives who "decide once in three or six years... which member of the ruling class was to misrepresent the people in Parliament," while voters could only replace them in elections every few years. The preference for short terms was also reflected in Marx’s 1852 article on the Chartists [3], where he explicitly supported their demand for annual general elections, noting this was one of the "conditions without which Universal Suffrage would be a mere phantasm for the working class."
Marx did not devote much space to elaborating specifically on how these elective mechanisms ensure a greater degree of democratic accountability, but he did make an interesting analogy—comparing the voters' selection of delegates to an employer's hiring of workers. He commented: "Universal suffrage... was to serve the people, constituted in Commes, as individual suffrage serves every other employer in the search for the workmen and managers in his business. And it is well-known that companies, like individuals, in matters of real business generally know how to put the right man in the right place, and, if they for once make a mistake, to redress it promptly." This ironic point intended to illustrate that just as an employer can fire an employee at will, the people should be able to recall their delegates at will. The implication of this analogy is that just as workers are currently subject to the will of their employers, delegates will be subject to the will of the voters. If a delegate deviates from the voters' preferences, the voters can correct the error by immediately recalling the delegate, rather than having to wait until the end of the term to vote them out. Thus, it can be expected that delegates will adjust their behavior to align with these preferences to ensure they are not recalled.
The accountability mechanisms endorsed by Marx meant transforming representative government into a system of popular delegation. Representative government understands the system of representation as the people ceding decision-making power to representatives, while the role of the people is weakened to deciding at the next election whether to renew or terminate the mandate. Between two elections, representatives possess a great degree of discretionary power in exercising their mandate without the formal participation of the people. In popular delegation, the system of representation is understood as a commission under which the delegate carries out the will of the voters. The people retain the power to intervene in the delegate's decision-making at all times by giving them formal instructions or recalling them. Marx believed that through popular delegation, universal suffrage—which was originally a tool for choosing between elite representatives—was now transformed into a tool for the people to firmly grasp political power. This point is vividly reflected in the first draft of The Civil War in France, where Marx wrote: "Universal suffrage, till now abused either for the parliamentary sanction of the Holy State Power, or a plaything in the hands of the ruling classes, only employed by the people to choose the instruments of parliamentary class rule once in many years, is now applied to its real purpose: to choose by the Communes their own functionaries of administration and initiation."
Some of Marx’s early political writings, especially his Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, already prefigured his critique of representative government in his discussion of the Paris Commune. Hegel had rejected "commissioned or authorized agents" because he believed representatives possessed a "better understanding" of the public interest than the voters. Marx countered that unconstrained representatives were "actually representatives of particular interests." Without the formal constraint of imperative mandates, representatives cease to be representatives of the people: "The deputies are formally commissioned, but once they are actually commissioned, they are no longer commissioners. They are supposed to be deputies, and they are not." Marx further refuted the reduction of political participation by representative government, arguing it reduced participation to a "single and temporary" event, an act of "febrile impulse."
As some commentators have noted, Marx’s criticism of reducing popular participation to merely choosing who leads them every few years, along with his support for an alternative system of popular delegation, bears a striking resemblance to Rousseau. In The Social Contract, Rousseau famously asserted that representative government is equivalent to slavery, and that the people are only free during the brief moment of election. He argued that the British people "thinks it is free; it is greatly mistaken; it is free only during the election of members of parliament; as soon as they are elected, it is enslaved; it is nothing." Rousseau’s critique of representation often prompts an interpretation that he believed freedom could only be realized in small city-states where every citizen could participate directly and representatives were unnecessary. But in Considerations on the Government of Poland, Rousseau suggested that freedom could actually be reconciled with large modern states. He argued that the inevitable corruption of legislators in a representative system could be avoided through two mechanisms: holding frequent elections and requiring legislators to "strictly follow their instructions." Rousseau believed that without these precautions, the legislature would become an instrument of servitude.
Therefore, both Marx and Rousseau were committed to imperative mandates and frequent elections as constitutional mechanisms to make delegates accountable to the people who elect them. Their similarity on this issue is not surprising, as in the same summer the young Marx wrote his critique of Hegel, he read and took notes on Rousseau’s The Social Contract. Both Marx and Rousseau appealed to popular delegation as a way to realize democracy and popular sovereignty in large modern polities, without resorting to what has today already been identified with—
This form of nearly unrestrained representative government is entirely equated with "democracy." In contrast, defenders of representative government tend to view their preferred polity as the only alternative to Athenian direct democracy; because they insist we cannot return to those small city-states, representative government wins out by default. The advocacy for popular representation by Marx and Rousseau demonstrates that representative democracy and Athenian direct democracy do not exhaust the possible ways of achieving democracy in a modern state.
II. Legislative Supremacy and the Separation of Powers
Marx praised the Paris Commune for merging executive and legislative powers into one body, stating it had become a "working, not a parliamentary body, executive and legislative at the same time." The Commune Council achieved this by retaining executive decision-making power for its own members. The Commune established ten commissions (covering common ministerial departments such as war, finance, justice, and education), each composed of five to eight councilors, with a chairperson elected by the members. Consequently, there was no president or cabinet minister independent of the legislature; executive functions were directed and controlled by the legislative body.
Marx’s praise for this feature of the communal constitution was consistent with his long-standing suspicion of the executive branch. In analyzing the French Constitution of 1848, Marx severely criticized it for granting excessive power to the executive through the presidency at the expense of legislative power. He believed this constitution merely replaced "hereditary royalty" with "elected royalty," investing the president with "all the attributes of royal power," including the right to pardon criminals, dissolve local and municipal councils, conclude foreign treaties, and, most fatally, the power to appoint and dismiss ministers without consulting the National Assembly. Marx maintained that the president's power was further strengthened by its personal nature; while the National Assembly represented the "manifold aspects of the national spirit, the President is the incarnation of the national spirit." Marx thus concluded that the constitution created "two heads... the Legislative Assembly on the one hand, and the President on the other." The constitutional office of the presidency allowed ambitious individuals to accumulate sufficient power to overthrow the legislature and impose their own despotic rule, as Louis Bonaparte successfully did in the coup d'état of 1851 [4].
Marx’s analysis of the French Constitution of 1848 shares several commonalities with that of the radical republican Félix Pyat. Pyat was a journalist, playwright, and member of the National Assembly of the French Second Republic, later becoming a member of the Commune Council. During the 1848 constitutional debates, he took the rostrum to denounce the proposed presidency, arguing that the president would be an "elected king" more dangerous than the "hereditary king" he replaced. Pyat presciently warned that the constitution would create a dangerous rivalry between "two heads," with the president possessing many advantages: "concentrating, centralizing, absorbing all power; representing the people, being the incarnation of the people." To avoid this outcome, he urged that "the legislative power must... completely dominate the executive power."
Marx and Pyat both supported the supremacy of the legislature over the executive, placing them within the tradition of radical constitutional thought that traces back to the National Convention period of the French Revolution and the Jacobin Constitution of 1793. In this tradition, sometimes called "parliamentary government" [5], "the legislative assembly elected by the people possesses undisputed supreme power over all other state institutions," and "the executive is strictly subordinate to the parliament, acting as its servant or agent, and can be dismissed by the parliament at will." Marx’s preference for this constitutional form stemmed from his belief that the executive branch tends to form an alienated and irresponsible will, which, in revolutionary situations, means it plays a reactionary role relative to the legislature. In evaluating the 1848 Revolution, Marx suggested: "In contrast to the legislative power, the executive power expresses the heteronomy of the nation rather than its autonomy..." Likewise, in his analysis of the French Revolution of 1789, he noted: "The legislative power completed the French Revolution. In those places where the legislative power appeared as the ruling factor in its specificity, it completed the great, fundamental, universal revolution... Precisely because the legislative power represents the people, represents the species-will, it struggles not against the state system in general, but against a specific, stale state system. The executive power, on the contrary, completes minor revolutions, retrograde revolutions, and reactionary changes. Precisely because the executive power represents a specific will, subjective caprice, the magical part of the will, it carries out revolutions not for a new constitution against the old, but against the constitution itself."
Parliamentary government differs from polities that practice a strict separation of powers, a constitutional doctrine Marx strongly criticized. Analyzing Article 19 of the 1848 French Constitution (which stated "the separation of powers is the first principle of a free government"), Marx noted: "Here we see the absurdity of the old constitution. The condition of a 'free government' is not the separation of powers, but the unity of power. The machinery of government cannot be too simple. It is always the craft of knaves to make it complicated and mysterious." Taken in isolation, this passage might carry a worrying authoritarian tone. However, if we place it within the context of Marx’s broader constitutional thought and the popular republican constitutionalism we have discussed thus far, it is clear that his objection to the separation of powers lay in how this practice wrongly concentrated power in the executive at the expense of the legislative branch. This, in turn, stemmed from the concern we have already observed: that executive power has an independent tendency to escape popular control. Indeed, this critique of the separation of powers is exactly why its original defenders praised the doctrine. Although the separation of powers is now seen as a cornerstone of democratic polities, its original advocates explicitly proposed it to limit democratic influence on the constitution.
Marx’s aforementioned remarks on the separation of powers must be understood in contemporary context. Marx's phrasing was likely inspired by an article by his friend Ernest Jones, a socialist republican and Chartist [6]. Articles by Jones and Marx were published in May and June 1851, respectively, in Jones’s weekly, Notes to the People. Jones’s article explored the history of Renaissance Florence, including its constitutional structure, and offered a view strikingly similar to Marx’s: "They [the Florentines] sought safety in a complex machinery of government, in a complicated system of 'checks and balances'; yet the fact is, the simpler a government is, the better. If a government is good, the fewer checks to its operation the better; if it is bad, the more complex its machinery, the greater the difficulty in removing or amending it." Both Marx and Jones believed that simpler government is better and criticized constitutions that make the "government machinery complicated." Marx’s critique targeted the separation of powers, while Jones’s targeted the distinct but closely related system of checks and balances (Marx seemed not to distinguish between the two doctrines). Both preferred simple government, contrasting with the judgment of Alexis de Tocqueville at the time. Tocqueville defended the bicameral legislature in the 1848 Constitution because he preferred a "somewhat complex system of checks and balances" over "simpler theories that grant indivisible power to a homogeneous authority... setting no obstacles to action."
A similar divergence existed between radical and moderate republicans in the American constitutional debates. In response to the complex system of checks and balances proposed by the Federalists, the Anti-Federalists advocated for a simple constitution that everyone could easily understand; they suspected that the system of checks and balances would limit democratic accountability. Indeed, the Federalists specifically designed these checks to delay the expression of popular will through the legislature. They believed the greatest danger for representative government was that "the legislature would acquire the defects of a popular assembly," and thus power must not only be dispersed across different branches, but these branches must also possess the power to intervene in the legislative process. Consequently, the presidential veto, judicial review by the Supreme Court, and the aristocratic-style Senate's check were all incorporated into the Constitution to limit the power of the branch perceived as the more democratic element of the Constitution—the House of Representatives. Alexander Hamilton boasted that the system was "so complex, and so nicely devised, that an unwise or wicked measure will find it almost impossible to pass through the scrutiny."
Anti-Federalists rejected aristocratic, counter-majoritarian checks on the legislature; instead, they favored a transparent constitution with clear boundaries where the legislature was superior to other bodies (similar to Marx’s view), because they believed it "represents the people better than the President (due to its diversity) and is more accountable to the people than judges." Marx’s view that "it is always the craft of knaves to make the machinery of government complicated and mysterious" can be seen as an echo of this older radical constitutionalism.
III. Popular Control over State Institutions
In The Civil War in France, Marx condemned the existing state as a professionalized, hierarchical, and centralized institution that had escaped the control of citizens. Due to these characteristics, Marx believed the existing state was unsuitable as a tool for a working-class revolution. This book contains perhaps one of his most-quoted remarks: "The working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes." In the second draft of the book, this sentence was followed by an equally significant expression: "The political instrument of their enslavement cannot serve as the political instrument of their emancipation." Therefore, simply taking over the existing state machinery and directing it toward socialism is unfeasible; the working class must transform it into a new type of polity that no longer possesses the offensive traits of the existing state. Marx identified five main institutions of the existing state: "the standing army, police, bureaucracy, clergy, and judicature." He discussed in varying detail how these state institutions should be transformed. For the sake of space, and to focus on where Marx’s inheritance of radical republicanism is most interestingly manifested, this article will only discuss Marx’s thoughts on the transformation of the first two institutions.
Marx believed the standing army should be transformed into a citizen militia. He praised the Paris Commune because its first decree was the "abolition of the standing army, and the substitution for it of the armed people." The Paris Commune was possible primarily thanks to the National Guard, the citizen militia of Paris; it was precisely because the working class was armed and organized in a militia that it could resist the army of the Versailles government and establish its own administrative organs. The National Guard was indeed a unique institution that played a central role in the establishment and survival of the Commune. Although it was traditionally a bourgeois citizen militia, its ranks were increasingly composed of the working class.
Marx identified four advantages of a citizen militia over a standing army. First, a citizen militia is cheaper. Marx stated that the abolition of the standing army abolished "this source of taxes and state debts," which is "the first economic condition for all social progress." Second, a citizen militia forms a better army. Marx considered the National Guard the "safest guarantee against foreign aggression" and suggested that if the Commune had been established at the start of the Franco-Prussian War, it could have "wrested the cause of national defense from the hands of traitors and given it passion," turning the struggle into a true war of "republican France." Third, a citizen militia improves the character of the soldiers. Marx believed that professional soldiers had developed "inveterate habits" (such as shooting prisoners without trial) under "the training of the enemies of the working class," and these habits would eventually be corrected when they joined the ranks of workers in the citizen militia. Fourth, and most importantly, a citizen militia is less likely to side with reactionary forces against popular movements. Marx denounced the standing army as a standing danger of "class rule... usurping government power." He viewed the standing army as an inexhaustible source of potential reaction, providing the means for a ruling class or a leader with Caesarist ambitions to end revolutionary upheaval. Marx believed that a citizen militia was unlikely to be used in such a manner because it was more closely tied to the people. In short, the standing army "protects the government against the people," while the citizen militia is "the people armed against government usurpation."
In this defense of a citizen militia proposed by Marx, we see traces of the republican tradition of the citizen-soldier. From Machiavelli to Rousseau, warnings were issued regarding the danger that professional soldiers (whether mercenaries or standing armies) posed to the existence of a republic, arguing that professional armies are alienated from the people and can thus be used by elites to suppress them. They emphasized that arming the people enables them to engage in self-defense, thereby securing their domestic liberty against such threats while simultaneously serving as a bulwark against foreign domination. Rousseau argued that a standing army "is good for only two purposes: to attack and conquer neighbors, or to chain and enslave citizens," proposing instead that "every citizen should be a soldier by duty, and none by profession." He noted that a citizen militia "costs the republic very little" and fights better than professional armies (because "one always does better what one does for oneself") [7], while avoiding the harassment of local populations common among professional soldiers. Marx’s arguments in support of a citizen militia are very similar to these positions. He focused on ensuring that the armed forces do not become alienated from society, defending the National Guard as the "surest guarantee against foreign aggression" and criticizing those generals who failed to properly deploy the National Guard against the Prussian army.
Marx’s discussion of the citizen militia in The Civil War in France primarily focuses on its role in defending the revolution against reactionary forces, rather than the connection between military service and the development of the virtues necessary for citizenship (a link frequently established in republicanism). This connection was reflected in an earlier article by Marx discussing the Prussian government's attempt in 1848 to establish a compromised citizen militia system. Marx condemned a regulation by the Prussian government stating that citizens in service "should neither consider nor talk about, nor discuss or make decisions upon, public affairs," and must "renounce their basic political rights." He argued that this would cultivate citizens who reflect the "passive, will-less, and impersonal obedience of the soldier."
We turn next to the second state apparatus—the bureaucracy. Marx believed the most important change to the bureaucracy was that public officials should be elected and subject to recall. A recurring expression in The Civil War in France and its drafts is that "public servants... were to be elective, responsible, and revocable." Marx thereby transferred the system of accountability he applied to representation to the entire field of public administration. While Marx was not entirely clear on exactly how many public administrative positions would be filled through election, some of his remarks undoubtedly indicate that it would be applied very extensively. For instance, he stated that elections applied to "all other public servants" and noted: "The Commune would have delivered the peasant of the blood tax, would have given him a cheap government, would have transformed his present blood-suckers, the notary, advocate, executor, and other judicial vampires, into salaried communal agents, elected by, and responsible to, himself." The result of an elected bureaucracy was a de-professionalization of public administration on a considerable scale, and this de-professionalization had far-reaching implications. Marx believed that public officials would no longer be a "trained caste" and that the "swarms of state parasites would be removed." Marx further pointed out that the result of making public officials revocable was that we could truly hold the bureaucracy accountable. These ideas of Marx likely originated from the "Declaration to the French People" issued by the Paris Commune on April 19, 1871.
The financial manifestation of the de-professionalization of the bureaucracy was what Marx described as: "From the members of the Commune downwards, the public service had to be done at workmen’s wages." In the context of the pay structure of the 19th-century French bureaucracy, this was a particularly radical requirement. Limiting wages to the level of workers was a vital link in the process of ensuring that "all the privileges and allowances of the high dignitaries of state disappeared along with the high dignitaries themselves."
Marx stipulated that all public offices be elective and revocable, and that the wages of all public officials should be equivalent to those of workers. In Marx’s conception of the social republic, public functions are no longer reserved for a "trained caste" but are performed by the people as a whole. This de-professionalization of the state's administrative and repressive functions is a seldom-noticed element of Marx’s political views. This vision stands in sharp contrast to the massive expansion of the state and its professional personnel since Marx proposed this view; it is effectively more similar to the model of ancient democratic Athens, which adopted the principle of rotation—where citizens not only had the right to choose their rulers but also took turns ruling and being ruled. This ideal once inspired the young Marx, who wrote admiringly that "as in Greece, the respublica was the real private affair of the citizens" [8], believing that these ancient republics achieved a commendable substantive unity between the people and the state. Similarly, Marx praised the Commune for achieving "the reabsorption of the state power by society as its own living forces instead of as forces controlling and subduing it." Thus, Marx's comments on the Commune are, to some extent, a return to the classical republican ideas of his youth.
IV. Conclusion
This article has illustrated from three perspectives how Marx's conception of a socialist political system inherited radical elements of the republican tradition: his support for replacing representative systems with popular delegation; his preference for legislative supremacy and criticism of the separation of powers; and his belief that the state’s administrative and repressive apparatuses must be transformed by placing them under popular control. These three dimensions are the core elements of Marx’s thought on the social republic.
Although Marx did not engage in an in-depth and detailed discussion of these political institutions, his discourse on the social republic provides socialists and republicans with a provocative system of thought to draw upon. One of these is that socialism requires a unique set of political structures—this is perhaps the most important insight Marx proposed when discussing the Paris Commune. Marx believed that the people of Paris "took the real management of their revolution into their own hands and found at the same time the means to hold it in the hands of the people themselves, should they prove successful, by replacing the state machinery of the ruling classes with their own governmental machinery." Therefore, the Commune not only demonstrated how the people should "take the revolution into their own hands" but also showed the "means to hold it in the hands of the people themselves"—namely, by forging "their own governmental machinery." Using the existing "state machinery, the governmental machinery of the ruling classes" would mean the revolution would slip from the people's hands and become uncontrollable. Therefore, the socialist governmental machinery must transform the inherited political and administrative institutions into truly democratic ones. Marx believed that by doing so, the Commune "supplied the Republic with the basis of really democratic institutions."