1. "By the revolution we understand the unchaining of everything that is to-day called 'evil passions,' and the destruction of everything that in the same language is called 'public order'."[412]
The revolution will rage not against men, but against relations and things.[413] "Bloody revolutions are often necessary, thanks to human stupidity; yet they are always an evil, a monstrous evil and a great disaster, not only with regard to the victims, but also for the sake of the purity and perfection of the purpose in whose name they take place."[414] "One must not wonder if in the first moment of their uprising the people kill many oppressors and exploiters--this misfortune, which is of no more importance anyhow than the damage done by a thunderstorm, can perhaps not be avoided. But this natural fact will be neither moral nor even useful. Political massacres have never killed parties; particularly have they always shown themselves impotent against the privileged classes; for authority is vested far less in men than in the position which the privileged acquire by any institutions, particularly by the State and private property. If one would make a thorough revolution, therefore, one must attack things and relationships, destroy property and the State: then there is no need of destroying men and exposing one's self to the inevitable reaction which the slaughtering of men always has provoked and always will provoke in every society. But, in order to have the right to deal humanely with men without danger to the revolution, one must be inexorable toward things and relationships, destroy everything, and first and foremost property and its inevitable consequence the State. This is the whole secret of the revolution."[415]
"The revolution, as the power of things to-day necessarily presents it before us, will not be national, but international,--that is, universal. In view of the threatened league of all privileged interests and all reactionary powers in Europe, in view of the terrible instrumentalities that a shrewd organization puts at their disposal, in view of the deep chasm that to-day yawns between the _bourgeoisie_ and the laborers everywhere, no revolution can count on success if it does not speedily extend itself beyond the individual nation to all other nations. But the revolution can never cross the frontiers and become general unless it has in it the foundations for this generality; that is, unless it is pronouncedly socialistic, and, by equality and justice, destroys the State and establishes liberty. For nothing can better inspire and uplift the sole true power of the century, the laborers, than the complete liberation of labor and the shattering of all institutions for the protection of hereditary property and of capital."[416] "A political and national revolution cannot win, therefore, unless the political revolution becomes social, and the national revolution, by the very fact of its fundamentally socialistic and State-destroying character, becomes a universal revolution."[417]