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  1. Goal. The aim of the association is the downfall of all the privileged classes, to submit these classes to the dictatorship of the proletariat by maintaining the revolution permanently until the realization of communism, which must be the last form of constitution of the human family (Marx, 18501).
  2. Professional Revolutionary Party. The thing we need is a military organisation of agents (Lenin, 19022). This network of agents will form the skeleton of precisely the kind of organisation we need—one that is sufficiently large to embrace the whole country; sufficiently broad and many-sided to effect a strict and detailed division of labour; sufficiently well tempered to be able to conduct steadily its own work under any circumstances, at all “sudden turns”, and in face of all contingencies; sufficiently flexible to be able, on the one hand, to avoid an open battle against an overwhelming enemy, when the enemy has concentrated all his forces at one spot, and yet, on the other, to take advantage of his unwieldiness and to attack him when and where he least expects it (Lenin, 19013).
  3. Self-organization of the masses. 2) Elimination of all parliaments and municipal councils, and takeover of their functions by workers’ and soldiers’ councils, and of the latter’s committees and organs. 3) Election of workers’ councils [soviet] in all Germany by the entire adult working population of both sexes, in the city and the countryside, by enterprises, as well as of soldiers’ councils by the troops (officers and capitulationists excluded). The right of workers and soldiers to recall their representatives at any time. 4) Election of delegates of the workers’ and soldiers’ councils […] to the central council of the workers’ and soldiers’ councils, which is to elect the executive council as the highest organ of the legislative and executive power (Luxembourg, 19184).
  4. Arming the proletariat. 1) Disarmament of the entire police force and of all officers and nonproletarian soldiers; disarmament of all members of the ruling classes. 2) Confiscation of all weapons and munitions stocks as well as armaments factories by workers’ and soldiers’ councils. 3) Arming of the entire […] proletarian population as a workers’ militia. Creation of a Red Guard of proletarians as an active part of the militia for the constant protection of the Revolution against counter-revolutionary attacks and subversions (Luxembourg, 1918, ibid.).
  5. Armed insurrection. The decision to create a Military Revolutionary Committee, first introduced on the 9th, was passed at a plenary session of the Soviet only a week later. The Soviet is not a party; its machinery is heavy. Four days more were required to form the Committee. Those ten days, however, did not go for nothing: the conquest of the garrison was in full swing, the Conference of regimental Committees had demonstrated its viability, the arming of the workers was going forward. And thus the Military Revolutionary Committee, although it went to work only on the 20th, five days before the insurrection, found – ready to its hands – a sufficiently well organised dominion. (Trotsky, 19305).
  6. Dictatorship of the proletariat. This socialism is the declaration of the permanence of the revolution, the class dictatorship of the proletariat as the necessary transit point to the abolition of class distinctions generally, to the abolition of all the relations of production on which they rest, to the abolition of all the social relations that correspond to these relations of production, to the revolutionizing of all the ideas that result from these social relations (Marx, 18506). Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat (Marx, 18757).
  7. Civil war. But before such a change could be effected a proletarian dictature would become necessary, and the first condition of that was a proletarian army. The working classes would have to conquer the right to emancipate themselves on the battlefield. The task of the International was to organize and combine the forces of labor for the coming struggle (Marx, 18718). A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists (Engels, 18739).
  8. Abolition of privileges. The criticism of religion ends with the teaching that man is the highest essence for man – hence, with the categoric imperative to overthrow all relations in which man is a debased, enslaved, abandoned, despicable essence (Marx, 184310). The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole. (Marx & Engels, 184711). […] abolition of all representation allowances, and of all monetary privileges to officials, the reduction of the remuneration of all servants of the state to the level of “workmen’s wages”. (Lénine, 191712). Abolition of all differences of rank, all orders and titles. Complete legal and social equality of the sexes. (Rosa Luxembourg, 1918, ibid.).
  9. Permanent Revolution. While the democratic petty bourgeois want to bring the revolution to an end as quickly as possible, achieving at most the aims already mentioned, it is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent until all the more or less propertied classes have been driven from their ruling positions, until the proletariat has conquered state power and until the association of the proletarians has progressed sufficiently far – not only in one country but in all the leading countries of the world – that competition between the proletarians of these countries ceases and at least the decisive forces of production are concentrated in the hands of the workers (Marx & Engels, 185015).
  10. Extinction of the State. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The state is not “abolished”. It dies out. (Engels, 187813). Ces classes They will fall as inevitably as they once arose. The state inevitably falls with them. The society which organizes production anew on the basis of free and equal association of the producers will put the whole state machinery where it will then belong–into the museum of antiquities, next to the spinning wheel and the bronze ax (Engels, 188414).

1 Marx, Engels et al. (1850). Statuts de la Société Universelle des Communistes Révolutionnaires. in Œuvres (1850), Karl Marx (trad. ad hoc), éd. Gallimard, coll. « Bibliothèque de la Pléiade », 1994, t. IV – Politique I, p. 559. https://www.marxists.org/francais/marx/works/1850/04/km_18500400.htm . There is a document in English called “Rules of the Communist League” which seems to be the equivalent of the Statuts de la Société Universelle des Communistes Révolutionnaires, however, it is not a translation. MECW, volume 10, p. 634. https://libcom.org/article/marx-and-engels-collected-works

4 Luxembourg, 1918. What Does the Spartacus League Want? https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1918/12/14.htm

5 Trotsky, 1930. The History of the Russian Revolution. https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/hrr/ch41.htm

7 Marx, 1875. Critique of the Gotha Programme. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch04.htm

8 Marx, 1871. Record of marx’s speech on the seventh anniversary of t h e international. MECW, vol. 22, p. 633. https://files.libcom.org/files/2022-12/MECW_22.pdf

10 Marx, 1843. A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. http://hiaw.org/defcon6/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.html

11 Marx & Engels, 1847. Manifesto of the Communist Party. http://hiaw.org/defcon6/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.html

12 Lénine, 1917. The state and the revolution. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch03.htm

14 Engels, 1884. Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State. http://hiaw.org/defcon6/works/1884/origin-family/ch09.html

15 Marx & Engels, 1850. Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/communist-league/1850-ad1.htm