Additional Readings

What is Needed to Establish Socialism?

The Peasant War in Germany, by Fredrick Engels

The worst thing that can befall a leader of an extreme party is to be compelled to take over a government in an epoch when the movement is not yet ripe for the domination of the class which he represents and for the realisation of the measures which that domination would imply.

Marxism and Bolshevism – Democracy and Dictatorship, by Karl Kautsky

Freedom of association, the right to vote on the basis of universal, secret and direct balloting are the necessary means of educating and developing the proletariat and hastening its maturity. Every extension of freedom for the laboring classes in the state has not only a formal but a real value of the highest degree. It is of tremendous educational importance to the working class. Without the preliminary attainment of democracy the working class can not acquire those qualities which it needs for its own liberation and the building of a new and higher social order.