There was no doubt for Marx and Engels about the necessity of having the proletariat conquer political power. It is left to Bernstein to consider the… - Rosa Luxemburg

Only the hammer blow of revolution, that is to say, the conquest of political power by the proletariat can break down [the] wall [between capitalist society and Socialist society].

Lagenliga reformer och revolution är alltså inte olika metoder för historiskt framåtskridande, vilka man kan välja efter behag vid historiens disk, som man gör med varm eller kall korv, utan de utgör olika moment i klassamhällets utveckling.

One is immediately struck with the obstinacy and rigid consistency with which Lenin and his comrades stuck to this slogan, a slogan which is in sharp contradiction to their otherwise outspoken centralism in politics as well as to the attitude they have assumed towards other democratic principles. Wile they showed a quite cool contempt for the Constituent Assembly, universal suffrage, freedom of press and assemblage, in short for the whole apparatus of basic democratic liberties of the people which, taken all together, constituted the "right of self-determination" inside Russia, they treated the right of self-determination of peoples as a jewel of democratic policy for the sake of which all practical considerations of real criticism had to be stilled.