Rosa Luxemburg — Eine antiklerikale Politik des Sozialismus (1903)

The analogy of the situation occupied by the army and by the Church towards the Republic has brought about a closer union between these two powers and has given a monarchical colouring to all the later political crises which have occurred in France. Every time these two organs of the Republic have been united in their revolt. And just as the contradiction between the army and the Republic can only be solved by the transformation of the standing army into a militia, the contradiction between the Catholic Church and the Republic can only disappear when the Church shall have ceased to be a public institution and shall have become a private institution, that is to say, when the Church shall have been separated from the State, when the clergy shall havebeen driven from the schools and from the army, and when the property of the religious orders shall have been confiscated. The Social-Democracy does not ask the partial confiscation of capitalist property by the middle-class State, but that is not because it is in principle an opponent of these confiscations. In cases where we ask for the socialisation of an industry, of that of the railways for example, we should not object if this measure took place simply by confiscation. If this be not one of our desiderata, if we do not ask only in certain cases that the State should take over an industry, it is because this working of an industry by the State would not alter the capitalist character of property and, indeed, in some cases it increases the power of a reactionary State. Even when this fear is not justified, as in Switzerland, such a demand addressed to a middle-class government is really utopian.