In the period of transition, the state will tend to conserve the existing state of affairs. Bec*ause of this, the state remains a fundamentally conservative organ that will tend:
-- not to favor social transformation but to act against it
-- to maintain the conditions on which its own life depends: the division of society into classes
-- to detach itself from society, to impose itself on society, to perpetuate its own existence and to develop its own prerogatives
-- to bind its existence to the coercion and viol*ence which it will of necessity use during the period of transition, and to try to maintain and reinforce this method of regulating social relations
-- to be a fertile soil for the formation of a bureaucracy, providing a rallying point for elements coming from the old classes and offices which have been destroyed by the revolution.