Between a monarchy and the most democratic republic there is only one essential difference: in the former, the world of officialdom oppresses and robs the people for the greater profit of the privileged and propertied classes, as well as to line its own pockets, in the name of the monarch; in the latter, it oppresses and robs the people in exactly the same way, for the benefit of the same classes and the same pockets, but in the name of the people’s will. In a republic, a fictitious people, the “legal nation” supposedly represented by the state, smothers the real, live people. But it will scarcely be any easier on the people if the stick with which they are being beaten is labeled “the people’s stick.”
—MIKHAIL BAKUNIN