And, later on, he makes it clear that the German constitution is but a copy of the very reactionary constitution of that the Reichstag is only, as Wilhelm Liebknecht put it, 'the fig leaf of absolutism'; and that to wish 'to transform all the instruments of labor into public property' on the basis of a constitution which legalizes the existence of petty states and the federation of petty German states is an 'obvious absurdity.' '