Selected Essays - The Original Classic Edition. Marx Karl

civilized shortcomings of the modern State world, whose advantages we do not possess, with the barbarous shortcomings of the ancien regime, which we enjoy in full measure, so that Germany is constantly obliged to participate, if not intelligently, at any rate unintelligently, [31]in the State formations which lie beyond her status quo.

       Is there for example a country in the world which shares so naively in all the illusions of the constitutional community, without sharing in its realities, as does so-called constitutional Germany? Was it necessary to combine German governmental interference,

       the tortures of the censorship, with the tortures of the French September laws which presupposed freedom of the press? Just as one found the gods of all nations in the Roman pantheon, so will one find the flaws of all State forms in the Holy Roman German Em-pire. That this eclecticism will reach a point hitherto unsuspected is guaranteed in particular by the politico-aesthetic gourmanderie of a German king, who thinks he can play all the parts of monarchy, both of the feudal and the bureaucratic, both of the absolute and the constitutional, of the autocratic as of the democratic, if not in the person of his people, then in his own person, if not for the people, then for himself. Germany as the embodiment of the defect of the political present, constituted in her own world, will not

       be able to overthrow the specifically German obstacles without [32]overthrowing the general obstacles of the political present.

       It is not the radical revolution which is a utopian dream for Germany, not the general human emancipation, but rather the partial, the merely political revolution, the revolution which leaves the pillars of the house standing. Upon what can a partial, a merely political revolution base itself ? Upon the fact that a part of bourgeois society could emancipate itself and attain to general rulership, upon

       the fact that, by virtue of its special situation, a particular class could undertake the general emancipation of society. This class would liberate the whole of society, but only upon the assumption that the whole of society found itself in the situation of this class, and consequently possessed money and education, for instance, or could acquire them if it liked.

       No class in bourgeois society can play this part without setting up a wave of enthusiasm in itself and among the masses, a wave of feeling wherein it would fraternize and commingle with society in general, and would feel and be recognized as society's general representative, a wave of enthusiasm wherein its [33]claims and rights would be in truth the claims and rights of society itself, wherein it would really be the social head and the social heart. Only in the name of the general rights of society can a particular class vindicate for itself the general rulership.

       Revolutionary energy and intellectual self-confidence are not sufficient by themselves to enable a class to attain to this emancipa-tory position, and thereby exploit politically all social spheres in the interest of its own sphere. In order that the revolution of a people should coincide with the emancipation of a special class of bourgeois society, it is necessary for a class to stand out as a class representing the whole of society. Thus further involves, as its obverse side, the concentration of all the defects of society in another class, and this particular class must be the embodiment of the general social obstacles and impediments. A particular social sphere must be identical with the notorious crime of society as a whole, in such wise that the emancipation of this sphere would appear

       to be the general self-emancipation. In order that one class should be the class of emancipation par excellence, another class must contrariwise be the class of [34]manifest subjugation. The negative-general significance of the French nobility and the French clergy was the condition of the positive-general significance of the class of the bourgeoisie, which was immediately encroaching upon and confronting the former.

       But in Germany every class lacks not only the consistency, the keenness, the courage, the ruthlessness, which might stamp it as the negative representative of society. It lacks equally that breadth of soul which would identify it, if only momentarily, with the popular soul, that quality of genius which animates material power until it becomes political power, that revolutionary boldness which hurls at the opponent the defiant words: I am nothing, and I have to be everything. But the stock-in-trade of German morality and hon-our, not only as regards individuals but also as regards classes, constitutes rather that modest species of egoism which brings into

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       prominence its own limitations.

       The relation of the various spheres of German society is therefore not dramatic, but epic. Each of them begins to be self-conscious and to press its special claims upon the others not when it is itself oppressed, but when the [35]conditions of the time, irrespective

       of its co-operation, create a sociable foundation from which it can on its part practise oppression. Even the moral self-esteem of the German middle class is only based on the consciousness of being the general representative of the philistine mediocrity of all the other classes.

       Consequently it is not only the German kings who succeed to the throne mal a propos, but it is every sphere of bourgeois society which experiences its defeat before it celebrates its victory, develops its own handicaps before it overcomes the handicaps which confront it, asserts its own narrow-minded nature before it can assert its generous nature, so that even the opportunity of playing a great part is always past before it actually existed, and each class, so soon as it embarks on a struggle with the class above it, becomes involved in a struggle with the class below it. Consequently, the princedom finds itself fighting the monarchy, the bureaucrat finds himself fighting the nobility, the bourgeois finds himself fighting them all, while the proletariat is already commencing to fight the bourgeois.

       The middle class hardly dares to seize hold of the ideas of emancipation from its own [36]standpoint before the development of social conditions and the progress of political theory declare this standpoint to be antiquated, or at least very problematical. In France partial emancipation is the basis of universal emancipation. In Germany universal emancipation is the conditio sine qua non of every partial emancipation. In France it is the reality, in Germany it is the impossibility of gradual emancipation which must bring forth entire freedom. In France every popular class is tinged with political idealism, and does not feel primarily as a particular class, but as the representative of social needs generally. The role of emancipator, therefore, flits from one class to another of the French people in a dramatic movement, until it eventually reaches the class which will no longer realize social freedom upon the basis of certain conditions lying outside of mankind and yet created by human society, but will rather organize all the conditions of human existence upon the basis of social freedom. In Germany, on the other hand, where practical life is as unintellectual as intellectual life

       is unpractical, no class of bourgeois society either feels the need or possesses the capacity for emancipation, unless [37]driven thereto by its immediate position, by material necessity, by its chains themselves.

       Wherein, therefore, lies the positive possibility of German emancipation?

       Answer: In the formation of a class in radical chains, a class which finds itself in bourgeois society, but which is not of it, an order which shall break up all orders, a sphere which possesses a universal character by virtue of its universal suffering, which lays claim to no special right, because no particular wrong but wrong in general is committed upon it, which can no longer invoke a historical

       title, but only a human title, which stands not in a one-sided antagonism to the consequences, but in a many-sided antagonism to the assumptions of the German community, a sphere finally which cannot emancipate itself without emancipating all the other spheres of society, which represents in a word the complete loss of mankind, and can therefore only redeem itself through the complete redemption of mankind. The dissolution of society reduced to a special order is the proletariat.

       The proletariat arises in Germany only with the beginning of the industrial movement; for it is not poverty resulting from natural [38]circumstances but poverty artificially created, not the masses who are held down by the weight of the social system, but the multitude released by the acute break-up of society--especially of the middle class--which gives rise to the proletariat. When the proletariat proclaims the dissolution of the existing order of things it is merely announcing the secret of its own existence, for it is in itself the virtual dissolution of this order of things. When the proletariat desires