ch Revolution obtained victory
over the privileged classes and gained control of the State? Since
this third class stood in contrast to the privileged classes of
society with legal vested rights, it considered itself at that time as
equivalent to the whole people, and its cause as the cause of all
humanity. This explains the exalting and mighty enthusiasm which was
general in that period. The rights of man were proclaimed; and it
seemed as if, with the liberation and sovereignty of this third class,
all legal privileges in society were ended, and as if every legally
privileged distinction had been replaced by its principle of the
universal liberty of man.

At that time, however, in the very beginning of the movement, in
April, 1789, on the occasion of the elections to a parliament which
was summoned by the king under the condition that the third class
should this time send as many representatives as the nobility and
clergy together, a newspaper of a character anything but revolutionary
writes as follows: "Who can tell us whether a despotism of the
bourgeoisie will not follow the so-called aristocracy of the nobles?"

But such cries at that time were drowned in the general enthusiasm.

Nevertheless we must come back to that question, we must put the
question definitely: Was the cause of the third class really the cause
of all humanity; or did this third class, the _bourgeoisie_, bear
within it a fourth class, from which it wished to distinguish itself
clearly, and subject it to its sovereignty?

I must now, if I do not wish to run the risk of subjecting my
presentation to great misunderstandings, explain my own conception of
the word _bourgeoisie_, or upper _bourgeoisie_, as a term for a
political party. The word _bourgeoisie_ may be translated into German
by _Buergertum_ (body of citizens). In my opinion this is not what it
means. We are all _Buerger_ (citizens)--the working man, the
_Kleinbuerger_ (lower middle class), _Grossbuerger_ (upper middle
class), etc. But in the course of history the word _bourgeoisie_ has
acquired the significance of a definite political tendency, which I
will now explain.[47]

The whole class of commoners outside the nobility was divided, when the
French Revolution began, and is still divided in general, into two
subordinate classes--first, those who get their living chiefly or
entirely from their labor, and are supported in this by very little
capital, or none at all, which might give