governments, numerous and important survivals of that first
historical period still exist, preventing to a large extent, even
today, complete control by the capitalist class.

We observed, second, the period beginning with the French Revolution
at the end of the last century, which has capitalism as its principle
and establishes this as the privilege which permeates all social
institutions and determines participation in the public policy. This
period is also, little as external appearances indicate, essentially
at an end.

On February 24, 1848, the first dawn of a new historical period became
visible, for on that day in France--that land in whose mighty internal
struggles the victories as well as the defeats of liberty indicate
victories and defeats for all mankind--a revolution broke out which
placed a workingman at the head of the provisional government, which
declared the principle of the State to be the improvement of the lot
of the working classes, and proclaimed the universal and direct
franchise, through which every citizen who had attained his
twenty-first year, without regard to property, should receive an equal
share in the control of the State and the determination of public
policy. You see, Gentlemen, if the Revolution of 1789 was the
revolution of the _tiers etat_ (the third class), this time it is the
fourth class--which in 1789 was still undistinguished from the third
class and seemed to coincide with it--that now attempts to establish
its own principle as the controlling one of society and to make it
pervade all institutions.

But here, in the case of the supremacy of the fourth class, we find
the tremendous distinction that this class is the final and
all-inclusive disinherited class of humanity, which can set up no
further exclusive condition, either of legal or actual kind, neither
nobility, land ownership, nor capital, which it might establish as a
new privilege and carry through the institutions of society.
Workingmen we all are, so far as we have the desire to make ourselves
useful to human society in any way whatsoever.

This fourth class, in whose bosom therefore no possible germ of a new
order of privilege is concealed, is for that very reason synonymous
with the whole human race. Its class is, in truth, the class of all
humanity, its liberty is the liberty of humanity itself, its
sovereignty is the sovereignty of all. Whoever hails the principle of
the working class, in the sense in which