opment. The highest form of the state,
the democratic republic, knows officially nothing of property
distinctions.[42] It is that form of the state which under modern
conditions of society becomes more and more an unavoidable necessity.
The last decisive struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie can only
be fought out under this state form.[43] In such a state, wealth exerts
its power indirectly, but all the more safely. This is done partly in
the form of direct corruption of officials, after the classical type of
the United States, or in the form of an alliance between government and
bankers which is established all the more easily when the public debt
increases and when corporations concentrate in their hands not only the
means of transportation, but also production itself, using the stock
exchange as a center. The United States and the latest French republic
are striking examples, and good old Switzerland has contributed its
share to illustrate this point. That a democratic republic is not
necessary for this fraternal bond between stock exchange and government
is proved by England and last, not least, Germany, where it is doubtful
whether Bismarck or Bleichroeder was more favored by the introduction of
universal suffrage.[44] The possessing class rules directly through
universal suffrage. For as long as the oppressed class, in this case the
proletariat, is not ripe for its economic emancipation, just so long
will its majority regard the existing order of society as the only one
possible, and form the tail, the extreme left wing, of the capitalist
class. But the more the proletariat matures toward its
self-emancipation, the more does it constitute itself as a separate
class and elect its own representatives in place of the capitalists.
Universal suffrage is the gauge of the maturity of the working class. It
can and will never be anything else but that in the modern state. But
that is sufficient. On the day when the thermometer of universal
suffrage reaches its boiling point among the laborers, they as well as
the capitalists will know what to do.

The state, then, did not exist from all eternity. There have been
societies without it, that had no idea of any state or public power. At
a certain stage of economic development, which was of necessity
accompanied by a division of society into classes, the state became the
inevitable result of this division. We are now rapidly approaching a
stage of evolution in productio