ation, 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 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
emancipatory 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 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
beco