ty ceases to be a right as soon as it comes into conflict with
the political life, whereas, according to theory, the political life
is only the guarantee of the rights of man, and should therefore be
surrendered as soon as its object contradicts these rights of man. But
the practice is only the exception and the theory is the rule. If,
however, we regard the revolutionary practice as the correct position
of the relation, the riddle still remains to be solved, why the
relationship was inverted in the consciousness of the political
liberators, the end appearing as the means, and the means as the end.
This optical illusion of their consciousness would still be the same
riddle, although a psychological, a theoretical riddle.

The riddle admits of easy solution.

The political emancipation is at the same time the dissolution of the
old society, upon which was based the civic society, or the rulership
alienated from the people. The political revolution is the revolution
of bourgeois society. What was the character of the old society? It
can be described in one word. Feudality. The old civic society had a
directly political character, that is, the elements of civic life, as
for example property or the family, or the mode and kind of labour,
were raised to the level of elements of the community in the form of
landlordism, status, and corporation. In this form they determined the
relation of the individual to the community, that is his political
relation, his relationship of separation and exclusion from the other
constituent parts of society. For the latter organization of popular
life did not raise property or labour to the level of social elements,
but rather completed their separation from the political whole and
constituted them as special societies within society. Thus the vital
functions and vital conditions of society continued to be political,
although political in the sense of feudality, which means that they
excluded the individual from the political whole, and transformed the
special relation of his corporation to the political whole into his
own general relation to the popular life. As a consequence of this
organization, the political unity necessarily appears as the
consciousness, the will and the activity of the political unity, and
likewise the general State power as the special concern of a ruler and
his servants sundered from the people.

The political revolution, which overthrew this domination and raised
p