Page:Masterpieces of German literature volume 10.djvu/479

 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 Bürgertum (body of citizens). In my opinion this is not what it means. We are all Bürger (citizens)—the working man, the Kleinbürger (lower middle class), Grossbürger (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.

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 them the possibility of actively engaging in production for the support of themselves and their families; to this class, accordingly, belong the laborers, the lower middle class, the artisans, and, in general, the peasants; second, those who control a large