Karl Marx: A biography by David McLellan

PARIS 103

of mankind but a partial revolution, a revolution that was merely political,
a revolution 'that leaves the pillars of the house still standing'.^79 Marx then
characterised a purely political revolution, obviously taking the French
Revolution as his paradigm:
A part of civil society emancipates itself and achieves universal domi-
nation, a particular class undertakes the general emancipation of society
from its particular situation. This class frees the whole of society, but
only on the supposition that the whole of society is in the same situation
as this class - that it possesses, or can easily acquire (for example)
money and education.^80

No class could occupy this 'special situation' in society without

arousing an impulse of enthusiasm in itself and among the masses. It

is a moment when the class fraternizes with society in general and

merges with society; it is identified with society and is felt and recog-

nized as society's general representative. Its claims and rights are truly

the claims and rights of society itself of which it is the real social head

and heart.^81

And for a class to be able to seize this emancipatory position, there had
to be a polarisation of classes:

One particular class must be a class that rouses universal reprobation

and incorporates all deficiencies: one particular social sphere must be

regarded as the notorious crime of the whole society, so that the

liberation of this sphere appears as universal self-liberation. So that one

class par excellence may appear as the class of liberation, another class

must conversely be the manifest class of oppression.^82

This, according to Marx, was the situation in France before 1789 when
'the universally negative significance of the French nobility and clergy
determined the universally positive significance of the class nearest to
them and opposed to them: the bourgeoisie'.^85
In Germany, the situation was very different. For there every class
lacked the cohesion and courage that could cast it in the role of the
negative representative of society, and every class also lacked the imagin-
ation to identify itself with the people at large. Class-consciousness sprang
from the oppression of a lower class rather than from defiant protest
against oppression from above. Progress in Germany was thus impossible,
for every class was engaged in a struggle on more than one front:

Thus the princes are fighting against the king, the bureaucracy against

the nobility, the bourgeoisie against all of them, while the proletariat

is already beginning its fight against the bourgeoisie. The middle class

scarcely dares to conceive of emancipation from its own point of view