ity had been preserved in the country’ssocial,economic, and legal structures.
Under these circumstances,the workers’ deep sense of betrayal,combined
with growingawareness of their numerical strength, had createdarevolutionary
situation. This is howvonStein describes the process:
The class of the propertyless has unified; they have gainedawareness of their situation;
they recognize that it is based on laws that exist outside the individual; they feel controlled
throughapowerthat they have foughtinvain; they areexcluded from participation in state
government; they confront the impossibility for the majority of their memberstoascend to a
higher class.Inresponse, they have become an estate(Stand), and this estate, literallythe
embodiment of all the demands originatinginthe principle of equality without satisfying
them, is theFrench proletariat.⁷Anumber of propositions and assumptions give rise to what can be called a
paradigmatic scene of proletarian identification.Forvon Stein, class mobiliza-
tion begins with an experienceofexclusion from representation in the political
sense. The cognitive and emotional processes associated withverbs such as“rec-
ognize”and“feel”set intoamotionalearning process that provides the disem-
powered with the appropriate skills to“fight”and“confront.”Aware of the false
promises made in the name of“equality,”the propertyless eventuallycome to
understand their condition of lack.Without access to the rewards of individual-
ism, they chooseto join the“unified”manythat embodythe abstract principles
of emancipation but,asthe particularand universal class, also possess the po-
litical tools to make thoseprinciplesahistorical reality.
WhilevonStein used the postrevolutionary situation inFrance to predict
similar developments in neighboringEuropean countries,other authors re-
sponded to the threat ofrevolutionwith specializedtreatises that offered practi-
cal solutions in the name of economic progress and political stability.Thus, in a
work with the lengthytitleUeber das dermalige Missverhältniss derVermö-
genslosen oder Proletairszuden Vermögen besitzenden Klassen der Societät inBe-
treff ihresAuskommens, sowohl in materieller,als intellektueller Hinsicht, aus dem
Standpunktdes Rechtsbetrachtet(1835,About theCurrent Disparity between the
Propertyless or Proletarians and the Propertied Classes...), FranzvonBaader
(1761–1841),amining engineer turned socialreformer,proposed to solve the
problem of proletarianization through greater legal reforms and public policies
that increased social mobility.InUnsere Gegenwart und Zukunft(1846,Our Pres-
ent andFuture), the National Liberal politicianFriedrichKarl Biedermann (1812–
1891) located the origins of the proletariat in the phenomenon of pauperism and
vonStein,Proletariat und Gesellschaft,203–204.
The Threat of the Proletariat and the Discourseofthe Masses 37