It believes rather that the special
conditions for its own emancipation are the general conditions under
which alone modern society can be saved and the class struggle avoided.
Likewise must we avoid running away with the notion that the Democratic
Representatives are all "shopkeepers," or enthuse for these. They
may--by education and individual standing--be as distant from them as
heaven is from earth. That which makes them representatives of the small
traders' class is that they do not intellectually leap the bounds which
that class itself does not leap in practical life; that, consequently,
they are theoretically driven to the same problems and solutions, to
which material interests and social standing practically drive the
latter. Such, in fact, is at all times the relation of the "political"
and the "literary" representatives of a class to the class they
represent.
After the foregoing explanations, it goes with-out saying that, while
the Mountain is constantly wrestling for the republic and the so-called
"rights of man," neither the republic nor the "rights of man" is its
real goal, as little as an army, whose weapons it is sought to deprive
it of and that defends itself, steps on the field of battle simply in
order to remain in possession of implements of warfare.
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