distribution of the various classes and the relative economic strength of proletariat and bourgeoisie which shows the proletariat in a particularly disadvantageous position, wherefore alone a future proletarian revolution will be far more difficult than any revolution that has taken place hitherto. It is important always to remember that in the bourgeois revolution the driving force, the revolutionary bourgeoisie, was the dominant economic class long before the revolution in the narrower sense broke out; that the bourgeoisie found a numerous class, economically dependent on it and subject to its political influence, which it could send into the fire and make a cat's paw of; that the bourgeoisie had bought up, as it were, the I old junk of feudalism before smashing and throwing it on the dumping heap, whereas all that the bourgeois have acquired by wealth the proletarians have to conquer by hunger and with their bare bodies.
