The cabinet--subject to the control theoretically exercisable by the _Vollzugsrat_--was thus untrammeled by other legislative or administrative institutions. But it was, as we have seen, trammeled from without by the disastrous material conditions in Germany, by the mental and moral shipwreck of its people, by the peculiar German psychology and by the political immaturity of the whole nation--a political immaturity, moreover, which even certain cabinet members shared. From within the cabinet was also seriously handicapped from the start by its "parity" composition, that is to say, the fact that power was equally divided between Majority and Independent Socialists without a deciding casting vote in case of disagreement along party lines. If the Independent Socialist cabinet members and the rank and file of their party had comprehended the real character and completeness of the revolution, as it was comprehended by some of the theorists of the party--notably Karl Kautsky and Eduard Bernstein--and if they had avoided their disastrous fellowship with Joffe and other Bolshevik agents, the subsequent course of events would have been different. But they lacked this comprehension and they had been defiled in handling the pitch of Bolshevism. All the revolutions of the last century and a quarter had been of _bourgeois_ origin. They had, however, been carried into effect with the aid of the proletariat, since the _bourgeoisie_, being numerically much weaker than the proletariat, does not command the actual brute force to make revolution. At first the _bourgeoisie_, as planners of the overthrow, took control of the authority of the state and exercised it for their own ends. The proletariat, which had learned its own strength and resources in the revolutionary contests, used its power to compel a further development of the revolution in a more radical direction and eventually compelled the first holders of authority to give way to a government more responsive to the demands of the lower classes. Thus the events of 1789 in Paris were followed by the victory of the Montane party, the events of September 4, 1870, by those of March 18, 1871, and the Kerensky revolution in Petrograd by the Bolshevik revolution of November, 1917.