The answer must be that long, very long, after much had been thought and written concerning the condition and future of the proletariat this element of the population yet remained completely untouched by these new ideas, knew nothing of them, cared nothing for them; it permitted itself to be controlled by other forces, other motives. The systems of St. Simon, Fourier, Owen, have had little or no influence with the masses. As we turn to the proletariat itself and ask after its fate,--perhaps up to the middle of our century,--we find a precursor of the social movement which everywhere--that is, in all lands controlled by the capitalistic economy--exhibits the same marks and is uniformly characterised in the following way: where the movement of the masses stands out clearly and conscious of its aim, it is not proletarian; where it is proletarian, it is not clear and conscious of its aim. That means, in the conscious movement in which the proletariat is found engaged, middle-class elements direct as to the object sought: where the proletariat undertakes to be independent, it shows all the immaturity of the formative stages of a social class, mere instincts, no clearly defined postulates and aims. Those historic occurrences in which the proletariat played a role, although they were not proletarian movements, are the well-known revolutions which we connect with the years 1789, 1793, 1830, 1832, 1848--for I must go back into the previous century for the inner connection. We have here movements which are essentially middle-class; in them political liberties are sought, and, so far as the proletarian elements are concerned, the masses fight the battles of the middle classes, like the common soldiers who fought in feudal armies. This fact, that we here have to do with purely middle-class movements, has so often been mistaken by many celebrated historians, the terms "communism" and "socialism" have been so constantly applied to those agitations, that it is well worth our while to show the incorrectness of this assumption. For this purpose, we must look separately at those movements which are connected with the years thus specified, since each one has its own characteristics.