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To the absolute governments, with their following of parsons,

professors, country squires and officials, it served as a welcome

scarecrow against the threatening bourgeoisie.

It was a sweet finish after the bitter pills of floggings and

bullets with which these same governments, just at that time,

dosed the German working-class risings.

While this "True" Socialism thus served the governments as a

weapon for fighting the German bourgeoisie, it, at the same time,

directly represented a reactionary interest, the interest of the

German Philistines. In Germany the petty bourgeois class, a

relique of the sixteenth century, and since then constantly

cropping up again under various forms, is the real social basis

of the existing state of things.