... So Bismarck has brought off his universal suffrage stroke even though without his Lassalle. It looks as if the German bourgeois will agree to it after some resistance, for Bonapartism is after all the real religion of the modern bourgeoisie. It is becoming more and more clear to me that the bourgeoisie has not the stuff in it to rule directly itself, and that therefore unless there is an oligarchy, as here in England, capable of taking over, for good pay, the management of state and society in the interests of the bourgeoisie, a Bonapartist semi-dictatorship is the normal form. It upholds the big material interests of the bourgeoisie even against the will of the bourgeoisie, but allows the bourgeoisie no share in the government. The dictatorship in its turn is forced against its will to adopt these material interests of the bourgeoisie as its own. So we now get Monsieur Bismarck adopting the programme of the National Association.  To carry it out is something quite different, of course, but Bismarck is hardly likely to come to grief through the German middle class. A German who has just returned relates that he has already found many who swallowed this bait; according to Reuter the Karlsruhe people have accepted the business and the profound embarrassment which this affair has caused the K lnische Zeitung  clearly indicates the forthcoming turn of events...
Marx-Engels Correspondence 1848