Your remarks against the bourgeoisie and for the Soviets

I used to belong to the petite bourgeoisie myself.

The spirit of 1848 is no more than a phrase, only the welfare of the bourgeoisie is important.

Nearly 1.5 million Cubans will never have a stake in the industries controlled by the military bourgeoisie. Nor was the issue of land ownership resolved only a few plots will be leased in some form.

The old proletariat and the old bourgeoisie are gone. Instead we see what has sometimes been called a levelled in middle class society, albeit one with an important elite of the super rich at one end and an underclass at the other.

Although Chávez s legend may survive, Chávismo probably will not, for it is not truly a doctrine, but a sentiment based on the rejection of the old political order and the invention of enemies. It lacks the solid foundations of, say, Perónism, an inclusive movement that relied on a traditionally well organized working class and a nationalistic bourgeoisie.

If anything has been laid to rest by China s rising wealth, it is the comforting idea that capitalism, and the growth of a prosperous bourgeoisie, will inevitably lead to liberal democracy. On the contrary, it is precisely the middle class, bought off by promises of ever greater material gains, that hopes to conserve the current political order.

In Italy, the bourgeoisie of Milan and Rome have made a point of spending winter days dressed in characteristically German Loden overcoats. When Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben recently appealed for a Latin empire to assert itself against Germany, his call was widely rejected, with several of his contemporaries asserting that, on the contrary, Germany should serve as a model for Italy as it seeks to overcome its current malaise.

Marx s comparative advantage was to read Hegel and create a narrative in which history is the history of class struggle, with the newly emergent industrial proletariat destined to develop class consciousness and overthrow the political and economic order created by the bourgeoisie. Liberal democracy has been at a disadvantage in the battle for the narrative because it tends to treat the collective self as if it were just a rational median voter in search of a better job.