Letter from Marx to Weydemeyer, March 5, 1852
I have not earned the honour of having discovered either the essence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them. Bourgeois historians had presented the historical development of this class struggle and bourgeois economists had presented its economic anatomy long before me.
What I did that was new was to prove :
1. that the existence of classes is merely linked to definite historical phases of development of production;
2. that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat;
3. that this dictatorship itself forms only a transitional stage in the removal of all classes leading to a classless society.
[Marx’s emphasis given by italicisation]
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