But the parliamentary struggles as struggles between parties, are only battles of words. Programmes, journalistic polemics, tracts, meeting reports, resolutions, parliamentary debates, decisions nothing but words. But from the start parties were only mere machines for preparing for elections. The bourgeoisie, parliamentarism, and political parties mutually and reciprocally conditioned one another. Each is necessary for the others.
None is conceivable without the others.
They mark the political physiognomy of the bourgeois system, of the bourgeois-capitalist system. The revolution of 1848 was still-born. But the democratic state, the ideal of the bourgeois era was erected. It knuckled under to the crown and the nobility, contenting itself with the right to exploit the masses economically and so reducing parliamentarism to a parody. So resulted the need for the working class to send representatives to parliament.