History of the public sphere - elucidation I

In 1848 Marx and Engels stressed in the Communist manifesto that universal suffrage was an important step in the proletariat's political struggle. Engels goes so far to equate it with democracy in his 1895 foreword to Marx' Class struggles in France 1848 to 1850: "Already the Communist manifesto had proclaimed universal suffrage, democracy, as one of the first and most important tasks of the struggling proletariat." Universal suffrage, Engels claims, formerly a demagogic tool in the hands of the likes of Napoleon III and Bismarck, had been turned into a tool of emancipation by the working class: "With this successful use of universal suffrage the proletariat discovered a whole new way of fighting." He goes on to claim that: "The old style of rebellion, fighting in the streets with barricades, which was decisive until 1848, is outdated." The October and November revolutions proved Engels' claim wrong, but we should remember that theory is not a weather forecast and is not to be judged with the same criteria. What Engels noticed is that a qualitative change in class struggle had taken place: it was no longer just strategic, it became political. This qualitative leap with universal suffrage and the consolidation of worker's parties marks the beginning of communicative exchange between two spheres of opinion and will formation that were previously pretty much isolated: a move towards the class struggle model of the public sphere.