"Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour,
the process of dissolution going on within the ruling class,
in fact within the whole range of old society, assumes such 
a violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling
class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, the class that
holds the future in its hands. Just as,
therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the nobility went over
to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie goes over
to the proletariat.

The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper,
the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie,
to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle-class.
They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more,
they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history.
If by chance they are revolutionary, they are so only in view of their impending
transfer into the proletariat, they thus defend not their present, but their
future interests, they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that
of the proletariat."

Karl Marx and F. Engels, "The Communist Manifesto," Penguin Classics, 1967, p. 91.

[MIM often refers to this quote for two reasons. One is that organizations
like the "RCP-USA" keep telling us that we have to cater to enemy classes to
win them over. However, Marx said that the proletarian revolution
would even win over a section of the bourgeoisie.  In fact, class struggle 
is not a straight-line matter like
--baby-kissing, promise-making and flag-waving--no matter how the Democrats and
Republicans of the united $tates or the social-democrats of Europe seem to indicate
otherwise in their electoral politics. Secondly, our opponents like the "RCP-USA" 
often refer to minorities of classes to justify their not naming those 
classes enemies. Many so-called "Marxists," are in fact so backward that they have not
adopted the kind of probabilistic thinking we see above, referring to "sections"
and "by chance."]