Frederick Engels

“ Seriously to assail the Social Democracy, they will have to have recourse to entirely different measures. The Social-Democratic revolution, which is getting on first rate while abiding by the law, they can only get at by means of a revolution made by the law and order party, which cannot live without breaking the law. Herr Rossler, the Prussian bureaucrat, and Herr von Boguslawski, the Prussian general, have shown them the only way to get at the workers, who refuse to be lured into a street battle,—violation of the constitution, dictatorship, back to absolutism, regis voluntas, suprema lex! ”

“ All the more modern revolutions, beginning with the great English revolution of the 17th century, exhibited these features which seem inseparable from every revolutionary struggle. They appear applicable also to the struggles of the proletariat for its emancipation, applicable the more so since, just in 1848, those could be counted who even in a measure understood in which direction emancipation was to be looked for. The proletarian masses themselves, even after their Paris victory, were absolutely at sea as to the course to be pursued. ”

“ History has proved us wrong and all others who thought similarly. It has made clear that the status of economic development on the Continent was then by no means ripe for the abolition of capitalist production; it has proved this by the economic revolution which, since 1848, has affected the entire Continent and has introduced large industry in France, Austria, Hungary, Poland, and, more recently, in Russia, and has made of Germany an industrial country of the first rank—all this upon a capitalist basis which, reckoning from 1848, implies great expansive capacity. ”

“ But it was just this industrial revolution that has everywhere introduced clarity in regard to class relations, which has eliminated a mass of hybrid forms taken over from the period of manufacture and, in Eastern Europe, even from guild handicraft, which has produced a real bourgeoisie and a real industrial proletariat and forced both into the foreground of social evolution. ”

“ Let there be no illusions about this: a real victory over the military in a street battle, a victory as between two armies, belongs to the greatest rarities. But the insurgents had seldom planned it that way. For them it had been a matter of disintegrating the troops through moral influences which, in the case of a fight between the armies of two warring countries, either did not come into play at all or, if so, in only minor degree. In case this succeeds, then the troops fail their commanders, these lose their heads and the insurrection wins. ”

“ The right to revolution is so thoroughly recognized in the inner consciousness of man, that even General von Boguslawski deduces from this popular right alone the coup d'état whereby to vindicate his Kaiser.
However, happen what may in other countries, the German Social Democracy holds a specific position and, for that reason and for the time being, faces a specific task. The 2,000,000 voters whom it sends to the hustings, plus the young men and women non-voters standing behind them, these form the most numerous, the most compact "shock troops" of the international proletarian army. ”

“ An uprising wherewith all layers of the population sympathize will hardly come again; in the class struggle the middle layers will hardly ever group themselves around the proletariat so fully that the party of reaction, gathering around the bourgeoisie, will be almost eclipsed by comparison. The "people" will for that reason always appear divided, and thus a powerful lever, so effective in 1848, will be missing. Even if on the side of the insurrection there be more trained soldiers, it will become more difficult to arm them. ”

“ Today, we may figure with 2,225,000 voters. If this goes on, we shall at the close of the century win over the greater part of the middle social layers, petty bourgeoisie as well as small peasants, and we shall come to be the decisive power in the land, before which all other powers must bow whether they like it or not. To keep going this growth without interruption until it swamps the ruling governmental system, that is our main task. ”

“ Whenever one minority was overthrown, another minority instead took hold of the reins of power and remodeled the State institutions according to its interests. In every instance it was that minority group which, according to the degree of economic development, was capable and therefore called upon to rule, on that account and principally, because it always happened that the ruled majority either aided the revolution on the side of the ruling minority, or at least passively tolerated the same. ”

“ Even in these days, when the professional press furnishes material so copiously, it will be impossible even in England to trace the course of industry and commerce in the world's market, or to follow the changes in production methods day after day in such manner as to be able to draw at any given moment a general conclusion from these highly complicated and ever changing factors, factors of which the most important often work for a long time under cover before they suddenly and forcibly come to the surface. ”

“ Given a bourgeoisie split in two dynastic-monarchist sections, but which above all things demanded tranquility and security for its financial transactions, and opposed to it a defeated but still threatening proletariat about which petty bourgeois and peasant elements more and more grouped themselves—a permanent threat of violent outbreaks which, however, offered no prospect for the solution—that was the situation almost made to order for the coup d'état of the third, the pseudo-democratic pretender, Louis Bonaparte. ”

“ Of what use was the anti-Socialist law to the Government and to the bourgeoisie if the election agitation and the Socialist speeches in the Reichstag constantly broke through it?
With this successful utilization of the general franchise, an entirely new method of the proletarian struggle had come into being and had quickly been built up. It was found that the State institutions, wherein the rule of the bourgeoisie is organized, did furnish further opportunities by means of which the working class can oppose these same institutions. ”

“ Thus, passive resistance becomes the prevailing form of the struggle. The offensive will here and there rise to occasional attacks and flanking movements, but the rule will be to confine itself to the occupation of positions abandoned by retreating troops. Added to this, there is on the side of the military the control of large ordnance and of fully equipped and thoroughly trained engineering troops, means of combat which the insurgents lack in most every case. No wonder that barricade fights conducted with the greatest heroism—Paris, June, 1848 ”

“ Internal tranquility secured full development of the new industrial prosperity, the necessity to provide work for the army and to divert the revolutionary currents into outward channels produced the wars, wherein Bonaparte, under the pretext of upholding the "principle of nationality," sought to gather in annexations for France. His imitator, Bismarck, adopted the same policy for Prussia: he made his coup d'état, his revolution from above, in 1866, against the German Bund and Austria, and no less against the Prussian "conflict-chamber." ”

“ And if this powerful army of the proletariat has not yet reached the goal, if, far from winning the victory by one fell blow, it must gradually proceed by hard, tenacious struggle from position to position, it proved once for all how impossible it was in 1848 to bring about the social transformation by a sheer coup de main. ”

“ The time is past for revolutions carried through by small minorities at the head of unconscious masses. When it gets to be a matter of the complete transformation of the social organization, the masses themselves must participate, must understand what is at stake and why they are to act. ”

“ Therefore, even during the classic period of street battles, the barricade had a moral rather than a material effect. It was a means to shake the solidity of the military. If it held until that had been accomplished, the victory was won; if not, it meant defeat. Already in 1849 the chances of success were rather poor. Everywhere had the bourgeoisie gone over to the side of the governments, "culture and possessions" greeted and feted the military marching out against the insurrections. The barricade had lost its charm ”

“ Of course, our comrades abroad have not abandoned the right to revolution. The right to revolution is, in the last analysis, the only real "historic right" upon which all modern States rest without exception, including even Mecklenburg where the revolution of the nobility was terminated in 1755 through the "inheritance agreement," the glorious confirmation of feudalism valid this very day. ”

“ In the second chapter, anent the "Right to Work," which is designated as the "first awkward formula wherein the revolutionary demands of the proletariat are condensed," it is said: "But behind the Right to Work stands the power over capital, behind the power over capital stands the expropriation of the means of production, their subjection to the associated working class, therefore, the abolition of wage labor and of capital and of their mutual relations." ”

“ That much the history of the last fifty years has taught us. But so that the masses may understand what is to be done, long and persistent work is required, and it is this work that we are now performing with results that drive our enemies to despair. ”

“ The hunting and sporting rifles of the warehouses—even if the police has not rendered them useless by the removal of a part of the mechanism—are no match for the magazine rifle of the soldier even at close quarters. Up to 1848 one could make his own ammunition out of powder and lead, today the cartridge for each rifle model varies, being similar only in that all of them are the product of large industry and not to be extemporized, which renders most rifles useless unless one has the special ammunition made for them. ”

“ In France, of course, years were required to recover from the blood-letting of May, 1871. In Germany, however, where industry fertilized by the French milliard indemnity was developed with hot-house rapidity, the Social Democracy grew still more rapidly and effectively. Thanks to the discernment with which the workers utilized the general franchise, introduced in 1866, the astonishing growth of the party lies in incontestable figures open before all the world. ”

“ The irony of history turns everything upside down. We, the "revolutionists," the "upsetters," we thrive much better with legal than with illegal means in forcing an overthrow. The parties of order, as they call themselves, perish because of the legal conditions set up by themselves. ”

“ If the cities have become larger, so have the armies. Paris and Berlin, since 1848, have quadrupled, but their garrisons have grown more than that. These garrisons, by means of the railroads, may be doubled inside of twenty-four hours, and in forty-eight hours may swell to gigantic armies. The armament of these enormously augmented troops has become incomparably more effective. In 1848 the smooth-bore, muzzle-loaded percussion rifle, today the small-caliber, magazine breech loader, shooting four times as far, ten times as accurately and ten times as quickly as the former. ”

“ During the election agitation, it furnished us a means, such as there is no other, of getting in touch with the masses of the people that are still far removed from us, of forcing all parties to defend their views and actions against our attacks before all the people ”

“ Here statistics are an indispensable aid, but they always limp behind the event. When dealing with current contemporary history one will often be forced to treat this, the most decisive factor, as constant and to consider the economic situation found at the beginning of a given period as governing the entire period without variation, or to consider only such changes of the situation as emanate from events plainly visible and therefore also quite manifest. ”

“ But if this does not succeed, then, even in case of numerical inferiority on the part of the military, the advantage of better equipment and training, the unity of command, the well-planned application of the forces at hand, discipline-all that comes into play. The utmost the insurrection can accomplish in a tactical action is the proper erection and defense of a single barricade. ”

“ Mutual support, the disposition and the use of reserves, in short, that which is needed for the mere defense of a section of a city, to say nothing of the whole of it, the indispensable cooperation and dovetailing of the separate commands can be attained in but small measure, often not at all. The concentration of battle forces upon one decisive point is thereby made impossible. ”

“ Even if the general franchise had offered no other advantage than to permit us to count our numbers once every three years;—that through the regularly demonstrated, unexpectedly rapid growth of the vote, it increased the certainty of victory on the part of the workers in the same measure that it increased the panic of the foe, and thereby became our best means of propaganda ”