Friedrich Engels

“ With brains made red hot by the Russian revolution, it was impossible to argue, it was useless for the time being to show by overwhelming argument and reasoning that the working class in the open field, armed with sticks, stones and mallets, or anything hard which they could pick up as they "mass-actioned" out of the factory, would be nothing but easy food for destruction by the well equipped capitalist military, even though this be far outnumbered. ”

“ All force is not manifested in fighting; sometimes, to be sure, the fighting force is weakness itself. Organized working class force does not necessarily (in fact we should say under modern conditions, as a rule, and certainly not previous to the political victory) , imply military force. The Socialist Labor Party continually warned the Social Democracy in the decade before its fall, warned all purely political Socialists, that a victory at the ballot box without the adequately organized power of the proletariat to back it up, would mean the defeat of the Revolution. ”

“ This organized force of the Proletariat can exist only in the Socialist Industrial Union, organized in shop and factory, mill and mine, on the railroads and other means of communication, every place where the economic power of the capitalist holds sway today and wherever the worker, by the fact that he is the producer, the wielder and operator of the tools of production, will and must become the only true source of power the moment he is organized in a classconscious Socialist Revolutionary Union. ”