Page:Friedrich Engels - The Revolutionary Act - tr. Henry Kuhn (1922).pdf/17

 added that the "means of distribution" should also be assigned to society. It would be difficult for these gentlemen to explain what are these means of distribution as distinct from the means of production and exchange—unless political means of distribution are meant, taxes, doles to the poor, including the Sachsenwald (communal forest) and other endowments. But these, in the first place, are means of distribution already in the possession of society, the State or the Municipality; and, second, it is we who would abolish them.

At the time the February revolution began, in so far as our conception of the conditions and the course of revolutionary movements are concerned, we were all subject to the prevailing historic experience, notably that of France. It was just the latter that had dominated the entire European history since 1789, and from whom now again had come the signal for a general transformation. And thus, inevitably and as a matter of course, were our conceptions of the nature and course of the "social" revolution proclaimed in Paris in February, 1848, the revolution of the proletariat, strongly colored by the memory of the prototypes of 1789 and 1830. And, finally, when the Paris uprising found its echo in the victorious insurrections in Vienna, Milan and Berlin; when all Europe was drawn into the movement, all the way to the Russian border; when in June the first great battle for dominance was fought in