Page:Friedrich Engels - The Revolutionary Act - tr. Henry Kuhn (1922).pdf/30

 class can oppose these same institutions. We participated in the elections to the Diets in the Federal States, Municipal Councillors, Industrial Courts; in short, we contested with the bourgeoisie every post in the filling of which a sufficiently large part of the proletariat had a say. And so it came about that bourgeoisie and Government feared far more the legal than the illegal action of the workers' party, more the successes of the elections than those of rebellion.

For here too the conditions of the struggle have essentially been altered. The rebellion of the old style, the street fight behind barricades, which up to 1848 gave the final decision, has become antiquated.

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. 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