Page:Friedrich Engels - The Revolutionary Act - tr. Henry Kuhn (1922).pdf/46

 has often been asked from capitalist sources, Where will you get the money from to buy the railroads and the other capitalist plants? The question is silly. No one proposes, nor will there be any occasion, to "buy" those things. Not silly, however, but extremely pertinent, is the question, Where will the proletariat get the billions needed to purchase such a military equipment?

Suppose the billions be forthcoming. Weapons, in the hands of men unskilled in their use, are dangerous, primarily, to those who hold them. Numbers, undrilled in military evolutions, only stand in one another's way. Where and how could these numbers practice in the use of their arms, and in the military drill? Where and how could they do the two things in secret? In public, of course, it would be out of question.

Suppose, finally, that the problem of the billions were solved, and the still more insuperable problem of exercise and drill be overcome. Suppose the military organization of the proletariat took the field and triumphed. And then—it would immediately have to dissolve. Not only will it not have been able to afford the incidental protection that the revolutionary union could afford to the proletariat while getting ready, but all its implements, all the money that it did cost, all the tricks it will have learned, and the time consumed in learning them, will be absolutely lost. Its swords will have to be turned into pruning hooks, its guns into ploughshares, its knowledge to be unlearned.