Page:Friedrich Engels - The Revolutionary Act - tr. Henry Kuhn (1922).pdf/8

 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.

Of course we were only the S. L. P. It was our word against the overwhelming evidence of Russia. To drown our voice the only thing considered necessary was to shout: "coward," "political compromiser," "reactionary." But here comes Engels—Marx's life-long co-worker—and who is more fit to interpret Marxism than he?—showing by facts and figures that the day of the barricade, of street corner revolution, of military action against the capitalist military forces, was a thing of the past already in the last half of the nineteenth century. Those shallow-minded phrasemongers, who have borrowed the plumage of the Russian revolution, have also continually bandied about the names of Marx and Engels. Naturally they were Marxian, Marxian to the core, since the Russian leaders were Marxian, and not to prate every moment of "mass action," street corner revolution and the "dictatorship of the proletariat," was nothing short of a betrayal of Marxism! Let them now get what comfort they can out of the authority of Engels on political vs. military action!

What is true of the strength of the military