Friedrich Engels on General strike

“Great importance was also attached to the general strike at the Geneva Congress of the Alliance held September 1, 1873, although it was universally admitted that this required a well-formed organization of the working class and plentiful funds. And there's the rub. ... The governments, especially if encouraged by political abstention, will never allow the organization or the funds of the workers to reach such a level.”

“In the Bakuninst program a general strike is the lever employed by which the social revolution is started. One fine morning all the workers in all the industries of a country, or even of the whole world, stop work, thus forcing the propertied classes either humbly to submit within four weeks at the most, or to attack the workers, who would then have the right to defend themselves and use this opportunity to pull down the entire old society.”