It’s true that there’s a great force (among the people), an untapped force that can unquestionably match that of the government and the ruling classes combined; but unless it’s organized, this force never becomes powerful. The power of the State is itself based on the guaranteed advantage of organized forces over the raw power of the people.
Everyone can agree that the system that currently dominates and holds sway does so not on the basis of its grand ideas or moral values—which are nonexistent—but by means of the entire mechanical, bureaucratic, military, and political apparatus of the state, as well as the knowledge and wealth of the classes that have a stake in maintaining it.
Therefore, the question is not whether they (the people) can rise up and resist, but whether they’re capable of building an organization that will give them the means to achieve a victorious final outcome—not a fleeting victory, but a lasting and definitive triumph.
(See: the section titled “Necessidades da organização” in Bakunin’s “Conceito de liberdade”; translated from Portuguese)
CES 