Page:Lenin - What Is To Be Done - tr. Joe Fineberg (1929).pdf/105

 intelligentsia imagined that the battle with this political police was a political struggle with the autocracy. That is why, to this day, it cannot understand "where the forces for the fight against the autocracy are to be obtained."

What matchless and magnificent contempt for the struggle with the police the worshippers (in the worst sense of the word) of the spontaneous movement display, do they not? They are prepared to justify our inability to organise secretly by the argument that with the spontaneous growth of the mass movement, it is not at all important for us to fight against the political police!! Not many are prepared to subscribe to this monstrous conclusion; our defects in revolutionary organisation has become too urgent a matter to permit them to do that. Martynov, for example, would also refuse to subscribe to this, but in his case it is only because he is unable, or lacks the courage, to think out his ideas to their logical conclusion. Indeed, does the "task" of prompting the masses to put forward concrete demands promising palpable results call for special efforts to create a stable, centralised, militant, organisation of revolutionists? Cannot such a "task" be carried out even by masses who do not "fight at all against the political police"? Moreover, can this task he fulfilled unless, in addition to the few leaders, it is undertaken by the workers (the overwhelming majority), who in fact are incapable of "fighting against the political police"? Such Workers, average people of the masses, are capable of displaying enormous energy and self-sacrifice in strikes and in street battles, with the police and troops, and are capable (in fact, are alone capable) of determining the whole outcome of our movement—but the struggle against the political police requires special qualities; it can be conducted only by professional revolutionists. And we must not only see to it that the masses "advance" concrete demands, but also that the masses of the workers "advance" an increasing number of such professional revolutionists from their own ranks. Thus we have reached the question of the relation between an organisation of professional revolutionists and the pure and simple labour movement. Although this question has found little reflection in literature, it has greatly engaged us "politicians," in conversations and controversies with those comrades who gravitate more or less towards Economism. It is a question that deserves special treatment. But before taking it up we shall deal with one other quotation in order to illustrate the position we hold in regard to the connection between primitiveness and Economism.