Page:Lenin - What Is To Be Done - tr. Joe Fineberg (1929).pdf/110

 has already been unfurled by the Vassilyevs and the Zubatovs. Support has been promised by the Ozerovs and the Wormses; and followers of the new tendency are to be found even among the workers. Henceforth, we must reckon with this tendency. How are we to reckon with it? About this there can be no two opinions among Social-Democrats. We must constantly expose any part played in this movement by the Zubatovs and the Vassilyevs, the gendarmes and the priests, and explain to the workers what their intentions are. We must also expose the conciliatory, "harmonious" undertones that will be heard in the speeches delivered by liberal politicians at the legal meetings of the workers, irrespective whether they proceed from an earnest conviction as to the desirability of the peaceful co-operation of the classes, whether they proceed from a desire to curry favour with the employers, or are simply the result of not being able to do otherwise. We must also warn the workers against the traps often set by the police, who at such open meetings and permitted societies spy out the "hotheads," and who, through the medium of the legal organisations, endeavour to plant their agent-provocateurs in the illegal organisations.

But while doing all this, we must not forget that in the long run the legalisation of the working class movement will be to our advantage, and not to the Zubatovs. On the contrary, our campaign of exposure will help to separate the tares from the wheat. What the tares are, we have already indicated. By the wheat we mean attracting the attention of increasing numbers of the more backward sections of the workers to social and political questions, and to freeing ourselves, the revolutionists, from functions which are essentially legal (the distribution of legal books, mutual aid, etc.), the development of which will inevitably provide us with an increasing quantity of material for agitation. Looked at from this point of view, we may say, and we should say to the Zubatovs and the Ozerovs, "Keep at it, gentlemen, do your best!" We shall expose your efforts to place a trap in the path of the workers (either by way of direct provocation, or by the "honest" corruption of the workers with the aid of Struveism), but we shall be grateful for every real step forward even if it is timid and vacillating; we shall say: Please continue! A real step forward can only result in a real, if small, extension of the workers' field of action. And every such extension must be to our advantage and help to hasten the advent of legal societies, not of the kind in which