Page:Lenin - What Is To Be Done - tr. Joe Fineberg (1929).pdf/112

 us take the last-mentioned set of rules, since it is drawn up in greater detail. The body of it consists of fifty-two paragraphs. Twenty-three paragraphs deal with structure, the method of conducting business, and the competence of the "workers circles," which are to be organised in every factory ("not more than ten persons") and which elect "central (factory) groups." "The central group," says paragraph 2, "observes all that goes on in its factory or workshop and keeps a record of events. …" "The central group presents to the contributors a monthly report on the state of the funds" (Par. 17), etc. Ten paragraphs are devoted to the "district organisation" and nineteen to the highly complex connection between the Committee of the Workers' Organisation and the Committee of the St. Petersburg League of Struggle (elected by each district and by the "executive groups"—"groups of propagandists for maintaining contact with the provinces and with exiles abroad, and for managing stores, publications and funds").

Social-Democracy—"executive groups" connected with the economic struggle of the workers! It would be difficult to find a m striking illustration than this of how far the Economists' ideas deviate from Social-Democracy on the question of trade unionism and how foreign to them is the idea that a Social-Democrat must concern himself first and foremost with an organisation of revolutionists, capable of guiding the whole proletarian struggle for emancipation. To talk of "the political emancipation of the working class" and the struggle against "tsarist despotism," and at the same time to write statutes like these, indicates a complete failure to understand what the real political tasks of the Social-Democrats are. Not one of the fifty or so paragraphs reveals the slightest glimmer of understanding that it is necessary to conduct the widest possible political agitation among the masses, an agitation that deals with every phase of Russian absolutism, and with every aspect of the various social classes in Russia. Rules like these are of no use even for the achievement of trade union aims, quite apart from political aims, for that requires organisation according to trade, and yet the rules do not contain a single reference to this.

But most characteristic of all, perhaps, is the amazing top-heaviness of the whole "system," which attempts to unite every factory with the "committee" by a long string of uniform and ludicrously petty rules and a three-stage system of election. Hemmed in by the narrow outlook of Economism, the mind is lost in details which