Page:Lenin - What Is To Be Done - tr. Joe Fineberg (1929).pdf/41

 First of all, the overwhelming of consciousness by spontaneity to which we referred above, also took place spontaneously. This may sound like a pun, but alas, it is the bitter truth. It did not take place as a result of an open struggle between two diametrically opposed points-of-view, in which one gained the victory over the other; it occurred because an increasing number of "old" revolutionaries were "torn away" by the gendarmes, and because increasing numbers of "young" members and "V. V.'s of Russian Social-Democracy" came upon the scene. Every one, who I shall not say has participated in the contemporary Russian movement, but who has at least breathed its atmosphere, knows perfectly well that this was so. And the reason why we, nevertheless, strongly urge the reader to ponder well this universally known fact, and why we quote the facts, as an illustration, so to speak, about the Rabocheye Dyelo as it first appeared, and about the controversy between the "old" and the "young" at the beginning of 1897, is that certain persons are speculating on the public's (or the very youthful youth's) ignorance of these facts, and are boasting of their "democracy." We shall return to this point farther on.

Secondly, in the very first literary manifestation of Economism, we observe the extremely curious and highly characteristic phenomenon—from the point-of-view of the differences prevailing among contemporary Social-Democrats—that the adherents of the "pure and simple" labour movement, the worshippers of the closest "organic" (the term used by Rabocheye Dyelo) contacts with the proletarian struggle, the opponents of the non-labour intelligentsia (notwithstanding that it is a Socialist intelligentsia) are compelled, in order to defend their positions, to resort to the arguments of the bourgeois "pure and simple" trade unionists. This shows that right from the outset, Rabochaya Mysl began unconsciously to carry out the programme of the Credo. This shows (what the Rabocheye Dyelo cannot understand) that subservience to the spontaneity of the labour movement, the belittling of the rôle of "the conscious element," of the rôle of Social-Democracy, means, whether one likes it or not, growth of influence of bourgeois ideology among the workers. All those who talk about "exaggerating the importance of ideology," about exaggerating the rôle of the conscious elements, etc., imagine that the pure and simple 1abour movement