Page:Lenin - What Is To Be Done - tr. Joe Fineberg (1929).pdf/59

 confine themselves entirely to the economic struggle; they must not even allow the organisation of economic exposures to become the predominant part of their activities. We must actively take up the political education of the working class, and the development of its political consciousness. Now, after Zarya and Iskra have made the first attack upon Economism "all are agreed" with this (although some agreed only nominally, as we shall soon prove).

The question now arises: What does political education mean? Is it sufficient to confine oneself to the propaganda of working-class hostility to autocracy? Of course not. It is not enough to explain to the workers that they are politically oppressed (any more than it was to explain to them that their interests were antagonistic to the interests of the employers). Advantage must be taken of every concrete example of this oppression for the purpose of agitation (in the same way as we began to use concrete examples of economic oppression for the purpose of agitation). And inasmuch as political oppression affects all sorts of classes in society, inasmuch as it manifests itself in various spheres of life and activity, in industrial life, civic life, in personal and family life, in religious life, scientific life, etc., etc., is it not evident that we shall not be fulfilling our task of developing the political consciousness of the Workers if we do not undertake the organisation of the political exposure of autocracy in all its aspects? In order to agitate over concrete examples of oppression, these examples must he exposed (in the same way as it was necessary to expose factory evils in order to carry on economic agitation).

One would think that this was clear enough. It turns out, however, that "all" are agreed that it is necessary to develop political consciousness in all its aspects, only in words. It turns out that Rabocheye Dyelo, for example, has not only failed to take up the task of organising (or to make a start in organising) in all-sided political exposure, but is even trying to drag Iskra, which has undertaken this task, away from it. Listen to this: "The political struggle of the working class is merely [it is precisely not "merely"] a more developed, a wider and more effective form of economic struggle. [Programme of Rabocheye Dyelo published in No. 1, p. 3.] "The Social-Democrats are now confronted with the task of, as far as possible, giving the economic struggle itself a political character." [Martynov, Rabacheye Dyelo, No. 10, p. 42]. "The economic struggle is the most widely applicable method of drawing the masses into