Page:Lenin - What Is To Be Done - tr. Joe Fineberg (1929).pdf/69

 into the background the task of 'presenting to the government concrete demands for legislative and administrative measures' that promise certain palpable results" (or demands for social reforms, that is if we are permitted just once again to employ the old terminology of old humanity, which has not yet grown to Martynov's level). We suggest that the reader compare this thesis with the following tirade:

The author of this tirade expresses more straightforwardly, more clearly and frankly, the very idea which, although Lomonosov-Martynov discovered it himself, actually originated in the mind of R. M. in the Special Supplement of Rabochaya Mysl [p. 15].

In advancing against Iskra his "theory" of "raising the activity of the masses of the workers," Martynov, as a matter of fact, displayed a striving to diminish this activity, because he declared the very economic struggle before which all Economists grovel to be the preferable, the most important and "the most widely applicable means of rousing this activity, and the widest field for it." This error is such a characteristic one, precisely because it is not peculiar to Martynov alone. As a matter of fact, it is possible to "raise the activity of the masses of the workers" only provided this activity is not restricted entirely to "political agitation on an economic basis." And one of the fundamental conditions for the necessary expansion of political agitation is the organisation of all-sided political exposure. In no other way can the masses he trained in political consciousness and revolutionary activity except by means of such exposures. Hence, to conduct such activity is one of the most important functions of international Social-Democracy as a whole, for even in countries where political liberty exists, there is still a field for work of exposure, although in such countries the work