Page:Lenin - What Is To Be Done - tr. Joe Fineberg (1929).pdf/75

 about which we shall have to speak farther on in connection with the question of training the masses in revolutionary activity. The Economists and the modern terrorists spring from. a common root, namely, subservience to spontaneity, which we dealt with in a previous chapter as a general phenomenon, and which we shall now examine in relation to its effect upon political activity and the political struggle·. At first sight, our assertion may appear paradoxical, for the difference between these two appears to be so enormous: One stresses the "drab every-day struggle" and the other calls for the most self-sacrificing struggle of individuals. But this is not a paradox. The Economists and terrorists mere;y bow to different poles of spontaneity: The Economists bow to the spontaneity of the "pure and simple" labour movement while the terrorists bow to the spontaneity of the passionate indignation of the intellectuals, who are either incapable of linking up the revolutionary struggle with the labour movement, or lack the opportunity to do so. It is very difficult indeed for those who have lost their belief, or who have never believed, that this was possible, to find some other outlet for their indignation and revolutionary energy than terror. Thus, both the forms of subservience to spontaneity we have mentioned are nothing more nor less than a beginning in the carrying out of the notorious Credo programme. Let the workers carry on their "economic struggle against the employers and the government" (we apologise to the author of Credo for expressing his views in Martynov's words! But we think we have the right to do so because even the Credo says that in the economic struggle the Workers "come up against the political régime"), and let the intellectuals conduct the political struggle by their own efforts—with the aid of terror, of course! This is an absolutely logical and inevitable conclusion which must be insisted upon—even though those who are beginning to carry out this programme did not themselves realise that it is inevitable. Political activity has its logic quite apart from the consciousness of those who, with the best intentions, call either for terror, or for giving the economic struggle itself a political character. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and, in this case, good intentions cannot save one from being spontaneously drawn "along the line of least resistance," along the line of the purely bourgeois Credo programme. Surely it is not an accident that many Russian liberals—avowed liberals and liberals