Page:Vladimir Ilyich Lenin - On Organization (1926).pdf/100

tented to their organization and to launch that organization into a decisive struggle against the autocracy; on the contrary, that is their chief historical merit; their mistake was that they based themselves on a theory which in reality was not a revolutionary theory at all, and were unable to bind up their movement indissolubly with the class struggle proceeding within developing capitalist society. Only a gross misunderstanding of Marxism (or a "Struvist understanding" of Marxism) could give rise to the opinion that the growth of the elemental mass movement can save us from the obligation of creating as good, in fact, an incomparably better, organization of revolutionaries than that of the Zemlevoltzi. On the contrary, the movement lays that obligation upon us; for the elemental struggle of the proletariat will not become the real "class struggle" of the proletariat until it is led by a strong organization of revolutionaries.

Secondly, many people—including apparently B. Krichevsky ("Rabochie Delo," No. 10, p. 18)—fail to understand the criticism which the Social Democrats have always levelled against the "conspiratorial" view of the political struggle. We opposed, and of course always will oppose attempts to narrow down the political struggle to a conspiracy^[1] but this naturally does not imply the denial of the necessity for a strong revolutionary organization. For

1. ↑ Cf. "Tasks of the Russian Social Democrats," p, 21, the criticism of P. L. Lavroy (Vol. 1 of the Russian edition of the collected works of Lenin.—Ed.).