Page:Vladimir Ilyich Lenin - On Organization (1926).pdf/22

to make sure that a decision shall be really democratic, it is not sufficient to gather together delegates of the organization. It is necessary that all the members of the organization, in electing the delegates, shall independently and each one for himself express their opinion on all controversial questions which interest the whole of the organization. Democratically organized parties and leagues cannot, on principle, avoid taking the opinion of the whole of the membership without exception, particularly in important cases, when the question under consideration is of some political action in which the mass is to act independently as for example, a strike, elections, the boycott of some local establishment, etc.

"A strike cannot be conducted with enthusiasm, elections cannot be intelligently conducted, unless every worker voluntarily and intelligently decides for himself whether he should strike or not, whether he should vote for the Cadets^[1] or not, etc. Not all political questions can be decided by a referendum of the whole Party membership. This would entail continuous, wearying and fruitless voting. But the important questions, especially those which are directly connected with definite action by the masses themselves, must be decided democratically, not only by a gathering of delegates, but by a referendum of the whole membership.

"That is why the Petersburg Committee has re-

1. ↑ Cadets is the abbreviated title of the Constitutional Democrats, i. e., the bourgeois liberals.—Translator.