Page:Vladimir Ilyich Lenin - On Organization (1926).pdf/65

tion of revolutionaries}} as being more or less coincident with the conception "organization of workers." And this, in fact, is the case; so that when we talk of organization we are literally talking different languages. I recall, for instance, a conversation I once had with a fairly consistent economist (1) with whom I had not been previously acquainted. We were talking about the brochure "Who Will Make the Political Revolution?" and we were very soon agreed that its chief defect was that it ignored the question of organization. We were beginning to believe ourselves in complete agreement,—but as the conversation proceeded it appeared that we were talking of different things. My interlocutor accused the author of ignoring strike funds, mutual aid societies, etc., whereas I had in mind an organization of revolutionaries, as an essential factor in "making" the political revolution. Once that difference became clear I do not remember to have found myself in agreement with that economist on any question of importance again!

Wherein lay the source of our disagreement? It lay in the fact that on questions both of organization and politics the economists are forever lapsing from Social Democracy into trade unionism. The political struggle of the Social Democrats is far more extensive and complex than the economic Struggle of the workers against the masters and the government. Similarly (and indeed for that reason) the organizations of the revolutionary Social