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LENIN ON ORGANIZATION
By means of legalization, therefore, we cannot solve the problem of creating a trade union organization which will be as little conspiratorial and as widely extensive as possible (but we should be extremely glad if the Zubatovs and the Ozerovs provided even the slightest opportunity for such a solution,—to which end we must fight them as energetically as possible!) There only remains the path of secret trade union organizations; and we must offer every possible assistance to the workers, who (as we know) have already adopted this path. Trade union organizations may not only be of tremendous value in developing and consolidating the economic struggle, but may also become a very useful auxiliary to the political, agitational and revolutionary organizations. In order to achieve this purpose, and in order to guide the beginnings of the trade union movement in the direction desired by the Social Democrats, we must first fully understand the foolishness of the plan of organization with which the Petersburg economists have been occupying themselves for nearly five years. That plan is described both in the "Statutes for a Workers' Fund" of July, 1897, and in the "Statutes for
to see that these facts tell against it and prove that the working class movement is assuming menacing proportions in the eyes of the government." (Two Congresses," p. 27) For this we have to blame the "dogmatism" of the "blind and perverted" orthodox. They obstinately refuse to see the yard-high wheat and are fighting down the inch-high tares! Does this not reveal a "distorted sense of perspective with regard to the Russian working class movement?" (idem. p. 27).
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