Page:Vladimir Ilyich Lenin - On Organization (1926).pdf/77

That may very well be. I am not out for names. But this "organization without members" can do everything that is required and it will from the very outset guarantee the closest contact between our future trade unionists and Socialism. Only an incorrigible utopian would want a wide organization of workers, with elections, reports, universal suffrage, etc.

The moral is simple. If we begin with the solid foundation of a strong organization of revolutionaries, we can guarantee the stability of the movement as a whole and carry out the aims of both Social Democracy and trade unionism. If, however, we begin with a wide workers' organization, supposed to be most "open" to the masses, when as a matter of fact it will be most open to the gendarmes and will make the revolutionaries most open to the police, we shall achieve the aims neither of Social Democracy nor of trade unionism, we shall not escape from our amateurishness, and by our disintegration, our eternal dispersedness, We shall make the masses most open to the trade unions of the Zubatov and Ozerov type.

What should be the functions of the organization of revolutionaries? We shall deal with this in detail. But first let us examine a very typical argument of the terrorist, who (wretched man) is here too hardly to be distinguished from the economist. In the journal intended for workers, "Svoboda" (6) (No. 1), there is an article entitled "Organization," the author of which tries to defend