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LENIN ON ORGANIZATION

ment only in words; as a matter of fact the same clique of leaders is always in evidence. It is always the same Bebel and the same Liebknecht year in and year out. Your delegates are supposed to be elected from among the workers, but they are just as unchangeable as the officials appointed by the Emperor!" But the Germans only smile contemptuously in answer to these demagogic attempts to set the "crowd" against the "leaders," to arouse turbid and vain instincts in the former and to rob the movement of its solidity and stability by undermining the faith of the masses in its "ten leaders." With the Germans political ideas have already sufficiently developed and enough political experience has been accumulated to make them understand that without the "ten" talented and experienced leaders (and talented men are not born by hundreds) who have been professionally trained and have passed through a long course of schooling and who work in brilliant cooperation with each other, no class in modern society is capable of conducting a determined struggle. The Germans have known many demagogues who have flattered the "hundred fools," exalting them above the "ten wise men," who have extolled the "muscular fists" of the masses, and (like Most and Hasselman) spurred them on to reckless "revolutionary" action and sown mistrust towards the tried and trusted leaders. It was only by stubbornly and bitterly combatting every demagogic manifestation within the Socialist movement that German Socialism managed to

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