LENIN ON ORGANIZATION 
The authors describe how during the early days of 
the trade union movement the British workers 
thought it an essential principle of democracy that 
every member should take part in the management 
of the unions. Not only was every question decided 
by the general vote of the members, but offices 
were distributed among the members in turn. It 
required a long historical experience before the 
workers came to realize the folly of this conception 
of democracy and the necessity both for represent- 
ative institutions and for professional officials. 
Several cases of trade union bankruptcy were 
required before the workers realized that the ques- 
tion of the proportional relation between contribu- 
tions and allowances could not be decided by a 
democratic vote, but required the advice of an 
actuary expert. Take also Kautsky’s book on Par- 
liament and National Legislation, and you will find 
that the conclusions of the theoretical Marxist 
coincide with the lessons derived from the long 
practice of ‘‘spontaneously” organized workers. 
Kautsky is definitely opposed to the primitive con- 
ception of democracy advocated by Rittinghaus and 
scoffs at people who are prepared to demand in the 
name of democracy that “popular newspapers 
should be directly edited by the people”: he demon- 
strates the necessity for professional journalists, 
parliamentarians, etc., for the Social Democratic 
leadership of the class struggle of the proletariat; 
he attacks the “Socialism of anarchists and litera- 
teurs” who in their “search for effect” advocate 
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