LENIN ON ORGANIZATION
the Party.” Firstly, the active elements of the
Social Democratic Labor Party do not by any means
include organizations of revolutionaries only; they
also include a number of workers’ organizations,
which are regarded as Party organizations. Secondly,
 with what reason, by what force of logic,
can it be deduced from the fact of our being a class
Party that it is needless to differentiate between
those who belong to the Party and those who associate
 themselves with the Party? The very opposite,
 in fact, should be the case: just because differences
 in degree of consciousness and activity
exist, must differences in the degree of proximity
to the Party be established. We are a class Party,
and therefore almost the whole class (and in war
periods, in the period of civil war, absolutely the
whole class) must act under the guidance of our
Party and associate itself as closely as possible with
our Party; but it would be sheer sentimentality and
“khvostism” * to assert that the whole class, or
nearly the whole class, can under capitalism lift
itself to the level of consciousness and the activity
of the vanguard, its Social Democratic Party. There
is not a single intelligent Social Democrat who
believes that under capitalism even the trade union
organizations (which are more primitive and more
open to class-consciously developed sections), are
* “Khvostism” (from the Russian word “khvost,” a tail),
a term invented to describe leaders who allow themselves to
be dragged in the tail of a movement instead of leading it.—
Translator.

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