LENIN ON ORGANIZATION 
to make sure that a decision shall be really dem- 
ocratic, it is not sufficient to gather together del- 
egates of the organization. It is necessary that all 
the members of the organization, in electing the 
delegates, shall independently and each one for him- 
self express their opinion on all controversial ques- 
tions which interest the whole of the organization. 
Democratically organized parties and leagues can- 
not, on principle, avoid taking the opinion of the 
whole of the membership without exception, par- 
ticularly in important cases, when the question un- 
der consideration is of some political action in which 
the mass is to act independently as for example, a 
strike, elections, the boycott of some local estab- 
lishment, etc. 
“A strike cannot be conducted with enthusiasm, 
elections cannot be intelligently conducted, unless 
every worker voluntarily and intelligently decides 
for himself whether he should strike or not, wheth- 
er he should vote for the Cadets* or not, etc. Not all 
political questions can be decided by a referendum 
of the whole Party membership. This would entail 
continuous, wearying and fruitless voting. But the 
important questions, especially those which are 
directly connected with definite action by the 
masses themselves, must be decided democratically, 
not only by a gathering of delegates, but by a ref- 
erendum of the whole membership. 
“That is why the Petersburg Committee has re- 
* (Cadets is the abbreviated title of the Constitutional 
Democrats, i. e., the bourgeois liberals.—Translator. 
20