LENIN ON ORGANIZATION 
tented to their organization and to launch that 
organization into a decisive struggle against the 
autocracy; on the contrary, that is their chief his- 
torical merit; their mistake was that they based 
themselves on a theory which in reality was not a 
revolutionary theory at all, and were unable to 
bind up their movement indissolubly with the class 
struggle proceeding within developing capitalist 
society. Only a gross misunderstanding of Marx- 
ism (or a ‘“Struvist understanding’ of Marxism) 
could give rise to the opinion that the growth of 
the elemental mass movement can save us from the 
obligation of creating as good, in fact, an incom- 
parably better, organization of revolutionaries than 
that of the Zemlevoltzi. On the contrary, the move- 
ment lays that obligation upon us; for the elemental 
struggle of the proletariat will not become the real 
“class struggle” of the proletariat until it is led by 
a strong organization of revolutionaries. 
Secondly, many people—including apparently B. 
Krichevsky (‘“Rabochie Delo,” No. 10, p. 18)—fail 
to understand the criticism which the Social Demo- 
crats have always levelled against the ‘“‘conspira- 
torial” view of the political struggle. We opposed, 
and of course always will oppose attempts to narrow 
down the political struggle to a conspiracy * but 
this naturally does not imply the denial of the neces- 
sity for a strong revolutionary organization. For 
* Of. “Tasks of the Russian Social Democrats,” p. 21, the 
criticism of P. L. Lavrov (Vol. 1 of the Russian edition of the 
collected works of Lenin.—Ed.). 
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