LENIN ON ORGANIZATION 
be a fictitious control? A widely distributed fiction 
is not beneficial, it is dangerous. “We should only 
be giad if every striker and every demonstrator will 
be able to declare in explanation of his conduct 
that he is a member of the Party.” Indeed? Should 
every striker have the right to dcelare he is a mem- 
ber of the Party? By this assertion Comrade 
Martov at once reduces his error to an absurdity; 
he reduces Social Democracy to strike-making and 
repeats the false conclusions of Akimov. We 
should be glad only if the Social Democrats succeed 
in leading every strike, for it is the obvious and 
direct duty of the Social Democrats to lead every 
manifestation of the class struggle of the proleta- 
riat, and the strike is one of the most profound and 
powerful manifestations of that struggle. But we 
should be “khvostists” if we identified this primitive 
form of struggle—and trade unionism is ipso facto 
a primitive form with the many-sided and conscious 
struggle of the Social Democrats. We should be 
mere opportunists if we knowingly legitimized a 
falsehood, if we allowed every striker the right of 
“declaring himself a member of the Party,” for in 
the majority of cases such a declaration would be a 
false declaration. We should be lulling ourselves 
with naive and sentimental dreams if we attempted 
to convince ourselves and others that every striker 
can be a Social Democrat and a member of the 
Social Democratic Party, remembering the endless 
disintegration, oppression and stupefication which 
under capitalism inevitably weighs upon exceedingly 
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