| EAN
LENIN ON ORGANIZATION iy a
2 pibligna 92
of professional revolutionaries. If these : ondfiohy" fo &
exist, something more than “democracy” A guaran- =
teed, namely, complete fraternal confidencé\afiron i.
revolutionaries. For us this is absolutely ess 1 pi
since in Russia there can be no question of its
replacement by general democratic control. It is a
great mistake to think that because real ‘“demo-
cratic” control is impossible, the members of a
revolutionary organization remain uncontrolled.
They have no time to think of the game of demo-
cratic forms (democracy within a compact body of
comrades enjoying mutual confidence in each
other), but they are keenly alive to their responsi-
bility, knowing from experience that in order to
get rid of an undesirable member, an organization
of true revolutionaries will stop at nothing. Ay,
we have a fairly developed Russian (and interna-
tional) revolutionary public opinion, already with
a history behind it, which punishes with merciless
severity every abuse of duty by a comrade (and
real “democracy,” not the game of democracy, is a
part of the conception ‘comrade’!) Bear all this
in mind, and you will notice the unpleasant odor
of the foreign game of general elections, which
hangs about the idle chatter and resolutions on
“anti-democratic tendencies”!
It should be said that the second source of the
idle chatter, i. e. naivete, is fed by a prevalent
vagueness as to what democracy really means. In
the Webbs’ book on British Trade Unionism there
is a curious chapter entitled “Primitive Democracy.”
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