LENIN ON ORGANIZATION
The authors describe how during the early days of
the trade union movement the British workers
thought it an essential principle of democracy that
every member should take part in the management
of the unions. Not only was every question decided
by the general vote of the members, but offices
were distributed among the members in turn. It
required a long historical experience before the
workers came to realize the folly of this conception
of democracy and the necessity both for representative
 institutions and for professional officials.
Several cases of trade union bankruptcy were
required before the workers realized that the question
 of the proportional relation between contributions
 and allowances could not be decided by a
democratic vote, but required the advice of an
actuary expert. Take also Kautsky’s book on Parliament
 and National Legislation, and you will find
that the conclusions of the theoretical Marxist
coincide with the lessons derived from the long
practice of ‘‘spontaneously” organized workers.
Kautsky is definitely opposed to the primitive conception
 of democracy advocated by Rittinghaus and
scoffs at people who are prepared to demand in the
name of democracy that “popular newspapers
should be directly edited by the people”: he demonstrates
 the necessity for professional journalists,
parliamentarians, etc., for the Social Democratic
leadership of the class struggle of the proletariat;
he attacks the “Socialism of anarchists and literateurs”
 who in their “search for effect” advocate

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