LENIN ON ORGANIZATION
tween the formula of Comrade Martov and the
undeniable postulates of scientific Socialism which
he so unhappily quoted. “Our Party is the conscious
 expression of an unconscious process.” That
is true; and for that very reason it is wrong to
insist that “every striker” should be allowed to call
himself a member of the Party; for even if “every
striker” were not merely a spontaneous and elemental
 expression of a powerful class instinct and
of a class struggle which must inevitably lead to
a social revolution, but a conscious expression of
that process—then a general strike would not be
an anarchist phrase, our Party would immediately
embrace the whole working class and consequently
would immediately put an end to bourgeois society
...In order in actual fact to be a medium of conscious
 expression, the Party must be able to produce
such organizational relations as will secure a given
level of consciousness and systematically raise that
That is true only in cases where it becomes necessary to
remove persons from the Party (and even then it is only
half true, for a Party organization removes by means of a
vote and not by means of a boycott). But it is absolutely
untrue with regard to those, far more frequent, cases when
to remove would be foolish, and all that is needed is to control.
 To secure control the Central Committee might under
certain circumstances admit an organization which is not
altogether reliable, but very energetic, in order to test it, or
to attempt to direct it along the right path, or, through the
medium of control, to paralyze its partial deviations, etc. To
admit an organization under such circumstances is not dangerous,
 provided in general that the right of “inscribing oneself”
 in the Party is not allowed. Admission under such
circumstances may often be useful in securing an open,

158