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 con- 
scious 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 ele- 
mental 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 con- 
scious 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 con- 
trol. 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 dan- 
gerous, provided in general that the right of “inscribing one- 
self” in the Party is not allowed. Admission under such 
circumstances may often be useful in securing an open, 
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