LENIN ON ORGANIZATION 
from functions which are essentially legal (the 
distribution of legal books, mutual aid, etc.) and 
the development of which will inevitably provide us 
with increasing material for agitation. Looked at 
from this point of view, we may say, and we should 
say, to the Zubatovs and the Ozerovs, “Do your 
best, gentlemen. To the extent that you are seek- 
ing to place a trap in the path of the workers 
(either by way of direct provocation or by the 
“honest” corruption of the workers with the aid of 
‘Struvism’) (5) we shall take care to expose you. 
But to the extent that you are making a real step 
forward—in a rather timid and zig-zag fashion, it 
is true—we say, Please, go on!” A real step for- 
ward can only result in a real, if small, extension 
of the field of action of the workers. And every 
Such extension must result to our advantage and 
help to hasten the advent of legal societies of the 
kind in which agent-provocateurs will not catch 
Socialists, but the Socialists will catch supporters. 
In a word, our task is to fight down the tares. It 
is not our business to grow wheat in window pots. 
By pulling up the tares we clear the soil for the 
Wheat. And while the old gentlemen are tending 
their flowerpot cultures, we must prepare reapers, 
hot only to cut down the tares of today, but also 
to harvest the wheat of tomorrow. * 
* The campaign of “Iskra’ against the tares evoked the 
following angry outbreak on the part of ‘“Rabochie Delo”: 
“For ‘Iskra’ the signs of the times lie not in the great events 
of the spring, but in the miserable attempts of the agents of 
Zubatov to ‘legalize’ the working class movement. It fails 
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