LENIN ON ORGANIZATION
ment only in words; as a matter of fact the same
clique of leaders is always in evidence. It is always
the same Bebel and the same Liebknecht year in
and year out. Your delegates are supposed to be
elected from among the workers, but they are just
as unchangeable as the officials appointed by the
Emperor!” But the Germans only smile contemp-
tuously in answer to these demagogic attempts to
set the “crowd” against the “leaders,” to arouse
turbid and vain instincts in the former and to rob
the movement of its solidity and stability by under-
mining the faith of the masses in its “ten leaders.”
With the Germans political ideas have already suf-
ficiently developed and enough political experience
has been accumulated to make them understand
that without the “ten” talented and experienced
leaders (and talented men are not born by hun-
dreds) who have been professionally trained and
have passed through a long course of schooling
and who work in brilliant cooperation with each
other, no class in modern society is capable of con-
ducting a determined struggle. The Germans have
known many demagogues who have flattered the
“hundred fools,” exalting them above the “ten wise
men,” who have extolled the “muscular fists” of
the masses, and (like Most and Hasselman) spurred
them on to reckless “revolutionary” action and
sown mistrust towards the tried and trusted leaders.
It was only by stubbornly and bitterly combatting
every demagogic manifestation within the Socialist
movement that German Socialism managed to
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