LENIN ON ORGANIZATION
Does not everybody know that there is a need for
popular literature for intellectuals too? And is not
such literature in fact being written? Imagine the
writer of an article on the organization of university
or high school students speaking as though it were
a great discovery, of the need for organizing the
“average student.” A man who wrote such stuff
would be laughed at, and rightly so. Give wus, he
will be told, your ideas on organization, if you have
any, and we ourselves will decide who is “average,”
who higher and who lower. If you have any idea
on organization of your own all your agonizing
over the “masses” and the “average man’ will be
simply tedious. Remember that the questions of
“politics” and ‘‘organization’ are themselves so
serious that they must only be spoken of seriously.
We can, and we must, prepare the workers (and the
university and high school students too) so as to
be able to talk to them about these questions, but
once you have started talking about them don’t
take refuge behind the “average man” and the
“masses” and don’t attempt to put us off with witticisms
 and phrases*.
* “Svoboda,” No. 1., article on “Organization,” p. 66: “The
heavy tread of the working class giant will support every
demand advanced in the name of Russian Labor.” Written
with a capital letter of course! The same writer exclaims:
“I am by no means hostile to the intellectuals, but . . .”
(this is the but which Stshedrin rendered by the words
“ears do not grow above the forehead!”) “but it always angers
me frightfully when a man utters a lot of fine phrases and
expects them to be accepted because of his own beauty or
other merits.” (P. 62). Yes, “it angers me frightfully” too.

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