LENIN ON ORGANIZATION
tented to their organization and to launch that
organization into a decisive struggle against the
autocracy; on the contrary, that is their chief historical
 merit; their mistake was that they based
themselves on a theory which in reality was not a
revolutionary theory at all, and were unable to
bind up their movement indissolubly with the class
struggle proceeding within developing capitalist
society. Only a gross misunderstanding of Marxism
 (or a ‘“Struvist understanding’ of Marxism)
could give rise to the opinion that the growth of
the elemental mass movement can save us from the
obligation of creating as good, in fact, an incomparably
 better, organization of revolutionaries than
that of the Zemlevoltzi. On the contrary, the movement
 lays that obligation upon us; for the elemental
struggle of the proletariat will not become the real
“class struggle” of the proletariat until it is led by
a strong organization of revolutionaries.
Secondly, many people—including apparently B.
Krichevsky (‘“Rabochie Delo,” No. 10, p. 18)—fail
to understand the criticism which the Social Democrats
 have always levelled against the ‘“‘conspiratorial”
 view of the political struggle. We opposed,
and of course always will oppose attempts to narrow
down the political struggle to a conspiracy * but
this naturally does not imply the denial of the necessity
 for a strong revolutionary organization. For
* Of. “Tasks of the Russian Social Democrats,” p. 21, the
criticism of P. L. Lavrov (Vol. 1 of the Russian edition of the
collected works of Lenin.—Ed.).

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