LENIN ON ORGANIZATION
stronger and more widespread will be the faith in
the power of the Party. And in war, as we know,
the important thing is to inspire belief in one’s
strength not only in one’s own army, but also in
the enemy and the neutrals. Benevolent neutrality
may sometimes decide an issue. Given such an
organization, based upon a firm theoretical founda-
tion and having the Social Democratic organs at
its disposal there will be no cause to fear that the
movement will be diverted from its course by the
numerous ‘foreign’ elements which are attracted
to it (on the contrary, we see today how, owing
to our amateurishness, many Social Democrats are
placing excessive emphasis on the “Credo,” imagin-
ing themselves to be the only true Social Demo-
crats). In a word, specialization necessarily pre-
supposes, and in fact demands, centralization.
But B-v. while so excellently describing the neces-
sity for specialization, fails in our opinion to give
it its proper value in the second part of his argu-
ment. He says that the number of revolutionaries
of working class origin is not enough. That is
absolutely true; ‘the valuable information of a
close observer” fully bears out our own view of the
causes of the present crisis in the Social Democratic
Party and of the means to cure it. Not only are
the revolutionaries behind the elemental movement
of the masses in general, but even the revolutionary
workers are behind the elemental movement of the
working class masses. This fact is glaringly con-
firmed by the not merely stupid, but even politically
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