Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 26 - From Marx to Mao

114V. I. LENINpropagating it among the people. But what is to be done if ourconception of democracy is somewhat different from theirs?In our opinion, to ease the incredible burdens and miseriesof the war and also to heal the terrible wounds the warhas inflicted on the people, revolutionary democracy isneeded, revolutionary measures of the kind described in theexample of the distribution of housing accommodation in theinterests of the poor. Exactly the same procedure must beadopted in both town and country for the distribution ofprovisions, clothing, footwear, etc., in respect of the landin the rural districts, and so forth. For the administration ofthe state in this spirit we can at once set in motion a stateapparatus consisting of ten if not twenty million people, anapparatus such as no capitalist state has ever known. Wealone can create such an apparatus, for we are sure of thefullest and devoted sympathy of the vast majority of thepopulation. We alone can create such an apparatus, becausewe have class-conscious workers disciplined by long capitalist“schooling” (it was not for nothing that we went to learnin the school of capitalism), workers who are capable offorming a workers’ militia and of gradually expanding it(beginning to expand it at once) into a militia embracingthe whole people. The class-conscious workers must lead, butfor the work of administration they can enlist the vast massof the working and oppressed people.It goes without saying that this new apparatus is boundto make mistakes in taking its first steps. But did not thepeasants make mistakes when they emerged from serfdomand began to manage their own affairs? Is there any wayother than practice by which the people can learn to governthemselves and to avoid mistakes? Is there any way otherthan by proceeding immediately to genuine self-governmentby the people? The chief thing now is to abandon theprejudiced bourgeois-intellectualist view that only specialofficials, who by their very social position are entirelydependent upon capital, can administer the state. The chiefthing is to put an end to the state of affairs in which bourgeoisofficials and “socialist” ministers are trying to governin the old way, but are incapable of doing so and, after sevenmonths, are faced with a peasant revolt in a peasant country!The chief thing is to imbue the oppressed and the working