Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 13 - From Marx to Mao

104V. I. LENINthe working class, whose best representatives built the Social-DemocraticParty, for objective economic reasonspossesses a greater capacity for organisation than any otherclass in capitalist society. Without this condition an organisationof professional revolutionaries would be nothingmore than a plaything, an adventure, a mere signboard.What Is To Be Done? repeatedly emphasises this, pointingout that the organisation it advocates has no meaning apartfrom its connection with the “genuine re-olutionary classthat is spontaneously rising to struggle”. But the objectivemaximum ability of the proletariat to unite in a class isrealised through living people, and only through definiteforms of organisation. In the historical conditions thatprevailed in Russia in 1900-05, no organisation other thanIskra could have created the Social-Democratic LabourParty we now have. The professional revolutionary hasplayed his part in the history of Russian proletarian socialism.No power on earth can now undo this work, whichhas outgrown the narrow framework of the “circles” of1902-05. Nor can the significance of the gains already wonbe shaken by belated complaints that the militant tasksof the movement were exaggerated by those who at thattime had to fight to ensure the correct way of accomplishingthese tasks.I have just referred to the narrow framework of the circlesof the old Iskra period (beginning with issue No. 51,at the close of 1903, Iskra turned to Menshevism, proclaimingthat “a gulf separates the old and the new Iskra”—Trotsky’s words in a pamphlet approved by the MenshevikIskra editors). This circle spirit has to be briefly explainedto the present-day reader. The pamphlets What Is ToBe Done? and One Step Forward, Two Steps Back* publishedin this collection present to the reader a heated, at timesbitter and destructive, controversy within the circlesabroad. Undoubtedly, this struggle has many unattractivefeatures. Undoubtedly, it is something that could only bepossible in a young and immature workers’ movement inthe country in question. Undoubtedly, the present leadersof the present workers’ movement in Russia will have to* See present edition, Vol. 7, pp. 201-423.—Ed.