Opening

Rabocheye Dyelo’s assertions—which we have analysed—that the economic struggle is the most widely applicable means of political agitation and that our task now is to give the economic struggle itself a political character, etc., not only express a restricted view of our political tasks, but also of our organisational tasks. The “economic struggle against the employers and the government” does not in the least require—and therefore such a struggle can never give rise to—an All-Russian centralised organisation that will combine, in a general attack, all the numerous manifestations of political opposition, protest and indignation, an organisation that will consist of professional revolutionaries and be led by the real political leaders of the whole people. And this can be easily understood. The character of the organisation of every institution is naturally and inevitably determined by the character of the activity that institution conducts. Consequently, Rabocheye Dyelo, by the above-analysed assertions, not only sanctifies and legitimatises the narrowness of political activity, but also the narrowness of organisational work. And in this case also, as always, its consciousness shrinks before spontaneity. And yet, subservience to spontaneously rising forms of organisation, the lack of appreciation of the narrowness and primitiveness of our organisational work, of our “primitive methods” in this most important sphere, the lack of such appreciation, I say, is a very serious complaint that our movement suffers from. It is not a complaint that comes with decline, of course, it isa complaint that comes with growth. But it is precisely at the present time, when the wave of spontaneous indignation is, as it were, lashing us leaders and organisers of the movement, that a most irreconcilable struggle must be carried on against all defence of sluggishness, against any legitimisation of restriction in this matter, and it is particularly necessary to rouse in all those participating in the practical work, in all who are just thinking of taking it up, discontent with the primitive methods that prevail among us and unshakable determination to get rid of them.