fered to the point of torture from the realisation that we were proving ourselves to be amateurs at a moment in history when we might have been able to say—paraphrasing a well-known epigram: "Give us an organisation of revolutionists, and we shall overturn the whole of Russia!" And the more I recall the burning sense of shame I then experienced, the more bitter are my feelings towards those pseudo-Social-Democrats whose teachings bring disgrace on the calling of a revolutionist, who fail to understand that our task is not to degrade the revolutionist to the level of an amateur, but to exalt the amateur to the level of a revolutionist.
D. The Scope of Organisational Work
We have already heard from B-v about "the lack of revolutionary forces fit for action which is felt not only in St. Petersburg, but over the whole of Russia." No one, we suppose, will dispute this fact. But the question is, how is it to be explained? B-v writes:
We shall not enter in detail into the historical causes of this phenomenon; we shall state merely that a society demoralised by prolonged political reaction and split by past and present economic changes, advances from its own ranks an extremely small number of persons fit for revolutionary work; that the working class does of course advance from its own ranks revolutionary whorkers who to some extent pass into the ranks of the illegal organisations, but the number of such revolutionists are inadequate to meet the requirements of the times. This is more particularly the case because the workers engaged for eleven and a half hours a day in the factory may perhaps be able to fulfil mainly the functions of an agitator; but propaganda and organisation, delivery and reproduction of illegal literature, issuing leaflets, etc., are duties which must necessarily fall mainly upon the shoulders of an extremely small intelligent force. [Rabocheye Dyelo, No. 6, pp. 38–39.]
There are many points in the above upon which we disagree with B-v, particularly with those points we have emphasised, and which most strikingly reveal that, although suffering (as every practical worker who thinks over the position would be) from our primitive methods, B-v cannot, because he is so ground down by Economism, find the way out of this intolerable situation. It is not true to say that society advances from its ranks few persons fit for "work." It advances very many but we are unable to make use of them all. The critical, transitional state of our movement in this connection may be formulated as follows: There are no people—yet there are enormous numbers of people. There are enormous numbers of people, because the working class and the most diverse strata of
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