ment[1] then the only choice is: Either bourgeois, or Socialist ideology. There is no middle course (for humanity has not created a "third" ideology, and, moreover, in a society torn by class antagonisms there can never be a non-class or above-class ideology). Hence, to belittle Socialist ideology in any way, to deviate from it in the slightest degree means strengthening bourgeois ideology. There is a lot of talk about spontaneity, hut the spontaneous development of the labour movement leads to its becoming subordinated to bourgeois ideology, it means developing according to the programme of the Credo, for the spontaneous labour movement is pure and simple trade unionism, is Nur-Gewerkschaftlerei, and trade unionism means the ideological subordination of the workers to the bourgeoisie. Hence, our task, the task of Social-Democracy, is to combat spontaneity, to divert the labour movement, with its spontaneous trade-unionist striving, from under the wing of the bourgeoisie, and to bring it under the wing of revolutionary Social-Democracy. The phrases employed by the authors of the "Economic" letter in Iskra, No. 12, about the efforts of the most inspired ideologists not being able to divert the labour movement from the path that is determined by the interaction of the material elements and the material environment are tantamount to the abandonment of Socialism, and if only the authors of this letter fearlessly thought out what they say to its logical conclusion, as every one who enters into the arena of literary and public activity should do, they would have nothing else to do but "fold their useless arms over their empty breasts" and … leave the field of action to the Struves and Prokopoviches who are dragging the labour movement "along the line of least resistance," i. e., along the line of bourgeois trade
- ↑ This does not mean, of course, that the workers have no part in creating such an ideology. But they take part not as workers, but as Socialist theoreticians, like Proudhon and Weitling; in other words, they take part only to the extent that they are able, more or less, to acquire the knowledge of their age and advance that knowledge. And in order that working men may be able to do this more often, efforts must he made to raise the level of the consciousness of the workers generally; care must he taken that the workers do not confine themselves to the artificially restricted limits of literature for workers but that they study general literature to an increasing degree. It would even be more true to say "were not confined," instead of "not confine themselves," because the workers themselves wish to read and do read all that is written for the intelligentsia and it is only a few (bad) intellectuals who believe that it is sufficient "for the workers" to tell them a few things about factory conditions, and to repeat over and over again what has long been known.
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