conviction nevertheless remains the cornerstone of the revolutionary ideology, since without it aspiring leaders would never subject themselves to the years of self-deprivation, to the sacrifice of desires and abilities, which their revolutionary profession demands. Without this conviction, the unquestioning devotion required by the ideology and the faithful service required by the organization would not be endured. But the conviction can no longer be communicated; one must neither lose it nor spread it; one must learn to keep it to oneself. A revolutionary leader who explicitly presented himself as the culmination, the apex, and the sole consequence of the proletariat's struggle for socialism, would not thereby increase his stature. In conditions of developed productive forces, the revolutionary ideology cannot be made to refer to any material consequences or historical social relations, because these consequences and relations are already past necessities and present fetters. The terms of the ideology must be made to refer only to other terms of the ideology: Revolution means Socialism, Socialism means Power, Power means Revolution. The terms of the ideology must be presented as abstract truths, as parts of the Idea. Only then can the coup of a Left-Leaning General be presented as a victory of the workers' movement. The General is no longer to be considered the representative, or even the consciousness, of the workers' movement. The General believes in the IDEA of the workers' movement, and the General's coup is therefore the victory of the IDEA. Thus it becomes possible for the idea of the workers' movement to seize State power without the workers themselves moving. In fact, this becomes the last possibility for revolutionary leaders in conditions where the workers will not move within the path historically experienced by the world socialist movement, the path to the seizure of State power. In such conditions, the independent movement of the working class, no matter how broad its sweep, no longer has interest for revolutionary leaders except as an illustration of failure. Such independent movement fails before it begins because the independence is above all independence from the idea of the seizure of State power, the central idea and experience of the world socialist movement. The Idea cannot be victorious if those struggling do not believe in it.
Revolutionary leaders who seize power in conditions of developed productive forces have to emphasize solely the idea of socialism, because in such conditions the seizure of State power can have no material consequences other than the rule of the idea. In order to lay the ground for the seizure of State power in conditions of developed productive forces, revolutionary organizers have to raise the consciousness of the revolutionary masses to a recognition of the Leader as the carrier of the Idea. If it was already true in countries oppressed by imperialism, it is even more true in countries not oppressed by imperialism that Ideology is the key to revolution and
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