Lenin: The Most Wonderfull Text
from What to be Done, the end of chapter 5.2. CAN A NEWSPAPER BE A COLLECTIVE ORGANISER?
“We should dream!” I wrote these words and became alarmed. I imagined myself sitting
at a “unity conference” and opposite me were the Rabocheye Dyelo editors and contribu-
tors. Comrade Martynov rises and, turning to me, says sternly: “Permit me to ask you, has
an autonomous editorial board the right to dream without first soliciting the opinion of the
Party committees?” He is followed by Comrade Krichevsky; who (philosophically deep-
ening Comrade Martynov, who long ago rendered Comrade Plekhanov more profound)
continues even more sternly: “I go further. I ask, has a Marxist any right at all to dream,
knowing that according to Marx, mankind always sets itself the tasks it can solve and that
tactics is a process of the growth of Party tasks which grow together with the Party?”
The very thought of these stern questions sends a cold shiver down my spine and makes
me wish for nothing but a place to hide in. I shall try to hide behind the back of Pisarev.
“There are rifts and rifts,” wrote Pisarev of the rift between dreams and reality. “My
dream may run ahead of the natural march of events or may fly off at a tangent in a direction
in which no natural march of events will ever proceed. In the first case my dream will not
cause any harm; it may even support and augment the energy of the working men.... There
is nothing in such dreams that would distort or paralyse labour-power. On the contrary, if
man were completely deprived of the ability to dream in this way, if he could not from time
to time run ahead and mentally conceive, in an entire and completed picture, the product
to which his hands are only just beginning to lend shape, then I cannot at all imagine what
stimulus there would be to induce man to undertake and complete extensive and strenuous
work in the sphere of art, science, and practical endeavour.... The rift between dreams
and reality causes no harm if only the person dreaming believes seriously in his dream, if
he attentively observes life, compares his observations with his castles in the air, and if,
generally speaking, he works conscientiously for the achievement of his fantasies. If there
is some connection between dreams and life then all is well.”
Of this kind of dreaming there is unfortunately too little in our movement. And the
people most responsible for this are those who boast of their sober views, their “closeness”
to the “concrete”, the representatives of legal criticism and of illegal “tail-ism”.
“We should dream!” I wrote these words and became alarmed. I imagined myself sitting
at a “unity conference” and opposite me were the Rabocheye Dyelo editors and contribu-
tors. Comrade Martynov rises and, turning to me, says sternly: “Permit me to ask you, has
an autonomous editorial board the right to dream without first soliciting the opinion of the
Party committees?” He is followed by Comrade Krichevsky; who (philosophically deep-
ening Comrade Martynov, who long ago rendered Comrade Plekhanov more profound)
continues even more sternly: “I go further. I ask, has a Marxist any right at all to dream,
knowing that according to Marx, mankind always sets itself the tasks it can solve and that
tactics is a process of the growth of Party tasks which grow together with the Party?”
The very thought of these stern questions sends a cold shiver down my spine and makes
me wish for nothing but a place to hide in. I shall try to hide behind the back of Pisarev.
“There are rifts and rifts,” wrote Pisarev of the rift between dreams and reality. “My
dream may run ahead of the natural march of events or may fly off at a tangent in a direction
in which no natural march of events will ever proceed. In the first case my dream will not
cause any harm; it may even support and augment the energy of the working men.... There
is nothing in such dreams that would distort or paralyse labour-power. On the contrary, if
man were completely deprived of the ability to dream in this way, if he could not from time
to time run ahead and mentally conceive, in an entire and completed picture, the product
to which his hands are only just beginning to lend shape, then I cannot at all imagine what
stimulus there would be to induce man to undertake and complete extensive and strenuous
work in the sphere of art, science, and practical endeavour.... The rift between dreams
and reality causes no harm if only the person dreaming believes seriously in his dream, if
he attentively observes life, compares his observations with his castles in the air, and if,
generally speaking, he works conscientiously for the achievement of his fantasies. If there
is some connection between dreams and life then all is well.”
Of this kind of dreaming there is unfortunately too little in our movement. And the
people most responsible for this are those who boast of their sober views, their “closeness”
to the “concrete”, the representatives of legal criticism and of illegal “tail-ism”.
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