Spontaneity and Organisation
From 'Anti-Bolshevik Communism'
Mattick, Paul
http://www.connexions.org/CxArchive/MIA/mattick-paul/1977/spontaneity.htm
http://www.marxists.org/archive/mattick-paul/1977/spontaneity.htm
Year Published: 1977
Resource Type: Article
Cx Number: CX10518
Although Lenin counted on, he simultaneously feared, spontaneous movements. He justified the need for conscious interferences in spontaneously-arising revolutions by citing the backwardness of the masses and saw in spontaneity an important destructive but not constructive element. In Lenin's view, the more forceful the spontaneous movement, the greater would be the need to supplement and direct it with organised, planned party-activity. The workers had to be guarded against themselves, so to speak, or they might defeat their own cause through ignorance, and, by dissipating their powers, open the way for counter-revolution.
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