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The case of the priest is not an accident, for it both sharpens the issue and was a common question at the time, especially in Western Europe. In contrast to the unqualified affirmative usually given, Lenin states: If a priest affirms the party program, if he shares the aims of the party and works actively to achieve them, then of course he may join. And if there is a tension between his religious belief and communism, then that is a matter for him to sort out alone. 42 The same principle applies to a believing worker, who should not merely be permitted to join, but who should be actively recruited.

This is all a solely legal organization may achieve. By contrast, an illegal organization wishes to smash the pot and open up the possibility of sowing wheat in the whole field. Here one will still find tares, but once they are cleared, the wheat harvest will be far, far greater. 15 Two final items from Lenin’s interpretation go beyond the Gospel parable: First, the timing of the weeding out of the tares may take place at various moments. No need to wait for the final harvest, for one may either pull up the tares first in order to “clear the soil for the wheat,” tearing “the evil up by the roots,” or one may “cut down the tares of today” in order to “reap the wheat of tomorrow” (Lenin 1902p, 456/116; 1905c, 56/113).

But let us return to the legal–illegal issue, for it had already appeared before the debates of WITBD in the form of “legal Marxism” and the illegal underground movement,12 and it would not disappear from the socialist movement, becoming an even more burning issue after the 1905 revolution, when the Tsar gave significant ground and permitted the formation of limited parliaments through elections, the Dumas (there were five Dumas between the 1905 and the 1917 revolutions). 13 Between these years, and even after the February Revolution in 1917, Lenin and others waged a bitter battle against liquidationism until the Bolsheviks took power later in the year.