Paradoxical though it may seem, the perspectives outlined by Lenin and Mancur Olson respectively, on the basis of radically opposed theoretical positions, do in fact agree on one specific point, namely that the working class tends not to commit itself to a movement of collective mobilisation. Admittedly, quite contrary reasons may be held to explain this theoretical convergence. According to Lenin, it is the dominant ideology which, in serving the interests of the bourgeoisie, leads the workers spontaneously to prefer to improve their standard of living; likewise – and this is quite a different argument – it is this same ideology which, through its alienation of the workers, diverts them from any genuine consciousness and therefore makes it necessary for a party of professional revolutionaries to be formed, in capitalist as well as in other countries, which, operating ‘from the outside’, is the only agency which will manage to provoke an otherwise quite improbable mobilisation of the working class. Lenin, in What Is To Be Done?, thus maintains that spontaneously the working class prefers to adopt a trade unionist strategy, that is an action leading to the collective maximisation of its interests rather than committing itself to a revolutionary action. In these circumstances, action would remain instrumentalist and utilitarian; it would unfold in a pragmatic manner and would not give rise to any collective mobilisation, but, in Lenin's eyes, it would still nevertheless exist.