ABSTRACT
The essentially Blanquist idea of the mastering of an institution or a state by a disciplined cadre, exercising dictatorial power after its seizure of power was modified by Leninism and routinized by Stalinism. The enormous ineffectiveness for its declared purposes of French Communism was another. The restoration of an old tradition of strong dissent must affect different university systems differently. Certain points about the British system, points which are in many ways strengths, render it vulnerable to damage of a kind to which other forms of university may be less subject. The restoration of the pre-Bolshevik revolutionary tradition is poly-centric, various, generous in intent, humane in many of its aspirations but it is fundamentally unrealistic in its neglect of opportunity costs in actual social situations. Its rhetoric in word and deed should not be allowed to destroy what with difficulty has been achieved and maintained in higher learning.
