ABSTRACT
We should stress one characteristic feature: the totally abstract nature of Comrade Lenin’s position. Control over the members of the party is necessary. This control can only be assured if it is possible to reach each member. Now, this can only be done if all the members of the party are formally fixed, that is, registered in the appropriate manner with one of the party organizations. Then the Central Committee, present everywhere, penetrating into everything and considering everything, can reach each party member on the scene of the crime. In reality, this is a fairly innocent bureaucratic dream; if the question had remained at that level one could light-heartedly have left the partisans of Lenin’s formula with the platonic satisfaction of feeling that the Second Congress of the RSDLP had discovered the surest statutory remedy for opportunism and intellectual individualism.
