LENIN ON ORGANIZATION
system of convictions, it does not express definite
organizational relations. But we can and should
forbid individuals, circles and persons “regarding
themselves as part of the Party,” if such circles
and persons do harm to the cause of the Party by
distorting and disorganizing it. It would be ridiculous
 to speak of the Party as a whole, as a political
magnitude, if it were unable to forbid a circle “by
degree” a circle from “regarding itself as a part”
of the whole! Why then lay down the method and
conditions for exclusion from the Party? Comrade
Axelrod has patently reduced the fundamental error
of Comrade Martov to an absurdity he even transformed
 that error into an opportunist theory when
mally, it would be enough to set up an “organization of
agents of the Central Committee,” and pass a resolution including
 it in the Party, and the “difficulty” which ogcasioned
Comrade Martov so much head-splitting thought would have
at once disappeared. The idea of par. 1 in my draft consisted
 in the spur, “Organize yourselves!” in order to guarantee
 real control and guidance. From the standpoint of essentials,
 the very question as to whether the agents of the Central
 Committee would form part of the Party is ridiculous,
since real control over them is fully and unconditionally
secured by the very fact that they had been appointed agents,
and are allowed to retain the post of agents. There can,
therefore, be no question here of the confusion of the organized
 and the unorganized (which is the root error of Comrade
Martov’s formula), The unsuitability of Comrade Martov’s
formula lies in the fact that anybody and everybody can
declare himself to be a member of the Party, every opportunist,
 every boaster, every “professor” and every “student.”
Comrade Martov tries to gloss over this Achille’s heel of his
formula by quoting examples where there is in fact no question
 of people who are not members of the Party declaring
themselves such.

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