LENIN ON ORGANIZATION
influential on account of its activities and its consistent
 revolutionary policy (in our case the “Iskra”
organization). During the period of the restoration
of the Party as an actual unity in which the obsolete
circles have been fused, the peak is the Party congress,
 the supreme organ of the Party; the congress,
as far as is possible, unites all the representatives
of the active organizations, and by appointing the
central institutions (frequently consisting of persons
 acceptable more to the advanced elements of
the Party than to the backward, to the revolutionary
wing rather than to the opportunist wing) makes
them the peak until the following congress. Such,
at least, is the case with the European Social Democrats,
 although little by little, not without difficulty,
not without disputes and haggling, this practice, so
cordially disliked by the anarchists, is beginning to
spread to the Asiatic Social Democrats too.
It is extremely interesting to note that the fundamental
 features I have described as peculiar to opportunism
 in questions of organization (autonomism,
 noble or intellectual anarchism, “khvostism”
and Girondism) are to be observed mutatis mutandi
in every Social Democratic Party throughout the
world in which there happen to be revolutionary
and opportunist wings (and where is this not the
case?). This came out especially clearly recently
in the ease of the German Social Democratic Party
when the election defeat in 20 Saxon constituencies

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