LENIN ON ORGANIZATION 
show of anarchist phrases; he must learn to demand 
that Party duties should be fulfilled not by the rank 
and file alone, but also by “the people above”; he 
must learn to treat ‘“khvostism” in questions of or- 
ganization with the same contempt with which he 
treats “khvostism” on questions of tactics. 
The final characteristic peculiarity of the position 
adopted by “Iskra” on questions of organization, 
namely, its defense of autonomism as against cen- 
tralism, is also associated with Girondism and noble 
anarchism. A similar principle (if there is any 
principle at all *) lies behind the outcry against 
bureaucracy and autocracy, the complaints regard- 
ing the “undeserved neglect of the non-Iskrists” 
(who at the congress defended autonomy), the 
comic outcries against the demand for ‘“uncondi 
tional obedience,” the bitter lament against “pom- 
posity,” etc., etc. The opportunist wing of every 
organization always defends and justifies backward- 
ness of every kind, whether on questions of pro- 
gram, tactics or organization. The new “Iskra’s” 
defense of organizational backwardness (Khvost- 
ism) is closely bound up with its defense of auto- 
nomism. Autonomism generally has already been 
discredited by the three-year’s advocacy of it by 
the old “Iskra,” which makes it all the more shame- 
ful for the new “Iskra” to come out openly in its 
favor. It still assures us of its sympathy for cen- 
tralism, but the only indication of it it gives is to 
* I here, as in this paragraph generally, leave the laments 
over “co-option” out of consideration, 
172