LENIN ON ORGANIZATION 
tion.” This thesis is extremely characteristic, for 
it betrays, if one may say so, for whom Martov’s 
formula is required and whose purpose it will in 
fact serve: intellectuals and individuals, or working 
class groups and the working class masses. The 
fact is that two interpretations of Martov’s formula, 
are possible: 1) that everybody who lends the 
Party regular personal support under the guidance 
of one of its organizations may “declare himself” 
(in Comrade Martov’s own phrase) a member of 
the Party; and 2) that every organization of the 
Party may recognize as a member of the Party 
everybody who lends it regular personal support 
under its guidance. Only the first interpretation in 
fact, and it alone, gives “every striker” the right of 
calling himself a Party member, and that is why it 
immediately won the heart of men like Liber (22), 
Akimov and Martynov. But this interpretation is 
obviously nothing but an empty phrase, since it 
would embrace the whole working class and the 
difficulty between Party and class would be ef- 
faced; we can only speak “symbolically” of control 
and guidance over “every striker.” That is why 
Comrade Martov in his second speech at once made 
for the second interpretation (although, it should 
be said in parenthesis, it was directly rejected by the 
congress when it refused to adopt the resolution of 
Kostich), according to which the committee will 
distribute functions and supervise their execution. 
Such a distribution of functions, will, of course, 
never take place as far as the mass of the workers, 
148