LENIN ON ORGANIZATION 
the cosy family circle, formal statutes may appear 
narrow, hampering, burdensome, degrading, bureau- 
cratic, enslaving and detrimental to the free “proc- 
ess” of the struggle of ideas. Noble anarchism 
cannot understand that formal statutes are required 
just in order to replace the narrow bonds of the 
circles by the broad bond of the Party. The bond 
within a circle, or between circles, did not require 
formulation, and indeed could not be formulated, 
for it was based either upon friendship, or upon 
blind and undefined “confidence.” The Party bond 
can be based on neither; it must be based upon 
formal, “bureaucratic” (from the point of view of 
the undisciplined intellectual) statutes, the strict 
adherence to which can alone guarantee us against 
the idiosyncracies, caprices and slipshod methods of 
the circles, which are called the free “process” or 
the struggle of ideas. 
The editors of the mew “Iskra” think they are 
playing a trump card against Alexandrov when 
they make the very edifying remark that “confi- 
dence is a delicate thing, which cannot be ham- 
mered into hearts and heads” (No. 56, Supplement). 
The editors fail to see that to talk thus of categories 
of confidence, of naked confidence, only serves once 
more to betray their noble anarchism and organiza- 
tional “khvostism.” When I was a member of a 
circle only, whether of the editorial six or the 
“Iskra” organization, I was entitled to justify my 
disinclination to work with X, say, purely on the 
grounds of a vague and undefined mistrust. But 
169