LENIN ON ORGANIZATION
a German Comrade Akimov and somewhat greater
than a German Comrade Egorov.
Comrade Wolfgang Heine took up the campaign
in the “Socialist Monthly” with no less pomp than
Comrade Axelrod in the new “Iskra.” “Democratic
Notes on the Gohre Incident”—how precious is the
title alone (Sozialistische Monatsheft,” No. 4).
The contents are no less weighty. Comrade W.
Heine protests against “the attempt against the
autonomy of the electoral constituency,” he insists
upon ‘the democratic principle,” he objects to the
interference of “an appointed authority” (i. e. the
Central Committee of the Party) in the free election
 of the delegates of the people. It is not only
a question of a chance incident, Comrade W. Heine
informs us, but of a “general tendency towards bureaucracy
 and centralism within the Party,” a tendency
 which has long made itself felt, but which
has now become especially dangerous. It must be
“recognized in principle that the local Party organizations
 are the shapers of their own life (a plagiarism
 on the brochure of Comrade Martov, “Once
More in the Minority’). One “must not get used
to the idea that all important political decisions are
to proceed from one centre’; the Party must be
warned against “the doctrinaire policy which has
lost all contact with life” (appropriated from the
speech of Comrade Martov at the Party congress
to the effect that “life demands its own”). ¢. .. If
we probe to the root of things,” Comrade W. Heine
goes on to broaden his argument, “and forget

177