LENIN ON ORGANIZATION 
ern opportunism as they manifest themselves in 
each and every sphere, namely, its indefiniteness, 
vagueness, and elusiveness. The opportunist, by 
his very nature, tends to avoid a definite and final 
solution of a question; he is always seeking for 
alternatives; he writhes like an eel between mutual- 
ly exclusive points of view; he tries to “be in agree- 
ment” with all sides, but expresses his disagree- 
ments in amendments, doubts, pious and innocent 
wishes, etc., etc. An opportunist on questions of 
program, like Comrade Ed. Bernstein, “is in 
agreement” with the revolutionary program of the 
Party, and although he would apparently like to 
see it “radically reformed,” he regards such reforms 
as untimely, inconvenient, and not important as an 
understanding on “the general principles” “of criti- 
cism” (consisting chiefly of uncritical borrowings 
of principles and phrases from bourgeois democ- 
racy). An opportunist on questions of tactics like 
Comrade von Vollmar, is also in agreement with the 
old tactics of revolutionary Social Democracy, and 
also confines himself to lengthy declamations, to 
corrections, to witticisms, and never proposes defi- 
nite “ministerial” tactics. Opportunists on ques- 
tions of organization also, like Comrades Martov 
and Axelrod, although they have been directly called 
upon to do so, have so far produced no definite 
theses setting forth principles which can be “embo- 
died in statutory form”; they also would have liked, 
most certainly would have liked, “the radical re- 
form” of our statutes of organization (“Iskra,” No. 
186