Pages: 216-217

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AMENDMENTS TO A. BOGDANOV'S DRAFT RESOLUTION "ON RELATIONS BETWEEN WORKERS AND INTELLECTUALS
IN THE SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC PARTY"1.
[May 3 (April 20), 1905]
On relations between workers and intellectuals in the S.-D.
party\
The Congress once again recalls the task of the conscious supporters
of the workers' S.-D. party: to strengthen with all forces the connection of the party
with the mass of the working class, raising ever wider and wider
strata of proletarians and semi-proletarians to full S.-D. consciousness,
developing their revolutionary and S.-D. self-activity,
taking care to single out from the working mass as many as possible
workers capable of leading the movement and party organizations as members of local centers and the central
all-party one; creating as many workers' organizations as possible that are part of our party, striving to ensure that
workers' organizations that do not want or are unable to join the party, at least adhere to it.
The Congress resolutely condemns the attempts, begun since the time of economism and systematically repeated by the right wing of the party,
to sow hostility and distrust between workers and intellectuals,
[portraying our party organizations as purely intellectual,
accusing them of seeking to fetter the self-activity of the working class with party discipline,
spreading empty phrases about the elective principle, mostly not even accompanied by attempts to actually implement it
in life.] — attempts to portray our party organizations as
purely intellectual, which is skillfully used by the enemies
of Social-Democrats, the liberal bourgeois, — attempts
* See Works, VII, 282 — 284. Ed.

to accuse social democratic] organizations of seeking to fetter the self-activity of the
working class with party discipline, — attempts to [spread] flaunt the slogan
of the elective principle mostly without serious steps towards its real implementation in life. The complete dominance of the
elective principle, possible and necessary under free political conditions, is unrealizable under autocracy. But even
under autocracy, the application of the elective system would be
possible to a significantly greater extent than is done
now, if it were not hindered by that formal vagueness of the party organization and that factual disorganization
to which the party owes precisely to the same right wing of Social-Democracy. Undertaking a series of measures to eliminate this
vagueness and uncertainty, the 3rd Congress strives to prepare the conditions for the actual implementation of the
elective principle in party life to the extent possible, which will be
one of the most important tasks of the upcoming congresses.
1 The draft was printed in Bogdanov's article "The Organizational Question"
in No. 13 of "Vperyod" of April 5 (March 23), 1905. The title of the article
was written by Lenin. The article contains drafts of the charter and resolutions on
the organizational question. The drafts were prefaced by the following lines:
"The Bureau of Committees of the Majority proposes to the congress to appoint Comrade
Ivanov [pseudonym of A. A. Bogdanov.
Ed.] as the rapporteur on the organizational question. We provide for the information of the entire party the essence of his report."