it without changing his
private opinion. In all mixed congresses, rather than break the party
discipline, he will give his vote for it, speak in favor of it, and use
against its adversaries the very arguments that have been used against
himself. He has his share in electing the local Communist Committee,
and, indirectly, in electing the all-powerful Central Committee of the
party, and he binds himself to do at any moment in his life exactly what
these Committees decide for him. These Committees decide the use that is
to be made of the lives, not only of the rank and file of the party, but
also of their own members. Even a member of the Central Committee does
not escape. He may be voted by his fellow members into leaving a job
he likes and taking up another he detests in which they think his
particular talents will better serve the party aims. To become a member
of the Communist Party involves a kind of intellectual abdication, or,
to put it differently, a readiness at any moment to place the collective
wisdom of the party's Committee above one's individual instincts or
ideas. You may influence its decisions, you may even get it to endorse
your own, but Lenin himself, if he were to fail on any occasion to
obtain the agreement of a majority in the Central Committee, would have
to do precisely what the Committee should tell him. Lenin's opinion
carries great weight because he is Lenin, but it carries less weight
than that of the Central Committee, of which he forms a nineteenth
part. On the other hand, the opinion of Lenin and a very small group of
outstanding figures is supported by great prestige inside the Committee,
and that of the Committee is supported by overwhelming prestige among
the rank and file. The result is that this small group is nearly always
sure of being able to use the whole vote of 600,000 Communists, in the
realization of its decisions.

Now 600,000 men and women acting on the instructions of a highly
centralized directive, all the important decisions of which have been
thrashed out and re-thrashed until they have general support within the
party; 600,000 men and women prepared, not only to vote in support of
these decisions, but with a carefully fostered readiness to sacrifice
their lives for them if necessary; 600,000 men and women who are
persuaded that by their way alone is humanity to be saved; who are
persuaded (to put it as cynically and unsympathetically as possible)
that the noblest death o