to those who represent them before the
public, to its leaders. No one of these, no matter in what position
he may be, can undertake any kind of political action against the
will or _even without the consent of his comrades_. The Social
Democratic representative is no free man in _this capacity_, as
burdensome as that may sound, but the delegate of his party. If his
views come into conflict with theirs, then he must cease to be
their representative.

"The present-day Member of Parliament ... is not the delegate of
his election district, but, as a matter of fact, if not legally,
the delegate of his party. But this is not true of any party to
such an extent as it is of the Social Democracy. And while the
party discipline of the bourgeois parties is, in truth, the
discipline of a small clique which stands above the separated
masses of voters, with the Social Democracy it is the discipline of
an organization which embraces the whole mass of the aggressive and
intelligent part of the proletariat, and which is stretching
itself more and more to embrace the whole of the working class."
(My italics.)[205]

In the introduction to the same booklet, Kautsky sums up for us in a few
words the methods in use in France:--

"Our French comrades have created for the solution of this
difficulty a body between the Party Congress and the Party
Executive like our Committee of Control, but different from the
latter in that it counts more members who are elected not by the
Congress, but directly by the comrades of the various districts
which they represent. A right to elect five members to the Party
Congress gives the right to elect one member to the National
Council.

"The National Council elects from the twenty-two members of the
permanent Executive Committee the five party secretaries, whose
functions are paid. It conducts the general propaganda, oversees
the execution of party decisions, prepares for the Congresses,
oversees the party press and the group in Parliament, and has the
right to undertake all measures which the situation at the moment
demands."[206]

We see that the Socialist members of the national legislatures, both in
Germany and France, are under the most rigid control, and we cannot
doubt that if such control becomes impossible on account of legisla