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.