LENIN AS PHILOSOPHER
407
work on philosophy and open a window into the innermost recesses
of
his
temperament and methods of polemics, philosophical as well
as political. Indeed, for him philosophy and politics are so closely
connected that on April 8, 1909 he writes: "It is
hellishly
important
for me that the book should come out at the earliest possible date,
not only for literary but also for political reasons." This "hellish
importance" derived from the fact that he had called an enlarged
conference of the editorial board of
Proletarii
for the end of June.
Though this was to be only
an
"editorial conference," he was secretly
planning to place political and organizational matters before it.
At the beginning of May, 1909, the book appeared
in
Moscow,
and from July 4-13, the enlarged Editorial Board of
Proletarii
met in
Lenin's apartment. Lenin had prepared all the resolutions and mo–
tions. On
his
proposal, the editorial conference set aside the old Bol–
shevik Center, elected at
the~
London Congress of 1907, and assumed
the power to appoint, remove, and legislate. It decided that "boycot–
tism, recallism, ultimatism, God-construction, and Machism" were
all of them "incompatible with membership in the Bolshevik faction."
In vain did Bogdanov question the right of a mere editorial confer–
ence to remove people appointed by the Bolshevik Center, or to repeal
the resolution on "neutrality in philosophy" on which the Bolshevik
bloc had been based. In vain did he protest the attempt to split the
faction, and the methods of
coup dJetat.
The moves had been pre–
pared and thought out to the last detail, and Lenin had the votes to
carry his motions. There is no way of knowing how much the big
book which nobody had yet had the time to read but which seemed
to tie all the "leftists" up with religion and "God-creation," helped
to weigh in the scale. By a small but safe majority, Bogdanov and
his
associates were declared to have "placed themselves outside the
faction." "Not outside the Party," Lenin explained precisely. "A
party can include a wide range of opinions the extremes of which may
even be diametrically opposed to each other. . . . " But in 1912,
Lenin's faction was to declare itself the Party! And after 1917 it
was to make even the State a mere reflection of that Party. ·what then
would happen to the "wide range of opinions"?
The dissidents, a sizeable minority despite the fact that Lenin
had pretty largely determined in advance who should come to the
enlarged editorial conference, withdrew at last and proclaimed them–
selves the only "true Bolsheviks" : legally, because they regarded the
acts of the conference as a usurpation; ideologically, because in their
own minds they were true to the "original tactics of Bolshevism"
