Paragraph One controversy
당원 자격 규약 제1조 논쟁
The dispute between Lenin and Martov at the Second Congress of the RSDLP in 1903 over Paragraph One of the party rules, which defined who was a party member. Lenin would count only those who personally took part in one of the party organisations; Martov would also include those who gave regular personal assistance under the direction of a party organisation. The congress adopted Martov's wording, but the dispute became the first open clash on the road to the split between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.
In depth
The two drafts
The two drafts opened alike: a member accepts the party programme and supports the party by material means. The difference lay at the end. Lenin's draft spoke of one who "personally participates in one of the party organisations"; Martov's of one who "renders it regular personal assistance under the direction of one of its organisations". Under Lenin's wording a member had to belong to some organisation; under Martov's, someone helping from outside under an organisation's direction could also be a member.
The congress debate
Lenin argued that the concept of party member had to be narrowed to separate those who worked from those who merely talked, and to end the confusion of organisations made up of party members that were not party organisations. Plekhanov backed him, warning that Martov's wording would open the doors to opportunists eager to be inside the party but outside its organisation.
Martov held that a broad class movement needed a broad party organisation and that a conspiratorial organisation made sense only when enveloped by a broad Social-Democratic workers' party. Axelrod insisted on distinguishing party and organisation, citing professors who helped the party without joining an organisation, and Trotsky also sided with Martov. Lenin recalled that Martov's supporters cited his own What Is to Be Done? in their defence.
The vote
According to the minutes, Martov's wording was adopted 28 to 22 with one abstention; Lenin later recalled it as "about twenty-eight votes to twenty-three". Martov's votes included part of the Iskra-ists, among them Axelrod, Zasulich and Trotsky, together with the five Bund delegates and the two of the Rabocheye Dyelo group. After those seven left the congress, Lenin's side became the majority in the elections to the central bodies, which gave rise to the names Bolsheviks (majority) and Mensheviks (minority). The other paragraphs of the rules were adopted without serious disagreement.
How the dispute grew
In One Step Forward, Two Steps Back (1904) Lenin wrote that the "comparatively slight difference over Paragraph 1" had acquired tremendous importance because it started the minority's swing towards opportunism and anarchistic phrase-mongering. In practice, he argued, Martov's wording served bourgeois intellectuals who shied away from discipline and organisation.
On the other side, Trotsky in Our Political Tasks warned of a committee substituting itself for the working class, and Luxemburg in "Organisational Questions of the Russian Social Democracy" set the "self-centralism" of the working class against Lenin's "ultra-centralism". One line of the rules had widened into the question of what the party was and how it stood to the class.
Later fate
The Third Congress in London in 1905, attended only by Bolsheviks, adopted new rules with Paragraph One in Lenin's wording. At the Stockholm Unity Congress of 1906, where the Mensheviks had the majority, the Bolsheviks still carried the replacement of Martov's wording by Lenin's. The official history of the Soviet Communist Party later presented the dispute as the moment when the unstable Iskra-ists broke away from the firm ones.