Fortnightly Reports of the Party Organisations

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Fortnightly reports by all the Party organisations, especially all the workers’ Party organisations, would contribute greatly towards consolidating the membership and the organisational unity of the Party, particularly towards read justing the Party’s representation (at congresses) in conformity with the number of the organised workers.

The Central Organ of the Party could publish extracts from these reports which would serve as valuable material on the actual and genuine state of affairs in the Party.

The number of members in the study circles, groups, etc., could also be published by using one or two letters of the alphabet to denote this or that group or organisation. Such reports concerning the membership of our Party organisations would serve as useful material for control. (The objection that they would occupy too much space is groundless. With two letters and two figures to show the number of members—e.g., ab 13, cd 41, ef 17, etc.— we would have eleven such reports to each line of column space.)

The Congress should break up the interval between the Third and Fourth Congresses (one year) into two parts. During the first half, every Party organisation down to the lowest workers’ unit of our Party should constitute itself and arrange without fail regular contact with the centre and the regular submission of fortnightly reports. I say “arrange”, because it is not enough to take the address and write; it is necessary to check the addresses, to make sure that the reports are delivered, etc., etc. Four to five months is quite sufficient for organising this new practice of fortnightly reports with full regularity. Without a doubt, given the will, this could be done in a third of the time.

After that, in the second half-year, the fortnightly reports of the Party organisations could be placed on a constitutional basis, so to speak, i.e., they would be used directly to readjust the Party’s representation at the Fourth Congress. Thus, let us say, the Third Congress decides in April 1905 that only Party organisations submitting the regular fort-nightly reports to the centre as of September 1, 1905, shall be entitled to consideration in the readjusted Party representation for the Fourth Congress. The Party’s representation at congresses pro rata to the number of workers organised in Social-Democratic leagues in each area will be deter mined at the Fourth Congress only on the basis of these reports for a period of not less than three months (a minimum of six reports). The number of members, therefore, must be given in each report.