I do not quite understand Comrade Plekhanov’s proposal. He says there should be some sort of practical measures; but surely, my draft already envisages such a practical measure. We have only to declare, to declare with authority, that a normal struggle, a struggle of ideas, a struggle carried on within definite bounds, is permissible, but that boycotts, refusal to work under the Central Committee’s direction, refusal of financial support for the central Party treasury, and so on, are not permissible. We are told that mere words will not convince anyone. I will not be so bold either as to assert that this will be enough to establish good will between the two sides in the Party, because the disease that has to be cured has indeed gone very far and a very solid wall, as Comrade Martov puts it, has indeed grown up between the two sides. We may not succeed in breaking down that wall, since we ourselves erected it; but that we who dealt one another the severest wounds may by an authoritative appeal in our capacity of Council members restrain comrades from unworthy forms of struggle is not at all impossible. And as regards demolishing the wall, I think time will then do its work and everything will tend to abate. As to the point that some passages in the appeal may be interpreted by each side in its own way, I think that the same thing could apply to anything that we might say. (Axelrod: "That is why it is necessary not just to talk, but to act.") Further, I fail to understand why Comrade Axelrod thinks that what I propose might only prove a fresh source of strife. I repeat, we may not break down the wall between the two sides in the Party, since we have ourselves done a great deal to erect it; but those of our comrades who, being en gaged in practical work, have kept aloof from our dissensions could break it down. Comrade Martov, as I saw with pleasure today, agrees in principle with this idea of the useful role in settling our dissensions that might be played by other comrades, who have not been involved in the dissensions. But apart from that it seems to me that the very fact of representatives of the central bodies agreeing that such-and-such methods of struggle were allowable and such-and-such were not—that that in itself could make the initial breach in the wall dividing the two sides, after which the present abnormality of Party life could diminish.
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