LENIN ON ORGANIZATION 
settlements and industrial villages, the creation of 
a political paper is something quite within the 
powers of the proletariat. Through the interme- 
diary of the proletariat, the paper will penetrate to 
the town middle class and to the village handicrafts- 
men and peasants, and will thus become a real 
national political paper. 
But the role of a paper is not confined solely to 
the spreading of ideas, to political education and to 
procuring political allies. A paper is not merely 
a collective propagandist and collective agitator. It 
is also a collective organizer. In that respect it 
must be compared with the scaffolding that is con- 
structed around a building, which makes the con- 
tours of the future structure and facilitates com- 
munication between the builders, permitting them 
to distribute the work and to view the common 
results achieved by their organized labour. With 
the aid of, and around a paper, there will automat- 
ically develop an organization which will be con- 
cerned not only with local activities, but also in 
regular general work; which will teach its members 
carefully to watch political events, to estimate their 
importance and their influence on the various sec- 
tions of the population, and to devise suitable 
methods for influencing these events through the 
revolutionary party. The mere technical problem 
of procuring a regular supply of material for the 
newspaper and its regular distribution will make it 
necessary to create a network of agents of a united 
party, who will be in close contact with each other, 
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