LENIN ON ORGANIZATION
settlements and industrial villages, the creation of
a political paper is something quite within the
powers of the proletariat. Through the intermediary
of the proletariat, the paper will penetrate to
the town middle class and to the village handicraftsmen
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 constructed
around a building, which makes the contours
of the future structure and facilitates communication
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 automatically
develop an organization which will be concerned
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 sections
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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