Page:Vladimir Ilyich Lenin - On Organization (1926).pdf/54
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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