Page:Lenin - What Is To Be Done - tr. Joe Fineberg (1929).pdf/154

 truism is as hoary and indisputable as the one that: We must build up strong political organisations. And is equally barren. Every question "runs in a vicious circle" because the whole of political life is an endless chain consisting of an infinite number of links. The whole art of politics lies in finding the link that can be least torn out of our hands, the one that is most important at the given moment, the one that guarantees the command of the whole chain, and having found it, to cling to that link as tightly as possible. If we possessed a staff of experienced bricklayers who had learned to work so well together that they could dispense with a guiding line and could place their bricks exactly where they are required without one (and speaking abstractly, this is by no means impossible), then perhaps we might seize upon some other link. But the unfortunate thing is that we have no experienced bricklayers trained to teamwork, that bricks are often laid where they are not needed at all, that they are not laid according to the general line, and are so scattered about that the enemy can shatter the structure as if it were made not of bricks but of sand.

Here is the other comparison:

Does this sound anything like the attempt of an armchair author to exaggerate his rôle? The scaffolding put up around a building is not required at all for habitation, it is made of the cheapest material, it is only put up temporarily and when finished with, as soon as the shell of the structure is completed, is destroyed. As for the building up of revolutionary organisations, experience shows that sometimes they may be built without scaffolding,—take the seventies