Page:Lenin - What Is To Be Done - tr. Joe Fineberg (1929).pdf/156

 fiction, they represent a sort of revolutionary bureaucracy, the members of which mutually appoint each other to the posts of generals; and so it will continue until strong local organisations grow up." These remarks while exaggerating the position somewhat, express many a bitter truth, but cannot Nadezhdin see the connection between the petty work carried on in the localities and the narrow outlook of the party workers, the narrow scope of their activities, which is inevitable in view of the lack of training of the party workers isolated in their local organisations? Has he, like the author of the article on organisation published in Svoboda, forgotten how the adoption of a broad local press (in 1898) was accompanied by a very strong intensification of Economism and "primitive methods"? Even if a broad local press could be established at all satisfactorily (and we have shown above that it is impossible save in very exceptional cases)—even then the local organs could not "rally and organise" all the revolutionary forces for a general attack upon the autocracy and for the leadership of a united struggle. Do not forget that we are here discussing only the "rallying," the organising significance of a newspaper, and we could put to Nadezhdin, who defends diffusiveness, the very question that he himself has already put ironically: "Has some one left us a legacy of 200,000 revolutionary organisers?" Furthermore, "preparations for demonstrations" cannot be set up in contrast to Iskra's plan for the one reason alone that this plan includes the organisation of the widest possible demonstrations as one of its aims; the point under discussion is the selection of the practical means. On this point also Nadezhdin has got confused and has lost sight of the fact that only already "rallied and organised" forces can "prepare for" demonstrations (which hitherto, in the overwhelming majority of cases, have taken place quite spontaneously) and we lack precisely the ability to rally and organise. "Work among the unemployed." Again the same confusion, for this to too represents one of the military operations of mobilised forces and not a plan to mobilise the forces. The extent to which Nadezhdin underestimates the harm caused by our diffusion, by our lack "200,000 men," can be seen from the following: Many (including Nadezhdin) have reproached Iskra with the paucity of the news it gives about unemployment and with the casual nature of the correspondence it publishes about the most common affairs of rural life. The reproach is justified, but Iskra is "guilty without sin." We