Page:Lenin - What Is To Be Done - tr. Joe Fineberg (1929).pdf/159

 experience, of material, of forces and of resources. The scope of organisational work would immediately become ever so much wider and the success of a single locality would serve as a standing encouragement to further perfection and a desire to utilise the experience gained by comrades working in other parts of the country. Local work would become far richer and more varied than it is now: political and economic exposures gathered from all over Russia would provide mental food to the workers of all trades and in all stages of development, would provide material and occasion for talks and readings on the most diverse subjects, which indeed will be suggested by hints in the legal press, by conversations among the public and by shamefaced government communications. Every outbreak, every demonstration, would he weighed and discussed from all its aspects all over Russia; it would stimulate a desire not to lag behind the rest, a desire to excel,—(we Socialists do not by any means reject all rivalry or all "competition!")—and consciously to prepare for that which at first appeared to spring up spontaneously, a desire to take advantage of the favourable conditions in a given district or at a given moment for modifying the plan of attack, etc. At the same time, this revival of local work would render superfluous that convulsive exertion of effort on the part of all local workers, working as if in the "throes of death" and the blunt invitation to join put to every one willing to perform some service, as is often done to-day when organising every single demonstration or publishing every single number of a local newspaper. In the first place the police would find it much more different to dig down to the "roots" because they would not know in what district to seek for them. Secondly, regular common work would train our people to regulate the force of a given attack in accordance with the strength of the forces of the given local detachment of the army (at the present time no one ever thinks of doing that because in nine cases out of ten these attacks occur spontaneously), and would facilitate the "transport" from one place to another, not only of literature, but also of revolutionary forces.

In the overwhelming majority of cases, these forces at the present time shed their blood in the cause of restricted local work, but under the circumstances we are discussing, occasions would constantly arise for transferring a capable agitator or organiser from one end of the country to the other. Beginning with short journeys on party business at the party's expense, our people would become