and generalise all the flashes of discontent and active struggle. "Live political work" can be commenced in our time, when Social-Democratic tasks are being degraded, exclusively with live political education, which is impossible unless we have a frequently issued and properly distributed All-Russian newspaper.
Those who regard Iskra's "plan" as a manifestation of literariness have totally failed to understand the substance of the plan, and imagine that what is suggested as the most suitable means for the present time is the ultimate goal. These people have not taken the trouble to study the two comparisons that were drawn to illustrate the plan proposed. Iskra wrote: The publication of an All-Russian political newspaper must be the main line that must guide us in our work of unswervingly developing, deepening, and expanding this organisation (i. e., a revolutionary organisation always prepared to support every protest and every outbreak). Pray tell me: When a bricklayer lays bricks in various parts of an enormous structure, the like of which has never been seen before, is it a "paper" line that he uses to help him to find the correct place to place each brick, to indicate to him the ultimate goal of the work as a whole, to enable him to use not only every brick but even every piece of brick, which, joining with the bricks placed before and after it, forms a complete and all-embracing line? And are we not now passing through a period in our party life, when we have bricks and bricklayers, but we lack the guiding line, visible to all, by which to guide our movements? Let them shout that in stretching out the line, we desire to command. Had we desired to command, gentlemen, we would have written on the title page, not "Iskra, No. 1," but "Rabochaya Gazeta, No. 3," as we were invited to do by a number of comrades, and as we had a perfect right to do after the events related above took place. But we did not do that. We wished to have our hands free to conduct an irreconcilable struggle against all pseudo-Social-Democrats; we wanted our line of policy, if properly laid, to be respected because it was correct, and not because it was carried out by an official organ.
"The question of combining local activity in central organs runs in a vicious circle," L. Nadezhdin tells us pedantically, "for this requires homogeneous elements, and this homogeneity can be created only by something that combines; but this combining element may be the product of strong local organisations which at the present time are not distinguished for their homogeneity." This
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