Propaganda and agitation among the masses of the working class was and remains the most important direction of the political activity of the Communists. Not detachment from the masses, but the closest connection with them, not to put oneself above the masses, but to go ahead of the masses, leading them behind them, not alienate themselves from the masses, but merge with them and gain the trust and support of the masses - this is the basic principle of the communist party relationship and working class.
Already in the first policy document of Marxism, The Communist Party Manifesto contains important provisions on the methodology of communist propaganda. The great teachers of the working class attached primary importance to the class education of the proletariat. They wrote that for a minute it was impossible to stop working out among the workers the clearer possible consciousness of the hostile opposition between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. An important quality of the revolutionary propagandist K. Marx and F. Engels considered the ability to write and speak for the masses vividly, figuratively, easily. “In order to act with any chances of success, you need to know the material you are going to influence,” wrote Marx.
For the first time in Russia, under the leadership of Lenin, the St. Petersburg Union of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class began to unite socialism with the workers' movement. When a strike occurred in a factory, the Union of Struggle immediately responded by issuing leaflets, issuing socialist proclamations. These leaflets denounced the harassment of workers as factory owners, explaining how the workers should fight for their interests. The prominent role of the book “What is to be done?” by V. I. Lenin is well known, in which he, developing the ideas of Marx and Engels about the proletarian organization, developed the fundamentals of the theory of the revolutionary Marxist party. In this work, the scientific foundations of party propaganda are laid out in a concentrated form, the principles of explanatory work, and the need to take social psychology into account in the political education of the masses are justified.
In the first place in the revolutionary agitation of the Communists is the proletarian masses, the working class — the ideal audience for political work, since the working class is more than anyone capable of assimilating political knowledge and translating this knowledge into active struggle. The work of the Communists and in the reactionary trade unions is perfectly acceptable. Sometimes it is directly obligatory, because reactionary trade unions have millions of workers, and the Communists do not have the right to refuse to join these trade unions, find a way to the masses and win them over to the side of communism. But representatives of the liberal ideology, in whatever clothes they don’t wear (like the Yabloko), are the sworn enemies of the proletarian revolution and socialism. They need to lead a stubborn, uncompromising struggle.
Agitation among the politically undeveloped masses must initially capture the masses with a concrete picture of one or another revolutionary action, and then go one step higher - the whole Marxist world view as a whole. The introduction of consciousness into the labor movement should be based on such elements of social psychology as discontent, indignation, resentment, indignation, protest, and the like. An integral feature of revolutionary propaganda and agitation is the principle, rationale and consistency in exposing opportunism, the enemies of the working class, their fake programs, social demagogy and lies.
Partyism is the highest principle of communist propaganda, which predetermines the possibility of the realization of other fundamental requirements - science, truthfulness, connection with life. The communists not only do not hide, but also emphasize the partisanship, the classiness of propaganda, while the imperialist ideologists are trying in every way to disguise the class essence of their ideological activity, trying to present it as non-partisan, supraclass, reflecting supposedly nationwide, national interests.
Teaching people to think independently, act and conquer is the main goal of party propaganda, the main purpose of the political education of the masses. The most important task of the party is the education of combat propagandists, agitators, organizers of the masses, thinking, creative revolutionaries, every performance of which, every leaflet, should be a call to action, to fight. In the book “What to do?” V. I. Lenin gave a classical justification and comprehensively revealed the dialectics of introducing socialist consciousness into the spontaneous working-class movement. "The political education of the people is our banner, this is the meaning of the philosophy of the whole."
On the difference between propaganda and agitation. Unlike the propagandist, who illuminates many ideas, the agitator takes one of them to encourage people to think and act. The task of propaganda is to clarify the ideas of scientific socialism, to disseminate among workers the right views about the modern social and political system, its development, about various classes of society, about their relationship and struggle, about the historical task of the communists. Agitation is associated primarily with current events, with everyday life, with facts that worry people today, with tasks whose solution cannot be postponed until tomorrow. This implies such requirements for agitation as topicality, efficiency, concreteness, and the closest connection with organizational work. Therefore, agitation is a means of political influence on the masses by explaining current events and facts, the immediate tasks of the revolutionary struggle, a means of mobilizing the masses. But no less theoretical preparation is required from an agitator than a propagandist explaining the general tasks of the movement, for it is impossible to discern a concrete fact, a specific event through the prism of revolutionary science without theoretical analysis. Of course, the emotional moment in agitation is more important than in propaganda. But in all cases the main thing is the impact on the mind, the consciousness of people.
For the victory of the revolution, if this revolution is truly popular, exciting millions of people, it’s not enough just correctness of party slogans. For the victory of the revolution, it is necessary that the masses themselves be convinced by their own experience of the correctness of these slogans. Only then can the slogans of the party become the slogans of the masses themselves. Only then "ideas become power when they take possession of the masses." It is necessary to set tasks broader and bolder in the conditions of the revolutionary struggle, to ensure that the party’s slogans always go ahead of the revolutionary initiative of the masses and serve as a beacon for them.
How to campaign and promote? What should always be remembered when speaking at a rally, composing a combat leaflet, evaluating the content of a party newspaper? What requirements should we make to ourselves when starting this work? You need to be able to work with the human material that is available. There will be no other. When analyzing any events and phenomena, asking yourself questions: “to whom is it advantageous?”, “Which class?”, “Which party?”, “The interests of socialism or its opponents?”. Without answering the most important, fundamental questions one cannot take a single step neither in propaganda, nor in agitation, nor in organization.
Truthfulness - and a propagandist and agitator, sincerity, the absence of any artificiality, pranksiness, false pathos in a conversation with people, taking into account their social psychology, the unity of word and deed - the most important quality of communist propaganda. Any deception is the greatest harm to the cause of the revolution, for it would be a crime to conceal from the workers and peasants the hard truth. We must tell the masses the bitter truth simply, clearly, directly. As if Lenin's words are addressed to us, living today: "Do not be afraid to admit your mistakes, not be afraid of repeated, repeated labor of correcting them - and we will be at the very top". It is also important that truthfulness is not only clarification of the essence of processes, phenomena, scientific, objective coverage of events and facts, positive and negative aspects of a particular phenomenon. This is the depth of the propagandist’s own convictions, irreconcilability towards formalism in work, “pretense”, and insincerity.
Never in propaganda and propaganda can not get away from sensitive issues! After all, when a person sees such a “departure” he has an opinion: one propagandist says something, but another in life. This, if I may say so, “propaganda” only contributes to the emergence of people with a “double bottom”, who have some words for public use and others with themselves. The basis, the uniting factor for all agitation and propaganda work are the party's program documents, its most important decisions.
The art of every propagandist and every agitator is to influence the given audience in the best way possible, making the known truth for it as convincing as possible, perhaps easier to assimilate, perhaps more clearly and firmly imprinted. The party policy is easiest of all; revolutionary views are assimilated when propaganda and agitation take into account people's life experiences, are connected with what excites, takes the audience, what is experienced and felt. Maximum popularity and simplicity is one of the most important principles of Bolshevik propaganda and agitation.
A few words about the opposition rallies. What is their meaning and what should be done on them? Well, of course, someone from the party members present, or sympathizers, should speak to the audience and convey to them the party position on the rally, of course, all present party members and sympathizers should be distributed (in advance?) Party newspapers and leaflets for distribution to participants of the rally. No less important are conversations with the participants of the rally (this may be theoretical disputes, and establishing contacts with kindred people. Such people can be an asset to sympathizers of the party, people carrying ideas and views of the party to the masses). It is very useful to establish contacts with working activists, future organizers of strikes. So it turns out - attending a rally can be (and should be!) A fruitful direction of party work.
The current bourgeois time, of course, is much different from the pre-revolutionary one. Perhaps one of the most important differences is that powerful ideological “press
”Which has been putting pressure on people's minds for the last thirty years, day by day forming a“ anti-socialist ”,“ anti-communist ”world view of millions of people through radio, television, the Internet, newspapers and other channels. A powerful anti-communist charge was laid by the “democrats” = liberals in the minds of people already in the years of “perestroika”. This is a cannibalistic attitude towards Stalin, towards the so-called “Stalinist repressions,” and this is endless speculation about the real, and more often imaginary, mistakes of Soviet power.
In recent years, millions of people have increasingly understood the falsity of the “democratic” falsifications of Soviet history and communist ideology. But even now the “ideological traffic jam” in the minds of people is still very, very powerful. To fight this phenomenon, to expose it clearly, objectively, necessarily with irrefutable facts in its hands is, perhaps, the most important and most difficult task of today's communist agitation and propaganda. Continuing imaginative comparisons, one can say that this is a “powerful wall”, fencing off people from the truth and, to a large extent, from their own personal interests, giving all the working people at the mercy of the bourgeois. You will not bypass this wall, you will not find "loophole". How to be? Here, perhaps, Lenin's words are useful: “To live in the thick. Know the mood. To know everything. Understand the mass. Be able to approach. To win her absolute trust. ” You need to know the people you convince. And we must not take it with a cry, but with iron persuasiveness, not with emotions, but with facts.
In the ideological struggle with the bourgeois, in the struggle uncompromising, irreconcilable, only a well-organized, broad attack on the ideological positions of the enemy can bring success. “Our main task is,” said I.I. Lenin, “in order to counter its truth in opposition to the bourgeois“ truth ”and force it to be recognized.”
It is necessary to fight against the pseudo-truth about bourgeois democracy, about so-called human rights, about press freedom and Soviet “censorship”, about the true meaning of “pluralism”, to clarify that class states were and are the dictatorship of an exploiting minority over an exploited majority, meanwhile as the dictatorship of the proletariat is the dictatorship of the exploited majority over the exploiting minority, to bear the real truth about the allegedly “leveling” invented by bourgeois under socialism and communism.
We, the Communists, clearly say about revolution: revolution cannot satisfy everyone and everything. It always works with one side to satisfy the interests of the working masses, with the other end it beats (often weighty) secret and obvious enemies of these masses. Therefore, it is necessary to choose: either together with the working and peasant poor for the revolution, or together with the capitalists against the revolution.
Revolutionary changes in society usually occur outwardly as if "unexpectedly." It would be stupid to argue in the spirit - let's wait for the immediate revolutionary situation. Here it comes - then we will prepare very energetically, coordinate, learn and speak in full armor. Such "comrades" can expect to assemble at the Revolution only when it is already safely completed. Not earlier.
The most important issue is the active work of the Communist Party in labor collectives, helping workers in organizing strikes — both strikes defending the economic interests of workers and political strikes — the most important means of political struggle of the working class. A separate material will be devoted to this topic in one of the future issues of the Bolshevik Sickle and Hammer.
The material was prepared by S.V. Khristenko
