While we must firmly grasp the content of these general tasks, the general direction of our work, we must also be able to single out the main tasks and forms of activity for the advancement of our movement at any given moment. It is a historical characteristic of every working class movement that its overall development proceeds from lower to higher forms. In order to determine the main task that will consolidate and advance our work, we must understand the stage of development of our movement and the specific tasks confronting us.
The conception and analysis of the stages and periods of development of the communist Party are most succinctly developed by Lenin and Stalin. In his analysis of the strategy and tactics of the Russian communists both before and after seizing state power, Stalin outlines three general periods that are applicable to the development of any communist Party:
1) The period of formation, of the creation of our party. p.103
2) ...the period of winning the broad masses of the workers and peasants to the side of the Party... p.105
3) ...the period of taking and holding power... p.107
J.V. Stalin The Party Before and After Taking Power Works Vol. 5 p. 103
It is essential that we understand these periods and stages of development within them as they actually exist, that is, dynamically, as general demarcations in the growth of a living social organism. The content of all three periods is integrally united, the tasks and forms of activity overlap. The periods of development are distinguished from each other by the differences in primary emphasis, in stress on different aspects of our work at different times. For example, Stalin’s analysis outlines the second period of the Party’s development (October 1905 to October 1917) in terms of winning the masses to the side of the Party, or, as Lenin put it, as the “disposition of the vast masses”. Stalin singles out the main form of activity as “practical action by the masses as a prelude to decisive battles”. Only those who are incapable of thinking would conclude that since the main task in the second period is to lead the revolutionary mass movement the Party therefore should no longer conduct propaganda and agitation among the advanced workers, should no longer try to raise the level of average workers to that of the advanced, should no longer need to devote such active attention to theoretical, organizational, or political problems within the Party, should no longer polemicize against the revisionists and opportunists of all hues and shades, should no longer “focus attention and care upon the Party itself, upon its own existence and preservation”, should, in short, no longer occupy itself with the tasks that were central in the first period. We need only remember Lenin’s fight against the god-builders, the boycotters, the liquidationists, social-chauvinists and social-imperialists among others to realize the narrowness of such a conclusion. The second period concentrates on winning the masses of workers because in the main the advanced workers have already been won to the Party. The overall emphasis is on “practical action” because the advanced detachment has already been welded ideologically, ongoing class-wide communist organization has already been established, and the Party is able to advance and maintain on that basis. But this higher level of development must be constantly supplemented by ongoing theoretical and ideological work, training of cadres, expansion and perfection of the Party’s division of labour, in short, by tasks that are the main focus of the first period.
The first thing that we must fully understand then is that there are no barriers separating these general periods of development or the tasks appropriate to them. And yet, as we shall see later, one of the clearest indications of the prevalence of petty bourgeois outlook on party-building in our movement is the frequency of the superficial notion that each period stands separately, has its own unique and exclusive tasks, and that we must take them up one at a time. Such a narrow standpoint is incapable of conceiving the comprehensive and integral nature of Party work, and the Party’s responsibility to fulfill its main tasks while not excluding others.
At what level of development is our movement? It is apparent from even a brief study of our movement that we are still in the initial stages of building a principled Marxist-Leninist Party.
On the one hand, the Communist Party of Canada is a completely bankrupt party, in both theory and practice, is an abject slave of modern revisionism and Russian social-imperialism, and thus stands outside the communist movement. The core of the CPC’s bankruptcy lies in its rejection of the armed revolutionary struggle of the proletariat in favour of the peaceful, parliamentary path of social-democracy, or more accurately, social-fascism; its maintenance of a strictly reformist, Economist position in its programme and mass work, stemming from its bankrupt theory; and its support for and reliance upon social-imperialism internationally. The CPC’s adoption of modern revisionism not only puts it outside the communist movement, but also makes it a completely counterrevolutionary force in the working class. The CPC is one of the main social props of imperialism, and specifically is an agent of social-imperialism in the working class movement.
As well, the historical development of the CPC as an opportunist trend has left our current movement no Marxist-Leninist tradition to draw on. The over-riding tendency of the CPC was always to the Right, whether on the question of political economy, the national status of Quebec, trade union work, united front work, the role of the Party, and so on. ’Correction’ of this Right tendency was always under the guidance and direct tutelage of the Third International, and was a constant phenomenon in the CPC’s life. For the CPC, however, these ’corrections’ were only formal; its Rightism was only being checked. As the Third International wound down its activities and dissolved, the CPC proceeded to business as usual and moved directly and immediately to ’unencumbered’, full-fledged Right opportunism and revisionism. Thus, the CPC never developed the most basic aspect of the Party – a consistent and correct revolutionary theory – for our present movement to draw on.
On the other hand, within the modern communist movement, we find little or no theoretical clarity on even the most general strategy and tactics of proletarian revolution in Canada. Our movement even lacks consensus on who constitutes the principal enemy of the Canadian working class. Such lack of unity on the most general features of the Canadian situation is a sign of our primitive level of development in Party-building, but it is not just a question of lack of unity on these basic questions. There is a lack of unity precisely because there is so little clarity on the fundamental principles of Marxism-Leninism and their application to our concrete conditions. And there is so little clarity because there is an overabundance of bourgeois and petty bourgeois deviations exerting influence over the movement. Out of such a retrograde situation, and although several groups claim to be either the Party or the vanguard pre-Party organization, there is in fact no trend in our movement that has yet been proven consistently Marxist-Leninist on any question facing us. In fact, those groups that have put themselves into the forefront of our movement have only proven themselves as vanguards of opportunism and reformism.
Given that we are still in the early stages of the formation of the Party, what are our primary tasks?
In The Party Before and After Taking Power, Stalin teaches us that the main task in the formative period of the Party is
...to recruit into the Party the best elements of the working class, those who were most active and most devoted to the cause of the proletariat; to form the ranks of the proletarian party and to put it firmly on its feet. Comrade Lenin formulates this task as follows: ’to win the vanguard of the proletariat to the side of communism’. J.V. Stalin The Party Before and After Taking Power Works Vol. 5 p. 103
Further, in his synopsis, The Political Strategy and Tactics of the Russian Communists, Stalin denotes three stages of development of the Russian Party that fall within this first period:
a) Welding the main core, especially the ’Iskra’ group, and so forth. Fight against Economism. The Credo.
b) Formation of Party cadres as the basis of the future workers party on an all-Russian scale (1895-1903). The Second Party Congress.
c) The expansion of the cadres into a workers party and its reinforcement with new party workers recruited in the course of the proletarian movement. (1903-04). The Third Party Congress.
J.V. Stalin The Political Strategy and Tactics of the Russian Communists Works Vol. 5 p. 72
From these passages it can be seen that there are two main aspects to the task of winning the vanguard of the proletariat to communism. One, the development of revolutionary theory – its most concise, systematic and comprehensive expression being the Party programme – to guide the movement, “to put it firmly on its feet”. The second being the actual recruitment of cadres and the creation of the Party, “to form the ranks of the proletarian party.”
It is a fundamental truth of Marxism-Leninism that “without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.” It is only through the correct application of the guiding principles of Marxism-Leninism to the various questions facing our movement that we develop an accurate and scientific revolutionary theory to guide our own revolutionary movement. Until we have correctly resolved the proper method of building the Party, the political economy of Canada and the class alignments arising on that basis, the national position of Quebec and the correct tactics to apply on this question, our attitude towards trade union work, the international situation, our stand towards war and our tactics during war, and so on, there can be no principled revolutionary theory or programme around which to unite the movement and guarantee that it represents the highest interests of the proletariat. This is what Stalin means when he speaks of “mapping the movement’s strategic plan, i.e. the route that the movement should take” as part of winning the advanced workers to communism.
The Marxist programme, based on deductions from the theory, defines the aim of the movement of the rising class, in the present case the proletariat, during a certain period in the development of capitalism, or during the whole of the capitalist period (the minimum programme and the maximum programme). J.V. Stalin The Political Strategy and Tactics of the Russian Communists Works Vol. 5 p. 64
The development of the Party programme is achieved through the concerted efforts of the principled sections of the movement. On the one hand, by taking up the theoretical tasks and developing scientific political lines on all the fundamental questions facing the movement. On the other hand, by waging a ruthless struggle against all opportunist lines in the movement. It is obvious that such a formulation of programme and the opening of programmatic debate would be a tremendous advance for our movement. Struggle over line would be raised from sporadic, inconsistent discussion to comprehensive, systematic discussion on all fundamental questions. This struggle would expose the wide range of political views within the movement, and make it possible to determine which lines are correct. It is clear then that grounding our movement on the foundation of correct revolutionary theory is a vital task demanding intensification of study, scientific investigation, and the opening of broad polemics.
However, there is much confusion in our movement as to what actually constitutes revolutionary theory and programme. This confusion manifests itself in separation of the fundamental guiding principles of Marxism-Leninism from their concrete application. Some tendencies make this separation outright. Others constantly stress the importance of the application of Marxism-Leninism to concrete conditions, but have proven incapable of following their own advice. In fact, their conception of revolutionary theory does not go beyond the most superficial ’acceptance’ of the ABC’s. This conception allows for the claim of ’integrity’ to Marxist-Leninist principles regardless of opportunism and revisionism in their application. What is being upheld in this case is not Marxism-Leninism, but rather a caricature of it. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Those who in fact uphold Marxism-Leninism, who have taken it as a science and guide to action, see it as the world-historical experience of the proletariat taken in its general aspect, and have no other intention than to apply the fruits of this experience to our own conditions and our own revolutionary movement. Our task is not only to uphold the general principles of Marxism-Leninism, but to enrich and expand them through their scientific application to Canadian conditions. Only when this is done can a true line of march be drawn.
The struggle to establish principle is the main, but not the only task of our movement. We must also lay a solid foundation of revolutionary practice and organization. When we investigate our movement, we find that virtually every group has some sort of working class practice, is already inside the factories trying to organize. However, the lack of consistent revolutionary theory to guide this work acts as a block to the development of consistent, principled practice. The movement’s practical work is marked by an overwhelming tendency towards Economism and reformism. The cause of this is not to be found only in the prevalence of small local circles. The solution is not some sort of enlarged circle which declares itself the Party, or moves to a ’higher’, pre-Party organizational level prior to the establishment of firm principles in the movement. Rather, it is the task of all the existing groups to participate in the struggle for revolutionary theory. As Lenin pointed out when looking back on the circle period in the development of the Russian movement:
The circles played their part and are now, of course, obsolete. But they became obsolete only because the struggle that they waged posed the key problems of the (communist) movement in the sharpest possible manner and solved them in an irreconcilable revolutionary spirit, thereby creating a firm basis for broad party activity. V.I. Lenin Preface to the Collection Twelve Years CW Vol. 13 p.106
Prior to this struggle, the socialist movement was ideologically united, but as a Social-Democratic Party, which Stalin later described as “a bloc of proletarian and petty bourgeois elements” (Works Vol. 11 p.294). This Party was united only around a few of the most general features of Marxism as applied to Russia: full recognition of the development of capitalism in Russia, acceptance of the struggle for socialism, overthrow of the autocracy as the immediate goal. When speaking of “welding the main core”, Stalin is describing the ideological and political consolidation of the Bolshevik trend, the truly consistent, principled communist trend. This consolidation was accomplished through the fiercest struggle against any and all distortion and deviation from Marxism. The principal opportunist trend of the period was Economism, and the polemic raged on all fundamental questions of strategy and tactics thrown up in the course of the practical work of the movement. It was through this struggle that the revolutionary theory and the main core of the CPSU (B) were developed.
The function of the main core or centre is to outline the tasks before the movement, demonstrate the correct method of work, and resolve the main questions confronting the movement; to wage consistent struggle against all shades of opportunism: to demarcate the boundaries of the movement; to establish and maintain contacts throughout the movement and provide specific theoretical and practical guidelines; to produce pamphlets, leaflets, books, and a leading organ at the level of the advanced workers; to develop organizational forms to fulfill our tasks; to begin coordination of the national activities of the movement; and so on. In short, the centre provides the ideological, political and organizational leadership necessary for the construction of an iron-willed, democratic centralist Party: a Party of professional revolutionaries.
In order to lay the foundation for such a Party now, the present communist movement must realize that its construction cannot proceed from the bottom upward – by which is meant a coalition of ’independent’ individuals or organizations, whether local, regional or national as the anarchistic party-builders would have it. Rather, it must proceed from the top down, i.e. under the leadership, direction and discipline of the centre. Of course, direction and discipline cannot be fully developed until the Party structure has been formed and rules adopted, but Lenin teaches us that
In the period of disunity and separate circles this top from which revolutionary Social-Democracy strove to proceed organizationally was inevitably one of the circles, the one enjoying the most influence by virtue of its activity and its revolutionary consistency. V.I. Lenin One Step Forward, Two Steps Back CW Vol. 7 p. 397
It is essential to understand that it is only through the struggle against ideological and practical opportunism that one trend (whether one or several circles) becomes the actual hub or leading centre of the movement. One part of the movement becomes the centre, not by declaration or pronouncement, but by proving itself to the rest of the movement and attracting its finest elements. This proof can only be established, as Lenin says, through its consistency of principle, correctness of views and practical leadership. The movement as a whole chooses its leadership, but only after it has been tested in the course of the struggle.
Today our movement is ’united’ only in terms of formal opposition to modern revisionism, formal recognition of the necessity of a truly Marxist-Leninist Party, and formal acceptance of the struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat. Beyond this, we are only beginning to answer the questions confronting the revolutionary proletariat in Canada. If we are to weld a Bolshevik core, we must greatly intensify the present ’debate’, raise it to the level of a fully open polemic on all questions of programme, and eliminate the present tendency to liberalism and accommodation of opportunism. We face an even more complicated international and domestic situation, a much more developed, solidified, powerful and dangerous opportunism and revisionism than did the Bolsheviks. As a movement, we have not yet developed a firm and consistent grasp of Marxism-Leninism. As a result, the necessity for absolute firmness of principle, absolute maintenance and development of orthodox Marxism-Leninism, and unflinching and ruthless opposition to and weeding out of even the slightest accommodation of bourgeois and petty bourgeois outlook in our ranks is mandatory and cannot be over-stressed.
Thus far we have dealt with only one aspect of the activity of the movement – the development of revolutionary theory and the welding of the main core. The second stage of the first period, integrally bound up with setting our movement firmly on its feet theoretically, is the “mustering” or “building up” of cadres “as the basis of the future workers party” (Stalin Vol.5 p.72). The organizational life of the movement always begins at the local circle stage. Initially, circles in different regions, and often even in the same region, are isolated and lack consistent contact with each other. In the course of development of the circles, common questions and problems are thrown up by the objective conditions of practical activity. Each circle tries to deal with these questions on their own, but eventually they also begin to reach out and establish contacts with other communists. Only a few of the circle leaders, unrectified petty bourgeois intellectuals, have any vested interest in maintaining the isolation of groups. The spontaneous striving of the rank and file is for theoretical and practical unity of the movement. The exchange of views and debate begins, the initial “lines of demarcation” are drawn. Since the movement as a whole is still immature, is still rife with petty bourgeois outlook and has a low theoretical level, the lines that develop are not based on firm Marxist-Leninist principle. But nevertheless these lines are drawn, and the movement begins to consolidate into trends, ’centres’ arise. It is during this phase of scattered and spontaneous growth that opportunist tendencies are most able to take advantage of the lack of principled leadership and exert their own. Many of the leading trends become leading centres of opportunism.
In the course of this still spontaneous development, the circles also develop their practical work in the factories, propagandize their lines (such as they are), attempt to organize and lead the workers struggles, and attempt to win support for their tendencies. All the while the advanced workers are following this development. A few participate directly in the struggle for clarification of line; the majority keep current with the debate and look for consistency of principle and practical solutions to gravitate towards. The two movements remain separate until a principled, leading trend arises in the communist movement. The spontaneous development of the movement does not automatically bring forth such a centre, but the rise of a principled centre marks an end to the movement’s spontaneous growth. The task of the leading centre is to transform the movement’s sporadic and inconsistent activity into a conscious struggle for the Party.
As a leading trend is formed it quite naturally becomes the centre and rallying point around which both old and new cadres unite. The most dedicated elements in the movement begin relating to the centre, and under its guidance put their practical work on a consistent and principled footing. New cadres coming into the movement also gravitate towards this centre. Since it acts as a rallying point, the core must be formed prior to the full-scale, organized formation of cadres. The training and consolidation of old cadres, and the influx, training and consolidation of new cadres, primarily from among the advanced workers, around the developing centre is a continuation, broadening, deepening and systematizing of a process that is already on-going. There is no ’raging river’ separating the first stage of Party-building from the second. The formation of cadres must not be understood mechanically, as a separate stage in a strictly linear progression: step one – the core, developed in isolation from the movement; step two – the cadres, the core ’goes out’ and recruits cadres. In reality, there is an overlap of tasks and activities throughout this development. On the one hand, the core is not developed in a closet, by exchange of positions ’at the top’, by the leaders alone. The core is developed through active participation in the life of the movement, in polemical debate and practical activity in full view of both the communists and advanced workers. On the other hand, the activity of the core is precisely to “build up” cadres, to lead in laying both the theoretical and organizational foundation of the Party. It is through the consistent lines being put into practice, through rallying the communist cadres and advanced workers, that the basis is laid for the consolidation of local work nationwide. As the core becomes consolidated and is accepted by the most dedicated and consistent elements, the unification of the Marxist-Leninists and the drawing in of the advanced workers is accelerated and proceeds on a firm and systematic basis.
The consolidation of the communist movement and its fusion with the working class movement takes place at both the local and national levels. National coordination is vital to the full development of our communist work. The class struggle of the proletariat is national in form, and as the organizers of this class struggle, the organizations of the communists must of necessity also be national in scope. If our local work is not to remain isolated, amateurish and occupied with embryonic forms of the class struggle, we must develop nationally, wage national polemics among all trends, resolve the questions facing the entire working class, put all local work in a national framework, and unite the communists and advanced workers across the country.
At the same time, national coordination means nothing unless our work is grounded concretely in each locality. The movement exists nationally as the sum total of the communist activity in every industrial area, every district, every region and province. To coordinate the national movement means to put all this activity on a common footing, under the direction of a centre that can accurately assess the development of the movement nationwide. It is only on the basis of systematic and coordinated local work – the defeat of opportunism, winning the advanced workers, uniting the communists, solving practical problems, and so on, in every locality – that the national struggle can be accomplished. But local work does not stand as a prerequisite to national work. To consider the process from this perspective, first local, then national consolidation, is just an expanded form of localism. In reality, the national consolidation of the movement is simultaneous with its local consolidation. This is the process our movement is already tending to spontaneously. We must raise this spontaneous tendency to the level of consciousness. In doing this we cannot cease local work until the Party is formed, nor can we conduct real Party work with local activity alone. Further, we cannot truly coordinate national work by one or another circle arbitrarily declaring itself the centre, the top, from which the Party will be proclaimed, nor can we move to the Party through a simple ’amalgamation’ of local work. We must systematically strive to lay the foundations of Party work in our own localities and set our movement on its feet nationally in one unified struggle.
In order to advance in this fashion, the formation of cadres must be both the internal unification of the Marxist-Leninist movement and the recruitment of the advanced workers. This is the only way we can establish a firm Marxist-Leninist foundation for our Party and move into the third stage of the first period: “the expansion of the cadres into a workers party”, the actual creation of the Party. The creation of the Party is not an isolated act of declaration. The Party is formed only on the solid basis laid during the first two stages of development. If the Party is declared prior to the principled unification of the Marxist-Leninist movement, it invariably represents only one of many factions, is a sectarian act. If the Party is declared before fusion with the advanced workers, it stands separate from the class, is in no way an advanced detachment of the class, and can in no way represent the highest interests of the class. On the one hand:
To establish and consolidate the Party means to establish and consolidate unity among all Russian (communists); such unity cannot be decreed, it cannot be brought about by a decision, say, of a meeting of representatives; it must be fought for. V.I. Lenin Draft Declaration of the Editorial Board of Iskra and Zarya CW Vol. 4 p. 323
On the other hand:
Only when this contact (between the working class movement and scientific socialism) has been established can a (communist) working class party be formed in Russia; for (communism) does not exist merely to serve the spontaneous working class movement (as some of our present-day ’practical workers’ are sometimes inclined to think), but to combine socialism with the working class movement. V.I. Lenin Ibid. p. 325.
Such are our main tasks in the first period.
Lenin states that:
As long as the question was (and in so far as it still is) one of winning over the vanguard of the proletariat to Communism, so long, and to that extent, propaganda was in the forefront; even propaganda circles, with all the defects of the circle spirit, are useful under these conditions and produce fruitful results. V.I. Lenin “Left-Wing”Communism – An Infantile Disorder Foreign Languages Press Peking p. 98
Stalin also says that for the task of the first period of Party development, the “chief form of activity” is propaganda. (Works Vol. 5 p.83)
In order to organize and lead the revolutionary workers movement, we must divert the working class from its spontaneous trade unionism and bring it under communist leadership. To do this we must raise the workers from spontaneous, embryonic consciousness to revolutionary class political consciousness. What does this political consciousness consist of?
Working class consciousness cannot be genuine political consciousness unless the workers are trained to respond to all cases of tyranny, oppression, violence and abuse, no matter what class is affected – unless they are trained, moreover, to respond from a (communist) point of view and no other. The consciousness of the working masses cannot be genuine class consciousness unless the workers learn, from concrete, and above all from topical, political facts and events to observe every other social class in all the manifestations of its intellectual, ethical,and political life; unless they learn to apply in practice the materialist analysis and the materialist estimate of all aspects of the life and activity of all classes, strata, and groups of the population. Those who concentrate the attention, observation, and consciousness of the working class exclusively, or even mainly, upon itself alone are not (communists); for the self-knowledge of the working class is indissolubly bound up, not solely with a fully clear theoretical understanding – it would be even truer to say, not so much with the theoretical as with the practical, understanding – of the relationship between all the various classes of modern society, acquired through the experience of “political life.” V.I. Lenin What is to be Done? CW Vol. 5 p. 412.
How is such political consciousness developed in the working class? There are two means by which the class is educated politically: through communist propaganda and agitation, and through the direct practical experience of the masses of workers. Both of these means are integrally related. Propaganda and agitation must be used by communists to cast the light of Marxism-Leninism upon the ongoing class struggle, to raise the consciousness of the masses on the basis of their own experience. There must be no separation made between the role of communists as ’educators’ by propaganda and agitation and as leaders of the practical activity of the class. Indeed,
The real education of the masses can never be separated from their independent political and especially revolutionary struggle. Only struggle educates the exploited class. Only struggle discloses to it the magnitude of its own power, widens its horizon, enhances its abilities, clarifies its mind, forges its will. V.I. Lenin Lecture on the 1905 Revolution CW Vol. 23 p. 241.
In the same way, propaganda and agitation are not entirely separate functions, but differ only in the scope of presentation:
A propagandist presents many ideas to one or a few persons; an agitator presents one or a few ideas, but he presents them to a mass of people. G. Plekhanov cited by Lenin What is to be Done? CW Vol. 5 p. 409.
Because of this general difference, each requires different personal qualities on the part of propagandists and agitators. On this basis, Party work generates a division of labour and specialization of functions between the two. But this does not mean that the work of political education can be divided into two distinct and unrelated, or even distantly related, spheres. In practice there can be no absolute separation of the two functions, and the tendency is to develop both. Even in a movement as primitive as ours, propaganda and agitation are constantly and spontaneously combined in the course of our daily work. There is a spontaneous division of labour both within and among the circles in carrying out the two, but as a movement we do not restrict ourselves to one or the other. It is only when various groups raise their own narrow experience to the level of an equally narrow theory that we find attempts to apply propaganda to the exclusion of agitation or vice versa. This gross distortion is only a symptom of the failure of our movement to raise both our propaganda and agitation to the level of consistent communist work.
But if the tasks of propaganda and agitation are integrally related, how are we to understand the use of propaganda as the main activity of the first period?
The formative period of Party-building, as we have seen, involves the unification of the Marxist-Leninist movement and its fusion with the advanced workers to create Party cadres. To do this our main emphasis must be on the broad explanation of the fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism as applied to the Canadian situation. We are laying out the broad framework of political knowledge which will be fleshed in, built up, and brought to life in the course of the class struggle. To win the advanced workers, we must constantly raise and follow up on the tactical, political and theoretical problems of world communism as well as all the national problems facing the Canadian revolution. This is the scope of educational work that must be done to win the advanced workers, presenting many ideas which will be fully grasped only by a numerically small strata of the class.
Examples of such propaganda in the pre-Party period in Russia would be Lenin’s What the “Friends of the People” Are, Development of Capitalism in Russia, On the Market Question, and What is to be Done? At the same time, propaganda work must” also include the broadest possible political exposures. A “clear picture” of social reality
cannot be obtained from any book. It can be obtained only from living examples and from exposures that follow close upon what is going on about us at a given moment...These comprehensive political exposures are an essential and fundamental condition for training the masses in revolutionary activity. V.I. Lenin What is to be Done? CW Vol. 5 p. 413.
Good examples of this kind of broad political exposure which should be studied by every class conscious worker are The Law On Fines and The Factory Laws, as well as many of Lenin’s longer political exposures in Iskra and Zarya.
This kind of exposition would be fully understood only by the advanced workers and must therefore speak most directly to their educational needs. The average workers, though they also strive towards socialism, are absorbed in local work and do not have a full view of the capitalist system or the solution to the exploitation of labour by capital. To the backward workers, such broad communist propaganda may be “completely or well-nigh incomprehensible” (Lenin Vol. 4 p.282). But this should not deter us. In fact, we should concentrate our efforts on such comprehensive propaganda precisely because it is the advanced workers we are trying to reach. Our task is not simply to introduce them to communism, which they are already aware of, but to win them as professional revolutionaries, as Party cadres. It is only on this basis that we will be able to create the Party and launch the class-wide effort to win the masses of workers to its side. It is for these reasons that we say that propaganda must be the main activity of the entire first period.
To say that our main emphasis is on propaganda to win the advanced workers does not mean that we should ignore the masses of workers, or that we should not engage in agitation to “rouse discontent and indignation among the masses” (Lenin Vol.4 p.294). Our propaganda work has the two-fold function of drawing the advanced workers into the active struggle to build the Party, and of raising the level of the average stratum to that of the advanced. The development of class conscious workers and their fusion with the communist movement lays the foundation for the Party. But we must also begin to lay the foundation for the Party’s mass work, must attempt to move the masses of workers towards active political life, towards independent class-wide action. Our
Agitational activity among the masses must be of the broadest nature, both economic and political, on all possible issues and in regard to all manifestations of oppression whatever their form. We must utilize this agitation to attract growing numbers of workers into the ranks of the revolutionary (communist) party, to encourage the political struggle in all conceivable manifestations, to organize this struggle and transform it from its spontaneous forms into the struggle of a single political party. Agitation, therefore, must serve as a means of widely expanding the political protest and more organized forms of political struggle. V.I. Lenin Apropos of the Profession de Foi CW Vol. 4 p. 294.
Agitational activity in the pre-Party period is aimed at rallying the masses of workers around a political struggle that, lacking the guidance and organization of an established communist Party, is still only in the early stages of consolidation. It is, as Lenin states, a means of developing the political protest of the masses of workers and of developing higher organized forms of that protest. But it cannot be the chief means so long as the proletariat lacks the organized fusion of communism and the working class: the Party.
In the first period, the period of the Party’s formation, our agitational work must remain secondary. It must remain so until we have established a base in the working class, until we have won the advanced workers. As we begin to develop a granite foundation of revolutionary theory, as we begin to provide a consistent Marxist-Leninist framework so that every communist and class conscious worker “has definite views on all important questions” (Lenin Vol.4 p.324), as a leading centre emerges, and as we begin to fuse with the advanced workers, we will be laying the real foundation for real Party work. The closer we move towards the Party, the more our emphasis will shift towards political agitation, towards rousing the broad masses of workers behind the solidifying Marxist-Leninist movement. To attempt to skip over this period of consolidation, to attempt to pass directly to broad agitational work before the necessary groundwork has been laid by propaganda, to make agitational work the main activity before the advanced workers have been won, before they have been raised to conscious Party communists, to attempt this is to fall into Economism. Those who subordinate propaganda to agitation in the pre-Party period are in fact subordinating the communist movement to militant trade unionism.