A shout out to all pro White / pro West activists, national and international: Why has the Right been so ineffective in utilizing agitation and propaganda? Or is agitprop antithetical to the Right? The Left’s appeal to the masses largely derives from its ability to effectively utilize both of these tools. The Right, if it wishes to move forward, should begin studying the Left’s agitprop tactics.
As a whole we must reach a new dimension of agitation by exposing the contradictions of the vile haters, whether by local muckraking or pointing out the idea that the entire political system is worthless, to “rouse discontent and indignation among the masses against this crying injustice.”
In other words, its long past time we get off our collective asses, study the enemy’s tactics like any good soldier would do, learn it, and inspire the collective consciousness of our people to literally crush those who truly hate us.
Communists often talk about the crucial importance of revolutionary agitation and propaganda. And with good reason. Together, agitation and propaganda, are a mighty and indispensable weapon in the Party’s revolutionary arsenal. How else but with vivid, compelling agitation, as well as propaganda, can the hatred which is provoked by daily life under capitalism be further aroused and sharpened against the bourgeoisie? How else but by agitation and propaganda can the word, the sparks, and the lessons of struggles waged by now one, now another, section of the masses be spread nationwide? How else can class struggle be waged in the crucial arena of public opinion against the ruling class–whose ideas also are the ruling ideas in society and who spend millions and millions of dollars yearly to produce a deluge of their own agitation and propaganda spreading confusion, defeatism and reaction?
Is there any way other than communist agitation and propaganda to arm the masses themselves with the science of revolution and the Party’s line so they can take it up and wage conscious struggle for revolution? And in what other way can the influence of the Party, its views, its presence be spread so openly, broadly, and consistently among the masses as by agitation and propaganda–in all its forms, spoken and written, but particularly in newspapers? As Stalin put it, “A whole generation of the revolutionary proletariat was reared by Pravda [a mass communist paper].” Or looking at this country in recent years, can we forget the influence of the tens of thousands of copies of the Black Panther paper sold each week in each of many major cities at a time when the Panthers stood for violent revolution in the minds of millions?
In fact it is impossible even to conceive of the Party itself–and the revolutionary stamp it aims to put on all its work–without the glue of agitation and propaganda unifying and giving all around revolutionary character to all its work. With all this in mind it is possible to see why Lenin described “systematic, all-around propaganda and agitation, consistent in principle” as “the chief and permanent task” of communists. (“Where to Begin,” CW, Vol. 5)
And with this in mind today we must greatly step up and sharpen our revolutionary agitation and propaganda. And we must give special emphasis to agitation which overall plays a more central role in our ongoing work. While this includes making full use of the Party press and leaflets, it also means widely and boldly doing spoken agitation. For agitation lends itself especially to the spoken word. But what is agitation and just what role does it play?
What Is Agitation?
Agitation, whether spoken or written, generally focuses on one event, and one contradiction, and seeks to make a single idea powerfully clear to broad numbers of people. It is like a sharp knife seeking to expose and make raw a glaring contradiction and draw blood around it. An agitator, focusing, say, on the U.S. government’s support for the Shah of Iran under the banner of bringing democracy to that country, would focus on the “democracy” the Shah is bringing to the people by shooting them down in the street, and would bring out the class content of this imperialist democracy. Or in an example cited by Lenin, pointing to the death by starvation of an unemployed worker’s family, an agitator would seek to show “the senselessness of the contradiction between the increase of wealth and the increase of poverty [and] he will strive to rouse discontent and indignation among the masses against this crying injustice.” (What Is To Be Done?, Section 3B) A fuller explanation of this contradiction, Lenin points out, will be left to the propagandist–who has to present many ideas and their interrelation, so propaganda will be understood in an all around way by a smaller number of people.
Continue….