Lenin countered this tail-endism by saying that “the fundamental economic interests of the proletariat can be satisfied only by a political revolution that will replace the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie by the dictatorship of the proletariat…” A mass revolutionary party based on the working class was needed, but one built upon the rock of Marxist principles and theory.
While Lenin understood the importance of agitation in exposing bad working conditions and such like, he nevertheless regarded such activity as a “purely trade union” level of struggle. In contrast, Lenin stressed the need to lead “the struggle of the working class, not only for better terms for the sale of labour-power, but for the abolition of the social system that compels the propertyless to sell themselves to the rich… Hence, it follows that not only must Social-Democrats not confine themselves exclusively to the economic struggle, but that they must not allow the organisation of economic exposures to become the predominant part of their activities. We must take up actively the political education of the working classes and the development of their political consciousness.”
In other words, beginning with the immediate problems of the workers, it is necessary to generalise these experiences and link them to the wider struggle of the working class to change society. This means being able to link together agitation, propaganda and theory. However, Lenin nevertheless warned against the use of crude agitation, because simply pointing to the bad conditions suffered by the workers was treating them as little children. “Such activity is not enough for us; we are not children to be fed on the thin gruel of ‘economic’ politics alone,” he explained. “It is not enough to explain to the workers that they are politically oppressed.” It is necessary to take up all instances of injustice in different spheres of life in order to help develop the political consciousness of workers. It is by linking the daily struggles to a revolutionary programme and theory – linking the particular to the general – that Marxists can raise the level of consciousness. You cannot do this by simply telling workers what they already know.
Underlying this whole argument is the conflict between Marxism and opportunism. While the opportunists separated the struggle for reforms and revolution, Lenin emphasises the inseparable link between them. “Revolutionary Social-Democracy has always included the struggle for reforms as part of its activities…” he writes. But that is not the end of the matter. “In a word, it subordinates the struggle for reforms, as the part to the whole, to the revolutionary struggle for freedom and for socialism.” Revolutionaries wanted to raise wages, but that was not the end of the matter. They wanted the workers to govern society.
Following Plekhanov, Lenin went on to outline the difference between agitation and propaganda: “if we give many ideas to a small number of people we have propaganda; if we give one idea to a large quantity of people we have agitation.” However, it is the role of the revolutionary propagandist to provide an all-rounded explanation to the workers of the capitalist crisis and the way out: “the propagandist, dealing with, say, the question of unemployment, must explain the capitalistic nature of crises, the cause of their inevitability in modern society, the necessity for the transformation of society into a socialist society, etc.”
Lenin pointed to the weaknesses of the Russian party. Taking the example of its study circles, Lenin criticised their low political level.
Let us take the type of Social-Democratic study circle that has become most widespread in the past few years and examine its work. It has ‘contacts with the workers’ and rests content with this, issuing leaflets in which abuses in the factories, the government’s partiality towards the capitalists, and the tyranny of the police are strongly condemned. At workers’ meetings the discussions never, or rarely ever, go beyond the limits of these subjects. Extremely rare are the lectures and discussions held on the history of the revolutionary movement, on questions of the government’s home and foreign policy, on questions of the economic evolution of Russia and of Europe, on the position of various classes in modern society, etc…
In fact, the ideal leader, as the majority of the members of such circles picture him, is something far more in the nature of a trade union secretary than a socialist political leader. For a secretary of any, say English, trade union always helps the workers to carry on the economic struggle, he helps them to expose factory abuses, explains the injustice of the laws and of measures that hamper the freedom to strike and to picket (i.e., to warn all and sundry that a strike is proceeding at a certain factory), explains the partiality of arbitration court judges who belong to the bourgeois class, etc., etc. In other words, every trade union secretary conducts and helps to conduct ‘the economic struggle against the employers and the government’. It cannot be too strongly maintained that this is still not Social-Democracy, that the Social-Democrat’s ideal should not be the trade union secretary, but the tribune of the people… who is able to take advantage of every event, however small, in order to set forth before all his socialist convictions and his democratic demands, in order to clarify for all and everyone the world-historic significance of the struggle for the emancipation of the proletariat.