“What a large number of Social-Democratic Lomonosovs have appeared among us lately!” observed a comrade one day, having in mind the astonishing propensity of many who are inclined toward Economism to arrive, “necessarily, by their own understanding”, at great truths (e.g., that the economic struggle stimulates the workers to ponder over their lack of rights) and in doing so to ignore, with the supreme contempt of born geniuses, all that has been produced by the antecedent development of revolutionary thought and of the revolutionary movement. Lomonosov-Martynov is precisely such a born genius. We need but glance at his article ‘Urgent Questions’ to see how by ‘his own understanding’ he arrives at what was long ago said by Axelrod (of whom our Lomonosov, naturally, says not a word); how, for instance, he is beginning to understand that we cannot ignore the opposition of such or such strata of the bourgeoisie (Rabocheye Dyelo, No. 9, pp. 61, 62, 71; compare this with Rabocheye Dyelo’s ‘Reply to Axelrod’, pp. 22, 23-24), etc. But alas, he is only “arriving” and is only “beginning”, not more than that, for so little has he understood Axelrod’s ideas, that he talks about “the economic struggle against the employers and the government”. For three years (1898-1901) Rabocheye Dyelo has tried hard to understand Axelrod but has so far not understood him! Can one of the reasons be that Social-Democracy, ‘like mankind’, always sets itself only tasks that can be achieved?
But the Lomonosovs are distinguished not only by their ignorance of many things (that would be but half misfortune!), but also by their unawareness of their own ignorance. Now this is a real misfortune; and it is this misfortune that prompts them without further ado to attempt to render Plekhanov ‘more profound’.
“Much water,” Lomonosov-Martynov says, “has flowed under the bridge since Plekhanov wrote his book (Tasks of the Socialists in the Fight Against the Famine in Russia). The Social-Democrats who for a decade led the economic struggle of the working class… have failed as yet to lay down a broad theoretical basis for Party tactics. This question has now come to a head, and if we should wish to lay down such a theoretical basis, we should certainly have to deepen considerably the principles of tactics developed at one time by Plekhanov… Our present definition of the distinction between propaganda and agitation would have to be different from Plekhanov’s [Martynov has just quoted Plekhanov’s words: ‘A propagandist presents many ideas to one or a few persons; an agitator presents only one or a few ideas, but he presents them to a mass of people.’] By propaganda we would understand the revolutionary explanation of the present social system, entire or in its partial manifestations, whether that be done in a form intelligible to individuals or to broad masses. By agitation, in the strict sense of the word (sic!), we would understand the call upon the masses to undertake definite, concrete actions and the promotion of the direct revolutionary intervention of the proletariat in social life.”
We congratulate Russian – and international – Social-Democracy on having found, thanks to Martynov, a new terminology, more strict and more profound. Hitherto we thought (with Plekhanov, and with all the leaders of the international working-class movement) that 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 this society into a socialist society, etc. In a word, he must present ‘many ideas’, so many, indeed, that they will be understood as an integral whole only by a (comparatively) few persons. The agitator, however, speaking on the same subject, will take as an illustration a fact that is most glaring and most widely known to his audience, say, the death of an unemployed worker’s family from starvation, the growing impoverishment, etc., and, utilising this fact, known to all, will direct his efforts to presenting a single idea to the ‘masses’, e.g., the senselessness of the contradiction between the increase of wealth and the increase of poverty; he will strive to rouse discontent and indignation among the masses against this crying injustice, leaving a more complete explanation of this contradiction to the propagandist. Consequently, the propagandist operates chiefly by means of the printed word; the agitator by means of the spoken word. The propagandist requires qualities different from those of the agitator. Kautsky and Lafargue, for example, we term propagandists; Bebel and Guesde we term agitators. To single out a third sphere, or third function, of practical activity, and to include in this function “the call upon the masses to undertake definite concrete actions”, is sheer nonsense, because the ‘call’, as a single act, either naturally and inevitably supplements the theoretical treatise, propagandist pamphlet, and agitational speech, or represents a purely executive function. Let us take, for example, the struggle the German Social-Democrats are now waging against the corn duties. The theoreticians write research works on tariff policy, with the ‘call’, say, to struggle for commercial treaties and for Free Trade. The propagandist does the same thing in the periodical press, and the agitator in public speeches. At the present time, the ‘concrete action’ of the masses takes the form of signing petitions to the Reichstag against raising the corn duties. The call for this action comes indirectly from the theoreticians, the propagandists, and the agitators, and, directly, from the workers who take the petition lists to the factories and to private homes for the gathering of signatures. According to the ‘Martynov terminology’, Kautsky and Bebel are both propagandists, while those who solicit the signatures are agitators. Isn’t it clear?
The German example recalled to my mind the German word which, literally translated, means ‘Ballhorning’. Johann Ballhorn, a Leipzig publisher of the sixteenth century, published a child’s reader in which, as was the custom, he introduced a drawing of a cock, but a cock without spurs and with a couple of eggs lying near it. On the cover he printed the legend, ‘Revised edition by Johann Ballhorn’. Ever since then, the Germans describe any ‘revision’ that is really a worsening as ‘ballhorning’. And one cannot help recalling Ballhorn upon seeing how the Martynovs try to render Plekhanov ‘more profound’.
Why did our Lomonosov ‘invent’ this confusion? In order to illustrate how Iskra “devotes attention only to one side of the case, just as Plekhanov did a decade and a half ago.” (p. 39.) “With Iskra, propagandist tasks force agitational tasks into the background, at least for the present.” (p. 52.) If we translate this last proposition from the language of Martynov into ordinary human language (because mankind has not yet managed to learn the newly-invented terminology), we shall get the following: with Iskra, the tasks of political propaganda and political agitation force into the background the task of “presenting to the government concrete demands for legislative and administrative measures” that “promise certain palpable results” (or demands for social reforms, that is, if we are permitted once again to employ the old terminology of the old mankind not yet grown to Martynov’s level). We suggest that the reader compare this thesis with the following tirade:
What also astonishes us in these programmes [the programmes advanced by revolutionary Social-Democrats] is their constant stress upon the benefits of workers’ activity in parliament (non-existent in Russia), though they completely ignore (thanks to their revolutionary nihilism) the importance of workers’ participation in the legislative manufacturers’ assemblies on factory affairs [which do exist in Russia] … or at least the importance of workers’ participation in municipal bodies…
The author of this tirade expresses in a somewhat more forthright and clearer manner the very idea which Lomonosov-Martynov discovered by his own understanding. The author is R.M., in the ‘Separate Supplement’ to Rabochaya Mysl. (p. 15.)