Plekhanov on agitation and propaganda, from "The Tasks of the Social-Democrats in the Famine"

If I assert that the promotion of the growth of the class consciousness of the proletariat is the sole purpose
and the direct and sacred duty of the Socialists, then this does not mean that the contemporary Socialists
stand for propaganda, for propaganda alone, and for nothing but propaganda.

In the broad sense of the word this is perhaps true, but only in the very broad sense.

When at the International Congress in Paris in 1889 the Socialists resolved to strive for the eight-hour day
they obviously had it in mind that workers’ demonstrations in favour of their resolution would be a
marvellous method of propagating their ideas. But a demonstration is at the same time a method of
agitation.

In general it is not easy to draw the line between agitation and what is usually called propaganda.

Agitation is also propaganda, but propaganda that takes place in particular circumstances, that is in
circumstances in which even those who would not normally pay any attention are forced to listen to the
propagandist’s words. Propaganda is agitation that is conducted in the normal everyday course of the life
of a particular country.

Agitation is propaganda occasioned by events that are not entirely ordinary and that provoke a certain
upsurge in the public mood. Socialists would be very bad politicians if they were not to use such notable
events for their own ends.

Let us suppose that the agitation in favour of the eight-hour day has been crowned with success.
Frightened by constantly growing pressure from the workers’ movement, the bourgeoisie has yielded. In
all civilised countries the law has limited the working day to eight hours.

This is a great victory for socialism but the question arises:

There were of course Socialists among them. There were many Socialists who played a leading role,
stepping out in front and sweeping the hesitant and the indecisive along in their wake.

But were there really then people who were hesitant and indecisive? Why did they hesitate, why were
they indecisive?...

Probably because they had not fully appreciated the benefits of the eight-hour day and because, on a
general level, not having assimilated socialist ideas, they were not yet imbued with the thirst for the battle
for a better future that is aroused by a consistent and ordered revolutionary outlook.

In a word, these people were not yet Socialists. But now look at what has happened.

The Socialists have drawn people who were not yet Socialists into the struggle for a cause that will be
very useful to socialism. In other words, people who were not yet Socialists have already been working
for socialism.

And it is agitation that has done this!

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Because of this Socialists can use for the cause not just the forces that belong to them at the present time,
but also those that will belong to them only subsequently. What has happened is rather like drawing on
the socialist account which history will pay for. And this payment will bring the victory of socialism
significantly closer.

Propaganda, in the strict sense of the word, would lose all historical significance if it were not
accompanied by agitation.

Propaganda conveys the correct views to dozens, hundreds, thousands of people. But people holding the
correct views only become historical activists when they exert a direct influence on public life. And
influence on the public life of contemporary civilised countries is unthinkable without influence on the
mass, i.e. without agitation. (In barbaric despotisms [such as Tsarist Russia] things are different: there the
mass has no importance. But we are not talking about them.)

Consequently agitation is essential for any party that wishes to have historical meaning. A sect may be
content with propaganda in the narrow sense of the word, but a political party never.

If I had to clarify further the relationship between agitation and propaganda I should add that the
propagandist conveys many ideas to a single person or to a few people, whereas the agitator conveys only
one or a few ideas, but he conveys them to a whole mass of people, sometimes to almost the entire
population of a particular locality.

But history is made by the mass.

Consequently agitation is the aim of propaganda: I conduct propaganda so that I shall have the
opportunity to transfer to agitation.

However, let us return to our example.

We supposed that the Socialists had managed to secure an eight-hour day by law. Such a law brings very
great benefit to the working class. Even the least advanced, least comprehending and most backward
workers soon become convinced of this once it has become a reality.

And they all know that the eight-hour day was introduced on the initiative of the Socialists.

For this reason all workers, even the most backward, will be thoroughly convinced that the realisation of
at least some socialist demands benefits the working class. And this knowledge will in any case bring
them incomparably closer to a complete sympathy with socialism than a complete indifference to socialist
teaching would have done. But let us go further.

By increasing the worker’s leisure time, the eight-hour day gives him the opportunity for greater
intellectual development and consequently for the easier assimilation of socialist ideas. That means that in
this way too the eight-hour day brings nearer the inevitable reckoning: it ‘hastens the social revolution’...

We have seen that [social relations in Russia] are changing very rapidly. The mutual relationship between
the social forces does, clearly, change with them. The autocracy weakens as the historical soil that has
nurtured it crumbles and decomposes.

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At the same time some forces are growing stronger and stronger, and it is the collision with these forces
that drives [autocracy] to its ruin.

This means that, while our propaganda is training revolutionaries, history creates the revolutionary milieu
essential for their activity; while we are preparing the leaders of the revolutionary mass, the officers and
NCOs of the revolutionary army, this very army is being created by the inevitable course of social
development.

But [if that is so, must we not] describe our activity as fruitless or unproductive? On the contrary, is it not
absolutely necessary and uniquely productive from the revolutionary point of view?

On the other hand it is clear that, as long as the individuals that we have ‘propagandised’ exert no direct
revolutionary influence on the mass, they are only its leaders in theory.

If they are to become its leaders in reality they will have to influence them in the revolutionary sense.

That is where agitation comes into its own. Thanks to it the necessary link between the ‘heroes’ and the
‘crowd’, between the mass and its leaders is established and strengthened. The more strained matters
become, the more the old social edifice will rock, and the more rapidly the revolution approaches, the
more important agitation will become.

To it belongs the principal role in the drama that we call the social revolution.
From this it follows that, if the Russian Socialists want to play an active role in the coming Russian
revolution, they must know how to become agitators.

This is essential. But it is not easy. The task of the agitator involves putting into circulation in each
particular case the maximum possible number of revolutionary ideas in a form that is accessible to the
mass.

For every mistake he makes one way or another a harsh punishment awaits the agitator.

If he overestimates the revolutionary mood of the mass he will at best remain unintelligible, but he may
be ridiculed or even assaulted.

If, on the other hand, because of extreme caution he puts to the mass demands that it has already
outgrown in its rapid revolutionary development, he will fall into the awkward position of agitator-brake,
an agitator who inspires the crowd with ‘moderation and tender conscience’.

The whole skill of the agitator consists in his ability to avoid such excesses.

But if he has this skill he has no need to fear failure. His task will be carried out of its own accord. You
may perhaps say that he is giving the mass nothing: he is only giving fully conscious expression to the
attitude that it already holds, which it is not itself aware of. But in this lies the secret of his influence and
the guarantee of his future successes.

Seeing in his words merely the expression of its own demands, the mass willingly follows him. And… it
may even itself push ahead of the agitator.

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Realising that only yesterday it was still frightened by its boldness and novelty it rapidly goes further,
inclining to more daring demands.

In this way, learning from its own experience, carried along by its own movement, encouraged by its own
success, it gradually, but on the other hand assuredly, becomes more and more revolutionary, until in the
end it deals with a single decisive movement the death-blow to the existing order.

But when the edifice of this order, made shaky, weak and decrepit by history, has shattered, new tasks
will unfold before it, it will have to build things better in its new home, not falling into the net of the
political exploiters, flatterers and tricksters.

Then the services and the directions of its devoted agitator-friends will be just as important for it as they
were earlier in the heart of the struggle with the old order.

Orators are born, according to the well-known saying. Agitators are also ‘born’ and no science can
replace the inborn agitational gift. Agitation cannot be conducted according to a particular pattern. But
this does not prevent us from thinking about its significance and preparing for it with all the means at our
disposal at a time when we can foresee that there will soon be a broad scope for agitational activity.

A necessary condition for this activity is a merger of the revolutionary forces that have already been
prepared.

Through circle propaganda we can involve people who have no connection with one another and do not
even suspect one another’s existence. Of course the absence of organisation always affects propaganda,
but it does not make it impossible.

In epochs of great social upheaval, when the political atmosphere is charged with electricity and when
here and there for the most varied, most unforeseen reasons there are increasingly frequent explosions that
testify to the approach of the revolutionary storm, in short when it is necessary either to agitate or to rally
to the flag — in these epochs only organised revolutionary forces can exert a serious influence on the
course of events.

The individual is then powerless, and only units of a higher order are equal to the revolutionary task:
revolutionary organisations.

Organisation is the first, the essential step. However insignificant the prepared revolutionary forces of
contemporary Russia, they will be increased tenfold by organisation.

Counting their forces and stationing them where appropriate, the revolutionaries set to work.

By means of spoken and printed propaganda they spread the correct view of the causes of the present
famine through all strata of the population.

Wherever the mass is not yet sufficiently advanced to understand their teaching, they give it, as it were,
object lessons. They appear wherever it protests, they protest with it, they explain to it the meaning of its
own movement and hence they increase its revolutionary preparedness...