Page:Lenin - What Is To Be Done - tr. Joe Fineberg (1929).pdf/67

 Lomonosov-Martynov writes:

We congratulate Russian, and international Social-Democracy on Martynov's more strict and more profound terminology. Up till now we thought (with Plekhanov, and with all the leaders of the international labour movement), that a propagandist, dealing with say the question of unemployment, must explain the capitalistic nature of crises, the reasons why crises are inevitable in modern society, must describe how present society must inevitably become transformed into Socialist society, etc. In a word, he must present "many ideas," so many indeed that they will he understood as a whole only by a (comparatively) few persons. An agitator, however, speaking on the same subject will take as an illustration a fact that is most widely known and outstanding among his audience—say the death from starvation of the family of an unemployed worker, the growing impoverishment, etc.—and utilising this illustration, will direct all his efforts to present a single idea to the "masses," i. e., the idea of the senseless contradiction between the increase of wealth and increase of poverty; he will strive to rouse discontent and indignation among the masses against this crying injustice, and leave a more complete explanation of this contradiction the propagandist. Consequently, the propagandist operates chiefly by means of the printed word; the agitator operates with the living word. The qualities that are required of an agitator are not the same as the qualities that are required of a propagandist. Kautsky and Lafargue, for example, we call propagandists; Bebel