Page:Lenin - What Is To Be Done - tr. Joe Fineberg (1929).pdf/68

 and Guesde we call agitators. To point to a third sphere, or third function, of practical activity, and to include in this third function "calling the masses to certain concrete actions," is sheer nonsense, because the "call," as a single act, either naturally and inevitably supplements the theoretical tract, propagandist pamphlet and agitational speech, or represents a purely executive function. Take, for example, the struggle now being carried on by the German Social-Democrats against the grain duties. The theoreticians write researches in tariff policy and "call" say, for a fight for commercial treaties and for free trade. The propagandist does the same thing in the periodical press, and the agitator does it in public speeches. At the present time, the "concrete action" of the masses takes the form of signing petitions to the Reichstag against the raising of the grain duties. The call for this action comes directly from the theoreticians, the propagandists and the agitators, and indirectly, from those workers who carry the petition lists to the factories and to private houses to get signatures. According to the "Martynov terminology," Kautsky and Bebel are both propagandists, while those who carry the petition lists around are agitators; is that not so?

The German example recalled to my mind the German word Verballhornung, which literally translated means "to Ballhorn." 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 this drawing, instead of portraying an ordinary cock with spurs, portrayed it without spurs and with a couple of eggs lying near it. On the cover of this reader he printed the legend "Revised edition by Johann Ballhorn." Since that time the Germans describe any "Revision" that is really a worsening, as "Ballhorning." And watching Martynov's attempts to render Plekhanov "more profound" involuntarily recalls Ballhorn to one's mind. …

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]. "According to Iskra, propagandist tasks force agitational tasks into the background, at least for the present" [p. 52]. If we translate this last postulate from the language of Martynov into ordinary human language (because humanity has not yet managed to learn the newly invented terminology), we shall get the following: "According to Iskra, the tasks of political propaganda and political agitation force