Lomonosov-Martynov writes:
Much water has flowed beneath the bridges since Plekhanov wrote this book. [Socialist Tasks 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 the fore, and if we would wish to lay down such a theoretical basis we would certainly have to considerably deepen the principles of tactics that Plekhanov at one time developed. … We would now have to define the difference between propaganda and agitation differently from the way in which Plekhanov defined it. [Martynov had just previously quoted the words of Plekhanov: "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 elucidation of the whole of the present system or partial manifestations of it, irrespective of whether it is done in a form capable of being understood by individuals or by the broad masses. By agitation, in the strict sense of the word [sic!] we would understand: Calling the masses to certain concrete actions that would facilitate the direct revolutionary intervention of the proletariat in social life.
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
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