Newspaper Hawkers and Websites: A Plan to Build a Revolutionary Democratic Movement in the U.S. (Keith) by Keith

One of the great curiosities of the revolutionary left is the newspaper hawker. At every protest, at every progressive and radical conference they appear. Trotskyites outside (they are never invited inside, -- apparently they have no manners) with insufferable papers like The Workers Vanguard, or The Militant. Inside crusty old “new left” Maoists, and their unwitting youthful acolytes, push the latest edition of Revolution with insights from their maximum leader. To sell these papers you must be disciplined, you need guts, and a tolerance for abuse—most of the people who you try to sell the paper to refuse it. You must be prepared to hear “no.”

I was once one of those sad hawkers with my newspaper. I didn’t sell one the established papers like The Challenge, FightBack, or the People’s Weekly World. My secret communist cell published our own newspaper. That’s why I can explain this curiosity—the newspaper hawker and their newspaper—to you, dear reader, I was once a newspaper hawker myself.

The newspaper, that marvel of 19th century communication technology, which is today breathing its last gasps under the weight of new communications technology, somehow remains the preferred vehicle for the communication of revolutionary news and analysis by all manner of Marxian sects, why? Because in an important little essay entitled: “Where to Begin,” and in a follow up pamphlet called: What is to be done, V.I. Lenin said a newspaper was necessary to unite the revolutionaries and to organize the impending insurrection. Our modern revolutionaries read Lenin’s essay like a cookbook recipe—what is to be done? Just add water. Lenin’s plan was brilliant in 1901 and we have much to learn from it, but only if we update the plan for the twenty-first century.

First and foremost newspapers are no longer cutting edge communications technology. Secondly, the new technology, most notably the internet, can not be considered in isolation from new forms of social organization. The newspaper and the vanguard party built in the course of writing, editing, publishing, and distributing that newspaper are organizational, communicative, and cultural forms that correspond to one another, and the level of development of the productive forces. In other words, newspapers and top down vanguard parties go together, but they are completely out-dated forms. To use them today is like using a typewriter instead of word processing, or a television with rabbit ears instead of cable.

Although the newspaper is increasingly anachronistic many organizers, allies, and revolutionary groups still use newspapers and plenty of people still read them. We are in the middle of a transition from one era to another. How long that transition will take no one can predict. We must find ways to unite with progressives, revolutionaries, and workers still using newspapers. But newspapers can no longer play the role of collective organizer that Lenin envisioned.
Since Lenin’s essays there have been a number of revolutions in communications technology: telephone, radio, cinema, television, and the internet. Revolutionaries have missed nearly all of them.

But what is even worse, or sadder, is that all of these revolutionary groups with newspapers have retained the aspects of Lenin’s essays that are no longer relevant: the newspaper and top down organization, while they ignore entirely the most important elements of Lenin’s plan.

Lenin shows that political organization is built around communication technology. He insists that the newspaper is not just for news it is a “collective organizer” The newspaper, according to Lenin, is supposed to do much more than report the news—the paper is supposed to be a place for revolutionaries to communicate with one another, to explain their practice to one another, to share experiences, and resources, to debate and argue out ideas and analysis—and in this process revolutionary unity is built, revolutionary culture is developed, revolutionary practice begins to become coordinated, and revolutionary organization is expanded. Most of the sects use their newspaper as self-promotion, they rarely have open discussions and certainly never discuss their practice in a serious way so that it can be critiqued and improved upon. They are more interested in maintaining their little sects as small businesses that can fund the careers of a few so-called leaders.

How can we put Lenin’s plan into effect with modern communication technology and organizational forms? Lenin called for a single newspaper to unite all the small local groups. Today we have all sorts of small local groups and their websites and they are connected through links. But what we need is a radically open website where it is easy and simple to contribute and where the value of a contributions is weighed not be an editorial board or moderator but by our fellow revolutionary democrats. The technology is now available, some of it is used on websites like “DailyKos,” , so that readers of a web page can “vote” on which articles and essays are most useful. Those with the most votes appear at the top of the web page and become the most read. In this way the site moderates itself. Posts that are disruptive will slide to the bottom of the page in the same way.

We need a website, that can unite all the local forces based on principle of revolutionary democracy that allows everyone full access. But openness and democracy are not just principles they are necessities. Openness and democracy are expedients. If we are to build the movement and transform this society we need the unrestrained and self-directed energy and creativity of the majority of people. Currently, no site on the left is this open, most retain the trappings of the 20th century: top down organization (moderators, and editors who determine content).

To get the project off the ground will require a commitment from organizers who are building dual power locally in numerous cities. We propose that Piratecaucus.com act as a bridge between now and the future open website we are proposing. To that end we are opening its space initially to organizers we have had direct personal contact with until the site gets out of the cradle and is ready for the harsher, even if ultimately more productive, environment of radical openness.



Appendix 1: Excerpts from Lenin’s Where To Begin
In our opinion, the starting-point of our activities, the first step towards creating the desired organisation, or, let us say, the main thread which, if followed, would enable us steadily to develop, deepen, and extend that organisation, should be the founding of an All-Russian political newspaper. A newspaper is what we most of all need; without it we cannot conduct that systematic, all-round propaganda and agitation, consistent in principle, which is the chief and permanent task of Social-Democracy in general and, in particular, the pressing task of the moment, when interest in politics and in questions of socialism has been aroused among the broadest strata of the population. Never has the need been felt so acutely as today for reinforcing dispersed agitation in the form of individual action, local leaflets, pamphlets, etc., by means of generalised and systematic agitation that can only be conducted with the aid of the periodical press. It may be said without exaggeration that the frequency and regularity with which a newspaper is printed (and distributed) can serve as a precise criterion of how well this cardinal and most essential sector of our militant activities is built up. Furthermore, our newspaper must be All-Russian.

If we fail, and as long as we fail, to combine our efforts to influence the people and the government by means of the printed word, it will be utopian to think of combining other means, more complex, more difficult, but also more decisive, for exerting influence. Our movement suffers in the first place, ideologically, as well as in practical and organisational respects, from its state of fragmentation, from the almost complete immersion of the overwhelming majority of Social-Democrats in local work, which narrows their outlook, the scope of their activities, and their skill in the maintenance of secrecy and their preparedness. It is precisely in this state of fragmentation that one must look for the deepest roots of the instability and the waverings noted above. The first step towards eliminating this short-coming, towards transforming divers local movements into a single, All-Russian movement, must be the founding of an All-Russian newspaper.

Lastly, what we need is definitely a political newspaper. Without a political organ, a political movement deserving that name is inconceivable in the Europe of today. Without such a newspaper we cannot possibly fulfill our task—that of concentrating all the elements of political discontent and protest, of vitalising thereby the revolutionary movement of the proletariat. We have taken the first step, we have aroused in the working class a passion for “economic”, factory exposures; we must now take the next step, that of arousing in every section of the population that is at all politically conscious a passion for political exposure. We must not be discouraged by the fact that the voice of political exposure is today so feeble, timid, and infrequent. This is not because of a wholesale submission to police despotism, but because those who are able and ready to make exposures have no tribune from which to speak, no eager and encouraging audience, they do not see anywhere among the people that force to which it would be worth while directing their complaint against the “omnipotent” Russian Government. But today all this is rapidly changing.

There is such a force—it is the revolutionary proletariat, which has demonstrated its readiness, not only to listen to and support the summons to political struggle, but boldly to engage in battle. We are now in a position to provide a tribune for the nationwide exposure of the tsarist government, and it is our duty to do this. That tribune must be a Social-Democratic newspaper. The Russian working class, as distinct from the other classes and strata of Russian society, displays a constant interest in political knowledge and manifests a constant and extensive demand (not only in periods of intensive unrest) for illegal literature. When such a mass demand is evident, when the training of experienced revolutionary leaders has already begun, and when the concentration of the working class makes it virtual master in the working-class districts of the big cities and in the factory settlements and communities, it is quite feasible for the proletariat to found a political newspaper. Through the proletariat the newspaper will reach the urban petty bourgeoisie, the rural handicraftsmen, and the peasants, thereby becoming a real people’s political newspaper.

The role of a newspaper, however, is not limited solely to the dissemination of ideas, to political education, and to the enlistment of political allies. A newspaper is not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, it is also a collective organiser. In this last respect it may be likened to the scaffolding round a building under construction, which marks the contours of the structure and facilitates communication between the builders, enabling them to distribute the work and to view the common results achieved by their organised labour.
With the aid of the newspaper, and through it, a permanent organisation will naturally lake shape that will engage, not only in local activities, but in regular general work, and will train its members to follow political events carefully, appraise their significance and their effect on the various strata of the population, and develop effective means for the revolutionary party to influence these events. The mere technical task of regularly supplying the newspaper with copy and of promoting regular distribution will necessitate a network of local agents of the united party, who will maintain constant contact with one another, know the general state of affairs, get accustomed to performing regularly their detailed functions in the All-Russian work, and test their strength in the organisation of various revolutionary actions.

This network of agents[1] will form the skeleton of precisely the kind of organisation we need—one that is sufficiently large to embrace the whole country; sufficiently broad and many-sided to effect a strict and detailed division of labour; sufficiently well tempered to be able to conduct steadily its own work under any circumstances, at all “sudden turns”, and in face of all contingencies; sufficiently flexible to be able, on the one hand, to avoid an open battle against an overwhelming enemy, when the enemy has concentrated all his forces at one spot, and yet, on the other, to take advantage of his unwieldiness and to attack him when and where he least expects it. Today we are faced with the relatively easy task of supporting student demonstrations in the streets of big cities; tomorrow we may, perhaps, have the more difficult task of supporting, for example, the unemployed movement in some particular area, and the day after to be at our posts in order to play a revolutionary part in a peasant uprising. Today we must take advantage of the tense political situation arising out of the government’s campaign against the Zemstvo; tomorrow we may have to support popular indignation against some tsarist bashi-bazouk on the rampage and help, by means of boycott, indictment, demonstrations, etc., to make things so hot for him as to force him into open retreat. Such a degree of combat readiness can be developed only through the constant activity of regular troops. If we join forces to produce a common newspaper, this work will train and bring into the foreground, not only the most skillful propagandists, but the most capable organisers, the most talented political party leaders capable, at the right moment, of releasing the slogan for the decisive struggle and of taking the lead in that struggle.

In conclusion, a few words to avoid possible misunderstanding. We have spoken continuously of systematic, planned preparation, yet it is by no means our intention to imply that the autocracy can be overthrown only by a regular siege or by organised assault. Such a view would be absurd and doctrinaire. On the contrary, it is quite possible, and historically much more probable, that the autocracy will collapse under the impact of one of the spontaneous outbursts or unforeseen political complications which constantly threaten it from all sides. But no political party that wishes to avoid adventurous gambles can base its activities on the anticipation of such outbursts and complications. We must go our own way, and we must steadfastly carry on our regular work, and the less our reliance on the unexpected, the less the chance of our being caught unawares by any “historic turns”.