“Comrades, our Party leaders often complain that there are no people, that they are short of people for agitational and propaganda work, for the newspapers, the trade unions, for work among the youth, among women. Not enough, not enough – that is the cry. We simply haven’t got the people. To this we could reply in the old yet eternally new words of Lenin:
There are enormous numbers of people, because the working class and ever more diverse strata of society, year after year, throw up from their ranks an increasing number of discontented people who desire to protest…. At the same time we have no people, because we have… no talented organizers capable of organizing extensive and at the same time uniform and harmonious work that would give employment to all forces, even the most inconsiderable.
(V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 5, pp. 436-437)
These words of Lenin must be throughly grasped by our Parties and applied by them as a guide in their everyday work. There are plenty of people. They need only to be discovered in our own organizations, during strikes and demonstrations, in various mass organizations of the workers, in united front bodies. They must be helped to grow in the course of their work and struggle, they must be put in a situation where they can really be useful to the workers cause.
Comrades, we Communists are people of action. Ours is the problem of practical struggle against the offensive of capital, against fascism and the threat of imperialist war, the struggle for the overthrow of capitalism. It is precisely this practical task that obliges Communists to equip themselves with revolutionary theory, for theory gives those engaged in practical work the power of orientation, clarity of vision, assurance in work, belief in the triumph of our cause.
But real revolutionary theory is irreconcilably hostile to all emasculated theorizing, all barren play with abstract definitions. Our theory is not a dogma, but a guide to action; Lenin used to say. It is such a theory that our people need, and they need it as badly as they need their daily bread, as they need air or water.”
The Espresso Stalinist 