Page:Michael Velli - Manual For Revolutionary Leaders - 2nd Ed.djvu/82

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lines is actually correct, it is less harmful to retain a formulation, even if in reality it were no longer quite up to date, than to deliver, by its correction, to general discussion and all its most evil consequences, a principle of the movement that so far has been looked upon as made of granite. This is impossible above all as long as the movement itself is still fighting for victory. For how does one think to fill people with blind faith in the correctness of a doctrine if by continued changes in its outward construction one spreads uncertainty and doubt? —This is the secret of philosophical language, in which thoughts in the form of words have their own content —The point here is not that the vanguard shall realize the impossibility of preserving the old order of things and the inevitability of its overthrow. The point is that the masses, the millions, shall understand this inevitability. But the masses can understand this only from their own experience. —Therefore, if, in order to lead a view of life to victory, we have to transform it into a fighting movement, the program of the movement has logically to consider the human material that it has at its disposal. As immovable as the final aims and the leading ideas must be, just as ingenious and psychologically correct must the method be, by which the propaganda program is orientated at the souls of those without whose help the most sublime idea would forever remain only an idea. If the people's idea wants to proceed to a dear success from the unclear intentions of today, then it has to single out certain leading principles from its large world of thought, principles which, according to their nature and contents, are suitable for obligating a broad mass of people, namely, that mass which alone guarantees the fight for this idea This is the mass of workers.

We must build a movement oriented toward power. Revolution is a power struggle, and we must develop that understanding among people from the beginning. A major focus in our work is the pigs, because they tie together the various struggles around the state as the enemy, and thus point to the need for a movement oriented toward power to defeat it. —For this reason, the program of the movement is summed up in a few articles They are destined primarily to give the man in the street a rough picture of the movement's intentions. They are in a way of speaking a political creed which on the one hand campaigns for the movement and which on the other hand is suited for uniting and welding together those who have been attracted by a generally acknowledged obligation. —The task is to enable the vast masses to realize from their own experience the inevitability of the overthrow of the old regime, to promote such

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