The Dialectics of Organizing and Mobilization

A revolution, among other things, is a series of mass mobilizations, continuing on until the quantity of mobilizations creates a qualitative change in societal power relations. A revolution is the collective action of an entire class. How do we get an entire class to move? 

Quantity to Quality

First, we need to understand that all large phenomena can be broken down into smaller components. Even a tidal wave is made of a trillion drops of water. The working class, when not organized, is a mass of individual atomized workers. Therefore, the process of organizing an entire class is simply the aggregate effect of mobilizing many individuals. A class is mobilized step by step, person by person.

It is not enough to support revolution in general ideological terms. Rather, true support of revolution manifests in specific plans and specific action. Yet when pressed, some alleged revolutionaries look at this objective, this mass mobilization, and get cold feet. They say that the enormity of this task is beyond the capability of a small group of organizers. These  breathless, panicked admonitions ignore the cumulative effect of persistent strategic action.

We must remember that when we move one worker, they can move two more. Those two can then move four, four can move eight, and thus we mobilize our class exponentially.

How then, do we get one person to move?

Agitation 

Agitation is the act of seeking out the dormant, moribund indignation which rests deep within the soul of the oppressed, and stirring that beast to life. To agitate someone you must speak to them; you must investigate the contradictions which bind, squeeze, suffocate, and lash at the exploited. You must point the trembling finger of indignation at the flail of oppression and call it by its true name. You must confront injustice and condemn it truthfully, accurately, and directly.

Agitation is antithetical to the meek, timid mindset found in many workers. It runs counter to the grooming to which workers are subjected, the capitalist indoctrination that conditions them for a life of servitude. We are told that pointing out contradictions and expressing anger is counterproductive and self-defeating. But what slave master would say otherwise to his slaves if he wishes to tame those he holds in bondage? What the capitalist class does not understand — what we will have to teach them — is that you cannot domesticate a tiger; you can only fool it into underestimating its own strength. 

As organizers, we model a completely different type of behavior. We encourage the worker to make a comparison between the (conditioned) response they have to their exploitation, and the way the communist organizer reacts to exploitation. When they do, one thing becomes immediately clear. The communist’s intense anger about exploitation is congruent with the intense violence of exploitation. The reaction only proportionate to the original action. The worker sees that the way they have been trained to react to exploitation is incongruent with the reality of their exploitation. As a result, their perspective begins to change.

Education 

The barrel of a gun channels the power of exploding gunpowder and directs the trajectory of an accelerating bullet. In the same way, political education channels the power unleashed by worker agitation, and directs the trajectory of revolutionary action. Agitation without direction turns to nihilism; anger is not sustainable forever. The energy produced by agitation must have a concrete effect on the real world. Otherwise, the worker will perceive their anger as a futile waste of time. They will believe that they were better off before they were agitated, more comfortable sleeping than remaining awake, and they will gradually recede into inactivity.

Political education serves to illustrate how the directed energy of the working class can materially change our conditions. It provides both a method of action, and a pathway to victory. But change is uncomfortable. To move a worker from inaction to action, we must make inaction uncomfortable. This means that contradictions must be sharpened and choices must be clear.

Organization

Choice illuminates the difference between thought and action. There is a vast gulf between the ideas one agrees with, and the actions one is willing to take. Asking for a commitment uncovers what concrete actions a person is willing to take. The answer is often somewhat less than we’d assumed, and far less than we’d hoped for.

After taking so much time to agitate and educate the worker towards revolutionary consciousness, their first timid steps may appear to be a setback. But this is not the case. In fact, it is the true beginning of forward momentum. Why? Because we have moved from the realm of theory to the realm of practice. The worker moves from the idea of revolution to the action of mobilization. Ideology is transformed into struggle. And one step in the real world covers a much greater distance than any leap in the imagination. 

The Communication Channel 

Inaction is transformed into action by the stimulus of agitation and education, directed by one individual towards another. Only once we have understood this change on an individual level, can we understand how to apply it at scale.

The transformation of individual mobilization into mass mobilization is facilitated by the strengthening of networks of communication. Fortunately, the networks upon which the working class will be organized already exist. In every workplace and every community, there are influential people who can bring in others, whether that’s five people or fifteen.

Leaders are key nodes in any social network, because to be a leader one must have a following. These leaders must be found and organized; when a leader is moved to action, they bring their followers with them. This is the multiplication effect. 

Leaders create lines of communication. Part of what makes them influential is that they are trusted by those around them to remain informed and inform others in turn. When someone’s sick, when somebody’s had a child, when there’s a get-together — leaders are the active unifiers in these situations, the glue that binds a community together.

Through these leaders, cadre can spread agitation and education amongst the workers, and receive information from the workers about their conditions. Information spread from person to person is more trustworthy than capitalist propaganda spread through television or the internet. 

That’s why the organizational weapon is more powerful than any weapon of propaganda developed by the capitalists. With direct channels of communication connecting the working class, agitation and education will defend workers against capitalist indoctrination. It will create a shield which the capitalists cannot penetrate.

When we understand this, we realize that in the time the alleged revolutionaries spent arguing about the ‘enormity of the task’, arguing about the odds, they could have organized a thousand workers. But we have to start with one.