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[5] CONTENTS Page Author's Note ..................... 7 Introduction ...................... 9 Chapter I. Intensification of the Ideological Struggle .... '27 1. Ideological Consequences of the World's Division Into Two Systems.................... 33 2. The People and Foreign Policy........... 48 3. Growth of the People's Role and the Modern Bourgeoisie 90 Chapter II. The Crisis of Bourgeois Ideology....... 105 1. The Modern Bourgeoisie's Ideological Poverty . . . 106 2. Anti-Communism, a Weapon of the Doomed..... 129 Chapter III. Imperialism's Foreign Political Propaganda Today....................... ,153 1. Doctrine and Methods of Imperialism's Foreign Political Propaganda .................. 153 2. Imperialism's Foreign Political Propaganda Machine 199 3. Strategy and Tactics of Imperialist Policy and Propaganda ...................... 222 Chapter IV. Peaceful Coexistence and the War of Ideas . . . 255 Conclusion ....................... 297 [6] ~ [7] __ALPHA_LVL1__ AUTHOR'S NOTEThe Russian language edition of this book was brought out in the autumn of 1970. In the two years that have passed the world has witnessed major events that have a direct bearing on the subject discussed in the book. I should like to say a few words about some of these events in the foreword to this edition, which, with the exception of a few amendments and specifications, faithfully reproduces the Russian original.
The principal event, unquestionably, was the 24th Congress of the CPSU, which enriched Marxist-Leninist theory with new propositions and conclusions and mapped out the CPSU's home and foreign policy for the immediate future. The Peace Programme formulated by the Congress is of especially great significance to the subject dealt with in this book.
That programme may be justifiably regarded as a major contribution not only to the struggle for world peace and security but also to the ideological struggle in the world between the two social systems, as a document dealing a crushing blow at the foundations of anti-communism, which is trying to intimidate the peoples with fabrications about a "communist threat'', as a document that helps to educate the masses and activate their struggle for peace, an improved jinternational situation and international co-operation.
The Congress decisions derive their enormous strength from the fact that they are backed by the policy consistently pursued by the CPSU and the Soviet Government. This fully applies also to the Peace Programme. By steadfastly carrying it out during the two years that have elapsed since the Congress, the Soviet Union has secured some momentous changes in the international situation.
Above all, this concerns the situation in Europe. The USSR-FRG and Polish-FRG treaties have helped to remove the most formidable barriers to an improvement of the 8 __NOTE__ Left running header: (set-register ?L "\n\nGEORGI ARBATOV\n\n") __RUNNING_HEADER_LEFT__ GEORGI ARBATOV political atmosphere and create favourable conditions for a further drive towards setting up a system of collective security and fostering constructive co-operation between the peoples of Europe. Also, this concerns Soviet-US relations, in which the outlines can now be seen of a marked shift towards normalisation. President Richard M. Nixon's visit to Moscow and the treaties and agreements that were signed as a result of the talks are a considerable contribution not only towards improving the relations between the two countries but also towards strengthening world peace and security.
Recent developments have given evidence that in our epoch of transition from capitalism to socialism one of the factors introducing far-reaching changes in international relations and diplomacy is the active struggle of the peoples for their foreign political interests. This is one of the principal factors that predetermined the new tendencies in the policies of the USA, the Federal Republic of Germany and many other countries, where with growing determination public opinion is demanding the eradication of manifestations of the cold war and denouncing military adventures and the arms race.
A major source giving the Soviet Union's principled peace policy its strength is that its aims have the support of the working class, of broad sections of public opinion throughout the world, and activate the massive struggle for peace, security and international co-operation.
At the same time, recent developments have shown that the international situation can be changed only as a result of a resolute struggle against imperialist reaction. The ideological front, the battle for people's minds, remains one of the principal bridgeheads of that struggle. The 24th Congress of the CPSU drew special attention to the tasks that in this field confront the communist movement and all the other forces of peace and progress. All the more is this true in view of the fact that far from dying down, the ideological struggle remains acute in spite of the relaxation of international tension.
It seems to me that these considerations have a direct bearing on all the chapters of this book.
G. Arbatov
[9] __ALPHA_LVL1__ INTRODUCTIONIn no other epoch have there been such marked and farreaching changes as in ours. This is only natural because our epoch witnesses history's most momentous changes linked with the transition from the millennia-old rule of the exploiting classes to socialism and communism, with the transition from prehistory to mankind's real history. "Mankind,'' it was recorded by the International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties held in Moscow in June 1969, "has entered the last third of our century in a situation marked by a sharpening of the historic struggle between the forces of progress and reaction, between socialism and imperialism. This clash is world-wide and embraces all the basic spheres of social life: economy, politics, ideology and = culture."^^*^^
A scientific and technological revolution, which, in its turn, powerfully influences economics, politics, people's minds and international relations, is unfolding parallel with and under the impact of the radical social changes taking place in the world.
The character of the epoch determines not only the scale but also the speed of the changes. Less than half a century ago Lenin wrote of the "tremendous acceleration of world development'',^^**^^ which formed a contrast even in comparison with the past century. But in comparison with our _-_-_
^^*^^ = __CHILD_CITATION_BEG__ = International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties, Moscow, 1969, Prague, 1969, p. 11. = __CHILD_CITATION_END__ =
^^**^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 33, p. 349.
10 __RUNNING_HEADER_LEFT__ GEORGI ARBATOV day history's progress of even a few decades ago may be described as having been slow.Swift, radical transformations are taking place in all spheres of social life, giving rise to many totally new phenomena. International relations are no exception. With the appearance of socialism the social substance of international relations has undergone a fundamental modification. Whereas formerly they were the arena in which various national contingents of one and- the same class or socially homogeneous (exploiting) classes came into conflict, in our day they are the arena of the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, between the two main classes of the contemporary epoch. Whereas only a few decades ago the subject of "big policy'', which determined the course and principal direction of international relations, constituted a handful of so-called civilised nations, the disintegration of the colonial empires has brought many new states into the channel of this policy, involving in international relations not a minority but the overwhelming majority of mankind. At the same time there has been an unprecedented growth of the role played by the masses in foreign policy. The change of the balance of strength in favour of socialism and the development of nuclear-- missile weapons have posed the problem of war and peace in an entirely new way.
Among the changes is the immense qualitative growth of the role played by ideological propaganda in international relations. This is an outcome of contemporary international relations. It has brought to life new methods and instruments of foreign policy, given prominence to new diplomatic tasks and engendered new directions for foreign policy.
These changes receive considerable attention from bourgeois politicians and propagandists. We do not mean those who may be regarded, so to speak, as professionals in the world-wide war of = ideas.^^*^^ In recent years the ideological _-_-_
^^*^^ For instance, in International Propaganda (Minneapolis, 1958, p. 57), the American researcher John L. Martin writes: "...it is through propaganda that many of our international conflicts of the future will be decided. Psychological warfare, the war of words, the battle for men's minds---these are the methods of the present and of the future.'' Wilson P. Dizard. another American propaganda expert __NOTE__ footnote continued on page 11 11 __NOTE__ Right running header: (set-register ?R "\n\nINTRODUCTION\n\n") __RUNNING_HEADER_RIGHT__ INTRODUCTION struggle in international relations has begun to receive due attention even from those who in foreign policy would have preferred to rely on other, traditional means and methods, above all on military strength. This may be illustrated by citing R. Strausz-Hupe, W. Kintner and S. Possony, prominent representatives of the extreme Right wing of United States political science, who admit that " psychological strategy and the systematic rise of propaganda influences, and at times influences decisively, international action".^^*^^
Had this statement been made some 20--30 years ago its authors would have been credited with keen foresight. Today it is almost banal, for what it says is quite obvious and has become a major feature of the present epoch with its specific international relations, and methods and instruments of foreign policy.
Perhaps the first thing that strikes the eye in this connection is that all the big (and many medium and small) countries have gone over to organised and systematic foreign political propaganda. The very appearance of this term in political jargon is in itself indicative.
One could, of course, argue about the modern meaning of the term "foreign political = propaganda".^^**^^ Other terms are also used ``(international propaganda'', "international information'', "psychological warfare" and so on), but this does not change the main thing, namely, the appearance and rapid development of a new weapon of foreign policy and _-_-_ __NOTE__ footnote continued from page 10 (who had been associated with USIA, the US central propaganda agency), concretised this idea as follows: "Unless there is a suicidal nuclear war the balance of power between ourselves and the Communists will be largely determined in the arena of world opinion" (The Strategy of Truth, Washington, 1961, p. 186). In an effort to explain the growing role played by ideological propaganda in international relations, Dizard's colleague Philip H. Coombs (former Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs) writes that ideology "has unleashed human drives far more powerful in their impact on societies ... than the force of nuclear energy" (The Fourth Dimension of Foreign Policy: Educational and Cultural Affairs, New York, 1964, p. 13).
^^*^^ R. Strausz-Hupe, W. Kintner, S. Possony, A Forward Strategy for America, New York, 1961, p. 253.
^^**^^ In this book the term "foreign political propaganda" is used to designate propaganda directed abroad for consumption by the population of foreign countries. It is quite legitimate to interpret this term more broadly as all propaganda linked with foreign policy.
12 __RUNNING_HEADER_LEFT__ GEORGI ARBATOV diplomacy which owes its birth to the enhanced significance of ideological propaganda in international relations.Foreign political propaganda has reached a scale that would have been regarded as fantastic only recently. It has become a profession for tens of thousands of people, while the expenditures of the leading states on this sphere of activity are running into many hundreds of millions and even billions of dollars. (The true figure, naturally, comes to light indirectly. President Lyndon B. Johnson remarked to a group of US propaganda chiefs that "the government was spending almost a billion dollars on people like them and they better start earning it".^^*^^)
Traditional instruments of foreign policy, notably diplomacy, are likewise being adapted to the ideological struggle. Diplomacy has assumed new functions which would have seemed incredible some fifty years ago. Noting this, StrauszHupe wrote early in the 1950s: "In diplomacy, the task is no longer to anticipate a move by the opponent, but to anticipate its effect upon the psychology of the masses, one's own and the opponent's. This is the meaning of 'direct' and 'open' diplomacy, a contest for mass opinion in which the techniques of propaganda, commercial advertising, and allied arts are more important than the techniques of diplomacy proper and the concrete diplomatic = issue."^^**^^
This is, of course, a simplified and one-sided assessment of modern diplomacy generally and of ``open'' diplomacy in particular. But it makes a number of important new points, which are indeed typical of present-day diplomacy: many foreign policy acts, pronouncements by statesmen and diplomats, diplomatic documents, negotiations, the work of international conferences and organisations, and even traditional methods of diplomatic practice such as the recognition of countries, the rupture or establishment of relations and so forth, are largely and sometimes chiefly directed at influencing the public mind in one's own and other countries.
The ``ideologisation'' of international relations has another major aspect, but it concerns not the means and methods _-_-_
^^*^^ Theodore H. White, The Making of the President 1964, New York, 1965, p. 57.
^^**^^ R Strausz-Hupe, The Zone of Indifference, New York, 1952, p. 125.
13 __RUNNING_HEADER_RIGHT__ INTRODUCTION of struggle between states but the very content of these relations in our epoch. This is the steadily deeper ^eciprdeal penetration of ideology and foreign policy---two important spheres of political relations, which had formerly not been so closely connected and mutually dependent.As soon as this fact caught their attention some Western researchers began to say that ideological propaganda had become a cause of international conflicts, a factor determining modern foreign policy. One cannot agree with this. Today, as tens and hundreds of years ago, underlying the struggles and conflicts in the world are, above all, the economic and socio-political interests of the ruling classes. The fact that more frequently than before these classes have recourse to a propaganda screen ``(struggle against communism" and "defence of the values of Western civilisation, democracy and freedom'') and mask the utterly prosaic fear of the monopolies for their investments, and their interest in sources of raw materials and markets is the other side of the coin. As a matter of fact, even long centuries ago the fable about delivering the Holy Land from the hands of infidels or of saving "lost souls" by converting other peoples into the "true faith" masked the piratical aims of the Crusaders in the East.
Where the source of contradictions is the economic or political interest of the ruling bourgeoisie it is compelled more frequently than before to resort to a propaganda cover for its traditional policy. But this is not the main thing.
A specific of our epoch is that in relation to the general ideological picture of the world and of world affairs foreign policy is being regarded more and more by both its subjects and its ``objects'' from the angle of the major ideas and ideological conflicts that have become the factor moulding public opinion.
For that very reason many of the actions that have become usual for imperialist powers and which conform to the age-old ``traditions'' of the exploiters---such as the aggression in Vietnam or the ``minor'' police action of the USA in the Dominican Republic---are today regarded by hundreds of millions of people as disgraceful not only for the United States but for capitalist foreign policy and the capitalist social system as such.
14 __RUNNING_HEADER_LEFT__ GEORGI ARBATOVMoreover, many present-day problems of international relations are becoming essentially ideological problems. The fact is that we are witnessing a world-wide collision of the two basic classes of modern society representing the two social systems---the capitalist class and the proletariat, who are locked not only in an economic and political but also in an ideological struggle. The ideological struggle and even the forms in which it is waged can influence international relations, give rise to specific political conflicts and determine the course of individual developments. This has been illustrated by the experience of the cold war, the consequences of imperialism's acts of ideological subversion and of its subversive propaganda.
Such, in general outline, are the principal manifestations of the war of ideas in international relations. They are extremely important both from the theoretical and the practical political points of view.
The new phenomena in international relations could not fail to be noted by Marxist science, while many of them were first spotted and studied by Marxists. This is quite natural because the founders of Marxism-Leninism had evolved not only the method but also the basic principles for the study of ideological and political processes. This gave the key for analysing a given problem under different historical conditions.
As it develops the ideological struggle in international relations, as other major phenomena in social life, posed and continues to pose the Marxist-Leninist science of society with new tasks in creative research. The conditions for such research have become extremely favourable: the dogmatic, stagnant trends, springing from the personality cult, and manifestations of subjectivism have been surmounted, and theoretical Marxist thought has marked further great progress.
The decisions of the 20th-24th congresses of the CPSU and the documents of international meetings of Communist and Workers' parties have provided a reliable foundation for the further study of questions linked with the ideological struggle in international relations and have formulated or concretised a number of fundamental propositions applicable to the modern epoch. Moreover, they have set researchers important tasks and showed that it was necessary 15 __RUNNING_HEADER_RIGHT__ INTRODUCTION to concentrate increasing theoretical effort in this sphere. This was underscored by the 24th Congress of the CPStL which focussed considerable attention on questions of ideology and the ideological struggle.
This work, naturally, cannot claim to be an exhaustive analysis of all the problems of the war of ideas in presentday international relations. Such a task would require the efforts of many scholars. The author has, therefore, concentrated on a limited range of problems, selecting those that are most important from the standpoint of theory and political practice. His analysis covers chiefly:
problems of the theory of present-day international relations linked with new phenomena, which determine the enhanced role of the ideological struggle in foreign policy;
the salient features of imperialist propaganda in the international arena, its doctrine, methods and organisation;
some problems of the ideological struggle of the socialist countries linked, in particular, with the policy of peaceful coexistence of states with different social systems.
Attention is centred mainly on the ideological struggle between imperialism and socialism as being of the greatest consequence to the war of ideas in the world as a whole. Other major channels of this struggle, linked in particular with the downfall of colonial empires and the emergence on the historical scene of peoples who have been oppressed by imperialism, are necessarily considered only in connection with the principal ideological conflict in the modern world. Partly, this also concerns the ideological struggle in the imperialist camp. Lastly, although the author has had to deal with the divergences in the world revolutionary movement, they too belong to the problems of the ideological struggle which are not "the central subject of study in this book.
In the ideological struggle socialism and capitalism have diverse and, one may even say, antithetic sources of strength. In one case they are the subjective efforts of a historically outworn class that possesses extensive material potentialities and experience. In the other, they are objective processes of social development. But this does not mean that in the ideological struggle the Communist parties and the socialist countries can rely on the objective processes of 16 __RUNNING_HEADER_LEFT__ GEORGI ARBATOV social development taking their natural course. The ideological struggle is a sphere of social life where very much depends on how capably and skilfully the objective economic and socio-political processes are utilised.
That explains why the Communist parties attach so much significance to improving their ideological work and set their ideological workers, scholars and propagandists responsible tasks in propagating the Marxist-Leninist teaching and combating bourgeois ideology.
A point to be noted is that the bourgeois researchers who have devoted many scores of books and papers to a study of Soviet propaganda usually assess it very highly ( sometimes engaging in fantastic speculations regarding Soviet propaganda's means and potentialities).
True, behind these assessments one must discern attempts to offer some explanation for the failures suffered by imperialist propaganda, for its setbacks in the struggle for people's minds (sometimes this conceals another, purely utilitarian aim---that of justifying the demands for more allocations for Western foreign political propaganda). However, these assessments are, at the same time, a forced admission of the successes scored by the Soviet Union and other socialist countries and by the fraternal Communist parties in their struggle for the triumph of the ideals of socialism, against imperialist ideology.
__*_*_*__In addition to theory, the war of ideas in international relations has a history of its own.
Ideology and the war of ideas emerged together with classes, the class struggle and statehood. The ideological struggle became one of the most important spheres of sociopolitical relations in society thousands of years ago. The ruling classes had long ago begun to use ideology and propaganda in their foreign policy. But for a long time these were only isolated cases. In order to make the ideological struggle part, let alone an important part, of international relations there had to be the corresponding prerequisites determining both the need for exercising an ideological influence on the population (or definite groups of the population) in other countries and the practical possibility of 17 __RUNNING_HEADER_RIGHT__ INTRODUCTION exercising such influence, the possibility for the ideological penetration of the state frontiers of other countries.
The individual cases where this need and possibility arose in the past help us to gain a better understanding of modern times, when both the need and possibility have become a feature of the entire system of international relations. In the literature on this subject there are essential differences regarding the dating of the first steps in this sphere, particularly foreign political propaganda. Some scholars are inclined to see an unbroken succession and to regard the present role and scale of the ideological struggle in international relations only as a purely quantitative development. The Austrian historian Alfred Sturminger, for instance, considers that "in the modern sense of the word, organised political propaganda (on the international level as well.--- G.A.) has been in existence for = millennia".^^*^^ Others give a much later date, the Napoleonic = wars^^**^^ or, more frequently, the birth of ``open'' diplomacy, i.e., the end of the First World = War^^***^^ as the beginning of systematic organised foreign political propaganda. Still others hold that in international relations (excluding wartime conditions) the ideological struggle began only after the Second World = War.^^****^^
Their arguments and counter-arguments bear no particular relation to the subject dealt with in this book. The important thing is to understand precisely under what social and political conditions the ideological struggle acquired a sufficiently noteworthy scale in the past. Even a quick historical scrutiny made from this angle will be quite instructive because with rare exceptions almost all the historical episodes referred to by students of propaganda boil down to three situations:
_-_-_^^*^^ Alfred Sturminger, 3000 Jahre Politische Propaganda, Vienna-Munich, Verlag Herald, 1960, S. 7.
^^**^^ For example, Vance Packard, The Hidden Persuaders, New York, 1961.
^^***^^ Walter Lippmann, The Public Philosophy, New York, 1955; Sisley Huddleston, Popular Diplomacy and War, Rindge, 1954. The same view is propounded by John L. Martin, who has been mentioned earlier. He considers that systematic foreign political propaganda was started after the First World War.
^^****^^ R.~Strausz-Hupe, W.~Kintner, S.~Possony, op. cit.
__PRINTERS_P_17_COMMENT__ 2 --- 0706 18 __RUNNING_HEADER_LEFT__ GEORGI ARBATOVfirst, a war situation: not any war but a war fought by relatively large armies and, in one way or another, drawing into its vortex a more or less considerable portion of the population of one's own country, of the enemy and allied countries and even of neutral countries;
second, a situation in which to conquer another country it is necessary to ensure a definite behaviour of its population and some form of relations with it (assimilation, relations of dependence, or direct subjugation);
third, a situation springing from a revolution: not any revolution but chiefly one that, having broken out in one country, can spread to other countries by virtue of a community of social problems (which, on the one hand, forces the governments of neighbouring countries to look for ways of strangling the revolution or at least preventing it from spreading, and, on the other, compels the revolutionary governments to strive to influence the rear of their adversaries by disseminating revolutionary ideas).
As regards the first of these situations---wars and conquests---they witnessed the earliest examples of the use of foreign political propaganda dating back to antiquity (the preaching of Pan-Hellenism and its use by Philip II, Alexander the Great and others) and, particularly, to the Middle Ages, when religion became a weapon not only of internal but of foreign policy. This was especially typical of wars, mainly those that required the creation of large international coalitions or the participation of broad sections of the population, and not only of mercenaries (the most striking examples are the crusades organised in the llth-13th centuries by a number of European feudal states and the Roman Catholic Church, and the Thirty Years' and other ``religious'' wars).
Besides giving wars ideological ``backing'', ideological propaganda was, already in feudal times, used as a means of spiritually ``developing'' conquered territory through the indoctrination of the population or of penetrating other countries in order to facilitate their subsequent conquest. The two major religions of that epoch---Christianity and Islam---were most efficaciously adapted (to be more exact, had been adapted after they had become state religions) for the fulfilment of this function. The very idea of converting--- forcibly, if necessary---all ``heathens'' and ``infidels'' into 19 __RUNNING_HEADER_RIGHT__ INTRODUCTION the ``true'' faith harboured in itself the potential of a powerful weapon of ideological aggression. It will be borne in mind that ``conversion'' was accompanied by the destruction of old spiritual links, culture and ideological foundations and by the suppression of moral sources of resistance.
Religion played an enormous role in the enslavement of the peoples of the colonies. It retains much of this role under capitalism and imperialism. Attention must be drawn, first and foremost, to the activities conducted by missionaries under the direct guidance of the corresponding governments. It was through conversion to Christianity that the colonialists recruited their agents among the local population (incidentally, Chiang Kai-shek is also a "converted heathen" and the ``honour'' for bringing him into the Christian fold belongs to United States Protestant missionaries, while Ngo Dinh Diem was converted to Catholicism by the French). In many colonial countries the planting of Christianity was an effective means of spiritually enslaving the local population.
Whereas the above examples illustrate the first two (i.e., war and the consolidation of conquest) political situations, which had made ideology a means of struggle in foreign policy in the distant past, the epoch of the 18 thcentury bourgeois-democratic revolutions allows us to form an idea of the third of the above-mentioned situations.
These revolutions took place when a developed system of inter-state relations had taken shape and any major change could upset the existing balance of strength and set off a chain of foreign political consequences. This made these revolutions, more than any other before them, not only national but international, threading together a large range of internal and foreign political problems.
On the one hand, a successful revolution, which put an end to absolutism in one country, threatened the old ruling classes in other countries by spurring the mature revolutionary processes in these countries. This created the foundation for the international unity of the forces of the old world against the revolution---not only for counter-revolutionary wars but also for other actions designed to throttle revolutionary ideas wherever they had gained strength.
On the other hand, the new class that had come to power as a result of the revolution could not fail to see that its 2* 20 __RUNNING_HEADER_LEFT__ GEORGI ARBATOV duty, stemming from solidarity with the oppressed, lay in spreading revolutionary ideas in other countries.
The Great French Bourgeois Revolution's slogan, calling for the revolutionary liberation of the peoples of Europe, and the National Convention's decree of November 19, 1792 on assistance to all peoples aspiring to depose their tyrants, on the basis of which the ideas of the revolution were propagated on an international scale, were unquestionably born of the desire to help achieve the triumph of the ideals of freedom and democracy throughout the world. That epoch witnessed the appearance of the internationalist type of revolutionary, for instance, the Frenchman Marquis de Lafayette and the Pole Thaddeus Kosciuszko, who went to America to serve in the revolutionary war, the German Anacharsis Cloots, who was active in the French Revolution, the Englishman Thomas Paine, who played an outstanding part in the War of Independence in America and then went to France to help her revolutionaries. When Robespierre declared that France was fighting for the liberation of the world there is no doubt that he sincerely believed what he was saying.
Obviously, international revolutionary propaganda was required by the vital political interests of the revolution, by the interests of its defence against the external enemy. It was by giving its defensive war a revolutionary character that the young French bourgeoisie was able to fire the masses with enthusiasm and defeat a militarily stronger opponent. "The whole people,'' Lenin wrote, "and especially the masses, i.e., the oppressed classes, were swept up by boundless revolutionary enthusiasm; everybody considered the war a just war of defence, as it actually = was."^^*^^ The revolutionary character of the war and of the entire foreign policy allowed the French bourgeoisie to exercise a strong influence on the population of their opponents and thereby seriously undermine their strength.
Foreign political propaganda played a considerable role also during the American bourgeois-democratic revolution--- the War of Independence---although its revolutionary nature was not very pronounced. In this connection mention may be made of Benjamin Franklin's mission to France in 1776 _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 25, p. 362.
21 __RUNNING_HEADER_RIGHT__ INTRODUCTION for the purpose of winning French support for the independence struggle of the seceded colonies. Today United States propaganda experts legitimately regard that mission as "a diplomatic success and a stunning venture in international = propaganda".^^*^^The War of Independence has entered the history of propaganda as an example where means of persuasion were used skilfully on the battlefield. To crush the revolution the British king sent an expeditionary corps of 30,000 German mercenaries. The US Congress set up a commission to draw up a plan whereby to induce these mercenaries to desert. On the commission's recommendations the Congress passed a bill according all deserters and defectors citizenship with all the accompanying rights and, what was most essential, a grant of 50 acres of land that was to be owned in perpetuity by the recipient and his = heirs.^^**^^
The measures taken by the US Congress and the propaganda campaign that was started on their basis had a substantial effect. American researchers estimate that of the 30,000 German mercenaries between 5,000 and 6,000 deserted.^^***^^
The close of the 18th and the opening years of the 19th century give what is essentially history's first instance in which broad, planned and organised use of ideological means of struggle was made in foreign policy, thus turning foreign political propaganda into an important component of state activity. We refer to Napoleon, who was an innovator in propaganda, including foreign political propaganda. This is mentioned by many of his celebrated contemporaries, Metternich among them. Noting that Napoleon was the first to use the press as a vehicle of military and political leadership, Metternich wrote: "It is something new in history that a sovereign should frequently and directly _-_-_
^^*^^ Wilson P. Dizard, op. cit., p. 29.
^^**^^ An interesting point is that this very same method was used against the USA in the war of 1846--48 by the Mexicans, who gave all defectors citizenship rights and 320 acres of land. The San Patricio Battalion was formed during the war of the Irishmen who defected to the Mexican side. (William E. Daugherty, Morris Janowitz, A Psychological Warfare Casebook, Baltimore, 1958, p. 72.)
^^***^^ Paper by L. Butterfield in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, 1950, No.~3, pp. 240--41.
22 __RUNNING_HEADER_LEFT__ GEORGI ARBATOV address the public. Napoleon introduced this method and greatly benefited by = it."^^*^^Napoleon's broad and frequently very successful use of ideological means of struggle can by no means be ascribed to his personal inclinations and talents. This was chiefly due to objective circumstances, which made the use of these means necessary and possible.
Indeed, Napoleon's first problem when he came to power was to justify and consolidate his rule in a country which had just had a revolution and where the monarchy had fallen and the old principles of legitimism had given way to national sovereignty. In this situation it was absolutely vital to the usurper that the public should ``sanction'' his right to power. To obtain this sanction public opinion had to be correspondingly manipulated. Another major factor was the changed character of the army, which had been turned from an army of professional hired soldiers into a mass army recruited from among broad strata of the population. An army like that in post-revolutionary France clearly had to have incentives other than only the possibility of gain and plunder. To maintain high morale and fighting efficiency in the army it was necessary to appeal to national feelings, patriotism and so on.
Also important was that having come to power on the crest of a great revolution Napoleon had the possibility of reaping many of its ideological fruits despite the fact that they had nothing to do with his actual aims and intentions.^^**^^ Thanks to the efforts of his revolutionary predecessors, other nations identified France with the ideals of freedom, equality and fraternity. Napoleon appreciated the power of these ideals and used them in his own interests against his monarchist adversaries. That was why he caused the works of the enlighteners to be disseminated in foreign countries, although he had them thrown out of fashion _-_-_
^^*^^ Rene-Henri Wiist, La guerre psychologique, Lausanne, 1954, p. 12.
^^**^^ "The tragedy,'' Engels wrote, "is that the party supporting war a entrance, war for the emancipation of the nations, is proved in the right and that the Republic gets the better of all Europe, but only after that party itself has long been beheaded; while in place of the propagandist war comes the Peace of Basle and the bourgeois orgy of the Directory" (Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence, Moscow, 1965, p. 406).
23 __RUNNING_HEADER_RIGHT__ INTRODUCTION in France herself, disguised his plans of plundering Russia with talk about the freedom of Poland and the emancipation of the serfs, and generally took every opportunity to profit ideologically by the revolution he had himself trampled.The Napoleonic wars made the European monarchs determined to wage an uncompromising struggle against revolutionary ideas. Thus was born the Holy Alliance, which was likewise destined to set an important precedent in the sphere interesting us, a precedent of action (and of an international organisation specially set up for such action) against ``seditious'' ideas in other countries.
The beginning of the epoch of imperialism marked the end of the prehistory and the commencement of the real history of the ideological struggle in international relations in the modern meaning of the term. The First World War is usually regarded as a milestone in the shaping of foreign political propaganda. Bourgeois historiography dates the emergence of official government foreign political propaganda agencies from the period of the First World War. The British Ministry of Information under Lord Beaverbrook and the Department of Enemy Propaganda headed by Lord Northcliffe, the American Committee on Public Information or the Creel = Committee,^^*^^ the Allied International Committee, which supervised the concerted propaganda of the Entente, the German Kriegspresseamt (War Press Department), which was subordinated to the General Staff and the Ministry of Foreign = Affairs^^**^^---these and analogous agencies and departments generally anticipated the organisation of imperialist foreign and domestic propaganda in its modern form.
The techniques and methods of propaganda for the army and population of other countries---not only enemy but also neutral and allied countries---likewise took shape in general outline.
In short, many facts indicate that the First World War was indeed an important milestone in the development of _-_-_
^^*^^ The official version of its history is given in the memoirs of George Creel, who headed this committee. (George Creel, How We Advertised America, New York, London, 1920; also see James R. Mock, Cedric Larson, Words That Won the War, Princeton, 1939.)
^^**^^ This organisation is described by Wolfgang Foerster in Kampjer an Vergessenen Fronten, Berlin, 1931.
24 __RUNNING_HEADER_LEFT__ GEORGI ARBATOV foreign political propaganda. But bourgeois researchers overlook the point that decisive here was not the war itself but the entire range of socio-political changes arising from capitalism's transition to its imperialist stage, from the beginning of the epoch of its general crisis.The transition to imperialism and the ruling bourgeoisie's shift towards reaction all along the line made the spiritual suppression of the people a major instrument of politics alongside physical violence. At the close of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century there was in most capitalist countries a trend towards a sharp curtailment of freedom of speech and the press, intensified censorship and repression of ``dissidents''. Most indicative was the unprecedented scale of the organised propaganda of the ruling class, the instruments for which were the press, the school, the Church and various reactionary institutions.
This period witnessed a change in the bourgeoisie's notions about the ideological struggle. It abandoned its former liberal practice of limited interference and went over to an active struggle for all-embracing control over people's way of thinking, over public opinion. Accordingly, the foundations were laid for the imperialist ``theory'' of propaganda, for the subtle ``science'' of manipulating people, which achieved its full development in our day. Naturally, the colossal activation of the ruling bourgeoisie's ideological propaganda could no longer be confined to the boundaries of capitalist countries.
One of the cardinal aims of this ideological activity was to serve the aggressive foreign policy of the imperialists. Expansion and the preparation and conduct of wars of aggrandisement occupied a hitherto unparalleled place in the policy of bourgeois states.
Imperialism is inseparably linked with wars, with the struggle for the division and redivision of the world, for the enslavement of peoples. It will be appreciated that the imperialist state ultimately had to back up such a policy ideologically. This was mirrored in domestic propaganda vindicating aggressive foreign policy, fanning chauvinism, distrust and hatred of other peoples, justifying war and fostering a spirit of militarism.
The First World War was a catalyst, as it were, that speeded up these processes and, at the same time, created 25 __RUNNING_HEADER_RIGHT__ INTRODUCTION the conditions under which it was possible to give effect to plans that had been drawn up in peacetime in the silence of war and diplomatic departments. The armed collision most strikingly proved that it was vital to enlist the people's moral support for imperialist policy. Touching on the First World War, John L. Martin writes: "It was then discovered that total war could be fought only by attacking the minds as well as the bodies of = men."^^*^^
As regards the efficacy of the propaganda used against the armed forces and population of other countries on a massive scale for the first time during the First World War there are contradictory opinions in bourgeois literature. Following that war a version that gained currency in Germany was that Allied (particularly British) propaganda played the decisive role in ensuring victory to the Entente. But this version, even in the opinion of serious bourgeois researchers, is absolutely untenable. It was fabricated to back up the legend, invented by the German militarists, that the German army remained unbeaten in the field of battle and that Germany was defeated because she "had been let down and deserted by her = allies".^^**^^ It is generally recognised that Entente propaganda was more effective against Austria-Hungary, where it found much more fertile soil.
When the First World War ended the foreign political propaganda apparatus that had been set up to serve it was dissolved. For some time it seemed that everything had reverted to the old ways. But this was only an outward impression. Actually, the war of ideas in international relations continued to be conducted and intensified on various fronts, above all on the front of struggle between imperialism and socialism and also in inter-imperialist clashes and in the conflicts between the imperialists and the peoples of the colonies. With the development of new means of communication, the first-ever special government foreign political propaganda agency began to take shape in peacetime.
In 1927 the Netherlands pioneered short-wave broadcasts for the colonies. France followed suit in 1931. The British Broadcasting Corporation's Empire Service was inaugurated _-_-_
^^*^^ John L. Martin, op. cit., p. 6.
^^**^^ Lindley Fraser, Propaganda, London, 1957, pp. 47--48.
26 __RUNNING_HEADER_LEFT__ GEORGI ARBATOV in 1932. Active foreign radio propaganda was started by Germany in 1933, by Italy in 1935 and by the United States in = 1939.^^*^^The nazis, it must be said, set up an unprecedented "total propaganda" system and machinery, whose annual expenditures are assessed by American experts as having exceeded 500 million = dollars.^^**^^ Most of this budget was for foreign political propaganda, which was directly controlled by the Foreign Policy Office of the Nazi Party (the department chief was Alfred Rosenberg) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Large foreign political propaganda agencies were set up in other imperialist countries during the Second World War. These included the Ministry of Information and the Psychological Warfare Committee in Britain, and the Foreign Information Service and the Office of War Information in the USA. Active propaganda was conducted also by the military command, which bore the direct responsibility for tactical propaganda in the battlefield and for propaganda among the population of occupied territories.
The years of the Second World War witnessed a colossal development of imperialist propaganda in its modern form, particularly the evolution of the theory, techniques and methods of propaganda. Unlike the propaganda activities during the First World War, the propaganda efforts of the leading imperialist countries (with the exception of the defeated states) did not cease after the Second World War, and instead of being dissolved the foreign political propaganda machine was reorganised. The propaganda lull that followed the establishment of peace proved to be extremely shortlived. Two or three years after the end of the Second World War the imperialists started the cold war in which foreign political propaganda was one of the principal weapons.
Thus, in all the leading capitalist countries foreign political propaganda turned from activity typical of military crises and emergencies into permanent and legally established activity.
_-_-_^^*^^ John L. Martin, op. cit., pp. 8-9.
^^**^^ If Men Want Peace. The Mandates of World Order, ed. by Joseph B. Harrison, Linden A. Mander and Nathaniel H. Engle, New York, 1947, p. 218.
[27] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ CHAPTER I __ALPHA_LVL1__ INTENSIFICATION OFThe ideological struggle has today acquired such significance and dimensions in the foreign political operations of states that it has compelled our ideological adversaries to speak of serious, qualitative changes in international relations, of the ``ideologisation'' of these relations or, as some bourgeois theorists put it, of their ``emotionalisation''. The very fact of these changes and their significance are universally recognised. Noting the growing importance of the ideological struggle, the American researchers George Gordon, Irving Falk and William Hodapp have come to the conclusion that "international relations have changed more radically in the past forty years than in all the centuries before.... For the first time in the history of the world, no government can afford not to be in the business of mass persuasion".^^*^^
Analogous conclusions are offered in many official documents and pronouncements. An example is the report presented by the President's Committee on Information Activities Abroad (Mansfield-Sprague Committee) to the US President during the last months of the Eisenhower Administration. "We are now in a period when the mission and style of diplomacy is changing,'' the report stated. It went on to explain: "Today it is recognised that unless governments effectively communicate their policies and actions to all politically influential elements of foreign populations, _-_-_
^^*^^ George N. Gordon, Irving Falk, William Hodapp, The Idea Invaders, New York,*1963, pp. 187--88.
28 __RUNNING_HEADER_LEFT__ GEORGI ARBATOV their programmes can be impeded and their security placed in = jeopardy."^^*^^William Benton, former US Assistant Secretary of State who later became a Senator, likewise spoke of a new stage in the development of international relations and diplomacy. "In the older diplomacy,'' he declared, "force, military might, lay in the background of most negotiations, sometimes very close to the surface. In most recent years economic considerations have played an increasing role. Today the diplomacy of public opinion is the emerging factor. Indeed, the diplomacy of public opinion is here for all to = see."^^**^^ Benton speaks of the appearance of a new type of international relations which have given birth to the new, ``total'' diplomacy, whose prime objective "is to win men's minds and loyalties''. This diplomacy, "to be total, must include as a major element psychological efforts directed at whole peoples. It must include practical means, direct as well as indirect, for waging psychological = diplomacy".^^***^^ Similar views were recorded in the official documents which the Republican Co-ordinating Committee published in 1968 as the basis of us election programme. Inone of these documents, drawn up under the direction of Robert C. Hill, a former Assistant Secretary of State, it is stated that in the 20th century psychological operations were being elevated to the level of traditional diplomatic, military and economic instruments of foreign = policy.^^****^^
These formulations of the problem are accompanied by attempts to explain the growing importance of ideological propaganda, which has wrought such radical changes in international relations and diplomacy.
In the Mansfield-Sprague Committee's report, for instance, it is noted: "These changes reflect technical developments in transport and communications, the growing role of public opinion in world affairs.'' Further down, the report states: "The steady mounting force of public opinion in world affairs is evident in all parts of the world.... Its _-_-_
^^*^^ The Department of State Bulletin, February 6, 1961, pp. 185, 186.
^^**^^ Congressional Record, Vol. 96, March 22, 1950, p. 3764.
^^***^^ Ibid.
^^****^^ Choice for America. Republican Answers to the Challenge of Now. Reports of the Republican Coordinating Committee 1965--1968, Washington, 1968, p. 398.
29 __NOTE__ Right running header: (set-register ?R "\n\nCH. I. INTENSIFICATION OF THE IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLE\n\n") __RUNNING_HEADER_RIGHT__ CH. I. INTENSIFICATION OF THE IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLE rising force is explained by the growth of literacy and education, the introduction of new and wider channels of communication, and the spread of the democratic = idea."^^*^^Identical conclusions are contained in the above-- mentioned documents of the Republican Co-ordinating Committee. In the opinion of the documents' authors, the prime factor raising psychological instruments to the level of diplomatic, military and economic means was that the "revolutionary advances in mass communications have made it possible to disseminate ideas and information with great speed not only to national leaders, but also to the entire population''. Further, the report declares that "policy-makers must realise that aggressive and intelligent use of modern communications may often be the shortest and most effective route to specific overseas = objectives".^^**^^
Gordon, Falk and Hodapp give a similar but more detailed answer to the above question. In this connection they speak of three vital changes that have taken place first in the Western and then in the Eastern = world.^^***^^
"First came the invention of the means of mass communications. This meant the cheap and effective spread of words and images to more people than ever before in history. And, as each medium of communication was perfected and massproduced --- from printing to film to radio to television --- this mass audience increased apace.
"Second, from the beginning of the nineteenth century onward (a by-product of the democratic ideal of free, universal education), larger and larger numbers of people were learning to read--- at least to read enough to constitute a fair target for the man with a message if his medium of communication was the printed word.
"Third, and also as a corollary of democratic idealism, people en masse became increasingly important as instruments of political activity, both national and international, and public opinion became more and more a vital factor in political and diplomatic manoeuvres. It mattered not a bit what the medieval serf thought on any _-_-_
^^*^^ The Department of State Bulletin, February 6, . 1961, pp. 185, 186.
^^**^^ Choice for America..., pp. 398, 399.
^^***^^ George N. Gordon, Irving Falk, William Hodapp, op. cit., p. 20.
30 __RUNNING_HEADER_LEFT__ GEORGI ARBATOV particular issue; he was politically inert, impotent to change the forces which governed his life in terms of both national and international issues. When the serf was educated and given political power by means of the vote and taught the equalitarian ideas of democracy, it did matter crucially what he thought, and there was more than likely to be someone around who attempted to manage his thinking for him."^^*^^We have quoted this long passage as typical of presentday bourgeois professorial sagacity in which forced admissions rub shoulders with outright inventions and tendentious arguments (they persist in their contention that the masses are not the makers of policy and history but the ``instrument'' of politics). From this we can see that Western researchers divide the reasons for the growing role of the ideological struggle in international relations into roughly two categories: technical and social.
The fact that enormous progress has been made in the technology of mass communications is unquestioned and nobody disputes the role it plays in the political phenomena we are discussing. Although history knows of examples of broad and systematic propaganda efforts, which did not rely on sophisticated technical means of mass communication (the most striking is the example of the Church), it is quite obvious that ideological propaganda would not have reached its present scale had it not been for the availability of technical means. This is air the more true of the war of ideas in international relations.
During the past few decades mass media of unprecedented effectiveness, scope and radius of action such as radio, films and television have been made available to propaganda. These media are being steadily improved, giving the propagandist an increasingly wider audience and the possibility of stepping across space and national frontiers.
Many new achievements of science and technology, notably the development of communications satellites, hold out immense possibilities for foreign political propaganda.
_-_-_^^*^^ George N. Gordon, Irving Falk, William Hodapp, op. cit. pp. 20--21.
31 __RUNNING_HEADER_RIGHT__ CH. I. INTENSIFICATION OF THE IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLEWith the launching of the first American communications satellite, Echo-1, early in the 1960s, the USA began working on far-reaching plans for utilising outer space for the direct transmission of television programmes to other, even the most remote, countries. As John Pierce, director of the Bell Telephone System's research division, admitted at the time, many politicians in Washington began thinking of outer space as of a unique field of battle in the cold war and studying the possibility of using communications satellites in the propaganda war against the Soviet Union.
Considerations of this kind undoubtedly played their role, and the International Conference on Communications Satellites with a membership of more than 60 countries was set up in 1964. It is indicative that not very long ago Leonard Marks, former USIA director, was named head of the United States delegation to Intelsat. The launching in 1969 of four Intelsat-3 satellites, each of which could transmit four TV programmes simultaneously, was regarded as an important step towards the creation of a global communications system.
In August 1967 President Johnson set up a communications policy committee (beaded by Eugene V. Rostow) with the task of drawing up recommendations for the broader use of communications satellites for the requirements of state policy.
The new potentialities being opened for propaganda by scientific and technological progress are not confined to the perfection of the technical means of mass communication. Enormous attention is devoted to quests for ways of influencing people's minds more effectively and reliably by subtle methods of propaganda and various means designed to intensify ``suggestibility'', in other words, to make people helpless in face of planned propaganda pressure.
For the ideological struggle the development of sophisticated means of mass communication and the swift progress in this sphere have been unquestionably of both technical and fundamental significance. In effect, more than ever before the means of propaganda have become a most potent weapon of political power, a major element of the political machinery ensuring domination in class society.
The experience of the past few decades has clearly shown that in the class struggle the monopoly over these means 32 __RUNNING_HEADER_LEFT__ GEORGI ARBATOV has become just as important as the monopoly over traditional instruments of power---the machinery of coercion, including the army, the police, the jails, the courts and so forth. Hence the new importance of some of the old slogans of the democratic movement, for example, the slogan of freedom of speech and the press, under which a struggle is now being waged against the monopoly of the reactionary classes over these key means of political power. Hence, also, the vital importance to the victorious working class and its party of retaining control of the mass media. Experience has shown that the dictatorship of the proletariat should treat this task just as seriously as the task of controlling the apparatus of coercion and state administration.
There is no particular argument with bourgeois authors over the significance of progress in the techniques of mass communications or over the importance of literacy in extending the sphere of propaganda influence.
The argument is over something else---the social reasons for the growth of the role of ideological propaganda in international relations.
It is utterly wrong to regard the masses as an " instrument" of policy used at will by omnipotent manipulators in the same way as centuries ago, with the sole difference that these manipulators now have to influence one more factor, namely, public opinion.
This approach to the masses is dictated by the class interests of the modern bourgeoisie and it determines the point of departure of the bourgeois theorists when they analyse the reasons for the increased role played by public opinion in political life. It is not accidental that in this issue they try to reduce matter to the vote and other formal rights and freedoms that fit quite well into the framework of bourgeois democracy. Here the aim is, essentially, to belittle the significance of the profound and irreversible socio-political changes that are steadily altering the balance of strength in the world in favour of socialism and the working class. It is in these changes that one must look for the origin of the changes that have taken place in international relations, notably the increased influence of the masses, of public opinion, on foreign policy.
33 __RUNNING_HEADER_RIGHT__ CH. I. INTENSIFICATION OF THE IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLE __ALPHA_LVL2__ 1. IDEOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES OF THE WORLD'SThe new role which the ideological struggle began to play in international relations is linked mainly with the world's division into two socio-political systems. This historic event determined the substance of the principal conflict in international relations for our entire epoch, giving it the nature of a clash between two classes---the bourgeoisie (chiefly the monopoly bourgeoisie) and the working class.
On the international scene, collisions not simply between nations and peoples but between states are not something new, of course. In some cases states were able to defend national interests, while in others they acted against these interests, depending on the interests and aims of the ruling class. International relations have always been class relations. But the distinguishing feature here was that whereas in a society split into hostile classes the specific determining social relations had always been the struggle between opposing, antagonistic classes, on the international scene the relations between states were in past epochs usually determined by the struggle between socially similar classes. Naturally, this rule was not without its exceptions. Take, for example, the relations between bourgeois-- revolutionary France and her feudal-absolutist neighbours: to a certain extent the spread of the class struggle between the two main classes of that epoch beyond national frontiers to the international arena had consequences similar to those which confront the world = today.^^*^^ But instead of nullifying the general rule, exceptions of this kind only confirm it.
The evolution of the contradiction between the principal classes---between the antagonists of contemporary society--- into the main contradiction of international relations is _-_-_
^^*^^ Of course, this, as any other, similarity has its boundaries. Fundamentally, the world's present divfeion into two systems has no precedent. Earlier, it was a question of classes and types of societies that were similar in the decisive respect that they were founded on private ownership of the means of production and on the exploitation of man by man. The world's division was caused by the appearance of a fundamentally new type of society, a society which has established social ownership and completely eradicated exploitation.
__PRINTERS_P_33_COMMENT__ 3 --- 0706 34 __RUNNING_HEADER_LEFT__ GEORGI ARBATOV a feature characterising precisely our epoch. Moreover, it has no precedent in history because the international relations in the transitional periods (i.e., in the periods of transition from one socio-economic formation to another) of the past had always developed under conditions in which world-wide social systems comparable with those in existence today did not and could not take shape.But even today international relations cannot be reduced to the contradiction between the capitalist and the socialist system. There are other contradictions as well, namely, between the imperialist powers and the peoples who have won deliverance from colonial tyranny or are fighting for national liberation, between the leading imperialist powers and the less powerful capitalist states and, lastly, between the imperialist vultures themselves.
In international relations growing importance is being acquired by a new type of relations, namely, co-operation in the socialist community, and between socialist countries and the new national states that have won freedom from colonial exploitation. Experience has shown that some contradictions can spring up at the early stages even in the socialist system and that these contradictions can assume considerable proportions if the leadership of the countries concerned departs from the principles of socialist internationalism.
However, the main contradiction determining the foundations of present-day international relations remains between the two social = systems.^^*^^
Lenin had pointed this out when the first socialist state, Soviet Russia, appeared on the world scene and the socialist system, which opposes imperialism, was only in its formative stage. He wrote: "...in the present world situation following the imperialist war, reciprocal relations between peoples and the world political system as a whole are _-_-_
^^*^^ This conclusion is disputed by the Chinese leaders, who call the struggle of the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America against imperialism the "principal knot" of contradictions and propound the theory of "intermediate zones'', a theory dividing the world into a ``world town'' and a ``world village'', and so forth. It has been shown by the Marxist-Leninist parties that these theories have been designed to give Peking hegemony in the Third World and undermine the policy of peaceful coexistence.
35 __RUNNING_HEADER_RIGHT__ CH. I. INTENSIFICATION OF THE IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLE determined by the struggle waged by a small group of imperialist nations against the Soviet movement and the Soviet states headed by Soviet Russia. Unless we bear that in mind, we shall not be able to pose a single national or colonial problem correctly, even if it concerns a most outlying part of the world. The Communist parties, in civilised and backward countries alike, can pose and solve political problems correctly only if they make this postulate their starting-point."^^*^^The fact that the pivot of the struggle in international relations has become the contradiction between the two world systems representing the two principal antagonistic classes of contemporary society also determines the content of that struggle. Here the crucial point is that essentially it is an antagonistic struggle which leads not to any reciprocal drawing together or even fusion of the two systems, as is maintained by the exponents of the ``convergence'' theory, but to the victory of the most advanced system, socialism, and to the subsequent reorganisation of all international relations in accordance with the laws of life and the development of the new society.
The nature of the main contradiction of present-day international relations by no means predetermines the forms in which it manifests itself and is resolved. The classantagonistic character of this contradiction does not in any way make international conflicts inevitably sharper than before or involve the broader use of coercive methods of struggle.
The forms of the struggle between states, including extreme means of violence such as war, occupation, annexation and colonisation, were engendered and, in effect, legalised by the social system founded on private ownership and exploitation. This is vividly borne out by the entire history of international relations, including the history of the two world wars. With the appearance of socialism the possibility of averting world wars and opposing aggression and colonialism has been immeasurably widened.
This brings us to one of the basic theoretical and political problems of modern international relations---the problem of the content and forms of the inevitable struggle between _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 31, p. 241.
3* 36 __RUNNING_HEADER_LEFT__ GEORGI ARBATOV the two world systems. A sound approach, in fact the only approach that can bear fruit, is provided by the principle of peaceful coexistence as propounded by the socialist countries.Although the main contradiction in international relations determines the content of the foreign policy pursued by countries belonging to different social systems, Marxists-Leninists are of the opinion that it cannot be resolved in the sphere of foreign policy (say, by one group of countries forcing other countries to adopt their social system). Here the decisive role is played by the inner processes of the class struggle in society in accordance with the objective laws of its development. This is the substance of the Marxist-Leninist approach to modern international relations. This approach determines the point of departure of socialist foreign policy and elucidates not only the common features but also the specifics that distinguish the class struggle on the world scene from the class struggle within society.
The conversion of the contradiction between the two principal classes of contemporary society into the main contradiction also in international relations signified a far-reaching change in these relations and gave them many new features. One of these new features is what is known as the ``ideologisation'' of international relations. As soon as the determining factor in these relations became the struggle between the two classes opposed to each other in modern society, ideological issues quite naturally acquired a new significance. From that moment onwards international relations became the arena of the class struggle in politics, economics and, inevitably, ideology. In foreign policy it is a clash between two classes, which have their own ideology, views and notions about the world, about politics and all major social problems. In other words, with the world's division into two systems not only every individual society and state but international relations became the arena of the clash between the two opposing class ideologies.
Properly speaking, it is only after this that the war of ideas in international relations acquires a genuinely ideological character. Formerly, it was sooner a case of utilising definite means for the promotion of ideas and definite methods of influencing people's minds in times of conflict, 37 __RUNNING_HEADER_RIGHT__ CH. I. INTENSIFICATION OF THE IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLE which very rarely bore the nature of a clash of opposing ideologies. Propaganda was an auxiliary weapon of foreign policy, which, as a rule, was not directly linked with the basic social and, therefore, ideological conflicts in society. In the centre of international relations today are modern society's fundamental ideological problems, which have been increasingly penetrating foreign policy since the world's division into two systems.
It is important to stress that we are concerned with natural-historic changes in international relations, with changes that take place objectively, regardless of the will of individuals and of governments. By virtue of the laws of the class struggle unfolding in the world, the ideological struggle between states belonging to different systems would have gone on even if these states had ``decided'' to abandon such a form of the struggle as foreign political propaganda. It will be borne in mind that we are witnessing the internationalisation of the class struggle, when the struggle between the main classes in society is fusing with their struggle on the international scene, when the triumph or defeat of each class in its own country has immediate repercussions in other countries, when each of these classes acts not only as a national but also as an international force.
These changes in international relations have confronted bourgeois theory with a very specific problem. On the one hand, it could not ignore-the obvious growth of the role played by the ideological struggle in foreign policy, especially as the practical requirements of the imperialist state demanded an account of this new phenomenon in international relations. On the other hand, an objective analysis of the tap-root of this phenomenon inevitably had to lead to the recognition of the law-governed nature of these changes, including the world's division into two systems and this division's deep-going link with the class struggle in capitalist society.
That is why in bourgeois literature questions related to the ideological struggle in foreign (and, as a matter of fact, domestic) policy are usually interpreted outside genuinely ideological, class concepts and categories. A favourite and customary method of this interpretation is to supplant the concept of ideology with the concept of "public opinion".
38 __RUNNING_HEADER_LEFT__ GEORGI ARBATOVThe validity of the category "public opinion" in political theory is beyond question. But it is one thing to understand as public opinion real situations in the public mind arising from a whole series of causes (the influence of the conditions of life of the various classes and groups, the ideological and other influences acting on these classes, information, socio-psychological factors and so on), and quite another to take it to mean that elusive, spectral phenomenon, which bourgeois authors try to give out for ideological and class consciousness. Properly speaking, on the lips of bourgeois politicians and, frequently, theorists the concept "public opinion" often sounds as a piece of political banality devoid of real meaning. It is ordinarily used for purely utilitarian purposes in order to justify or reject some idea, measure or demand (Western "public opinion'', we are told for example, does not accept communism; or, on the contrary, " public opinion" supports the policy of a given bourgeois government).
The war of ideas on the international scene is not, of course, always expressed in a direct, frontal clash between the proletarian and the bourgeois philosophies. Very frequently it goes on round more specific and, therefore, more local issues---a crisis in international relations, the problem of disarmament, the recognition of a new country or regime, and so forth. But today such issues range beyond the local framework and are inevitably regarded as part of the world pattern.
However, the significance of the ideological struggle in international relations does not boil down to this, so to speak, passive aspect---to the fact that international phenomena and developments are increasingly regarded by the people in the context of existing and contending ideologies. Ideas and ideologies are growing into a powerful force that is influencing politics and is being used in the political struggle.
This circumstance could not escape the notice of many bourgeois researchers, who endeavour to give it their own interpretation. One of these attempts has been made by Professor Hans J. Morgenthau, founder of the "political realism" school. "Men in politics,'' he says, "seek power and they come into conflict with others engaged in the same truest. They use moral justifications to cover their 39 __RUNNING_HEADER_RIGHT__ CH. I. INTENSIFICATION OF THE IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLE aspirations and thus heighten and intensify the = struggle."^^*^^ This quite accurately mirrors a key feature of present-day bourgeois ideology---the desire to conceal and disguise the real aims of its class. But if we are to speak of the theoretical meaning of this concept, it will become obvious that we have before us an attempt to transfer the ideological struggle to the individual (or group) sphere of a ``free'' struggle of individuals and groups for power, an attempt to divorce this struggle from classes and class relations.
Morgenthau sees the link between ideology and politics, although he divorces both ideology and politics from class relations. Many other bourgeois researchers are unable to achieve this degree of theoretical generalisation, failing to rise above banalities.
One of them is the Austrian historian Alfred Sturminger. Here is the pertinent passage from his book on the history of propaganda: "It is the inborn property of human nature that various, frequently contradictory views and ideas inescapably arise when general situations in life are assessed. The more human thought has developed and the more differentiated have the components of a state union become, the more differences of opinion have there been. Hence the desire and need to convey to other people one's own ideas and convictions, to influence them and repulse contradictory influences. Political propaganda has thus been in existence ever since the rise of society in = general."^^**^^
Arguments of this kind are not worth a serious analysis because they explain nothing, and are far removed from life and from the ideological struggle, which has nothing in common with the picture of peaceful and truly academic discussion drawn by Sturminger.
Both the problem of the ideological struggle as a form of the class struggle and the problem of the relation between the ideological and the political struggle have been convincingly resolved in Marxist-Leninist theory. The point of departure in this solution is of fundamental importance also for understanding the entire range of issues linked with _-_-_
^^*^^ This summary of Morgenthau's views is given by Kenneth W. Thompson in Political Realism and the Crisis of World Politics, Princeton, I960, p. 34.
^^**^^ Alfred Sturminger, op. cit., p. 9.
40 __RUNNING_HEADER_LEFT__ GEORGI ARBATOV the present-day war of ideas, including the struggle on the international scene.As has been shown by Marxism-Leninism, the ideological struggle between opposing classes arises just as naturally (not spontaneously, of course) as each class develops its own understanding and explanation of the world, and. perceives its position in society, its interests and aims and the ways of fighting for these interests and aims. Antagonistic classes have different, antipodal and incompatible systems of ideas, and once these ideas are shaped the only relations they can have between them are those of struggle. There is no connection here with the psychological factor, with ideological intolerance, which, some bourgeois ideologists contend, is inherent in human nature and compels man to strive to mould the thinking of others. In effect, such intolerance is not a psychological but a class-political phenomenon. The heart of the matter is that ideas and the ideological struggle are not solely the product of class relations but a powerful weapon of the class struggle.
Having established the secondary nature of social consciousness, of the world of ideas in respect to social being and the world of things, Marxism-Leninism has thereby in no way belittled the role of ideas in social life. It has only given a scientific explanation of their origin. As regards the role of ideas and, generally, of people's conscious activity, Marxism-Leninism has always accorded them an important place in social life and in politics.
It is precisely through ideas and the ideological struggle that each class becomes conscious of itself as a special class in society, as a class with its own aims and interests, to say nothing of its attitude to economic, political and other problems. This is the starting-point of the class struggle, regardless of the class or political system concerned.
Further, ideas and the ideological struggle play an immense part in resolving a central task of politics such as winning the support of the masses. The masses are, of course, stirred to action under the impact of objective influences underlying the very conditions of their existence. But ideas and the ideological struggle become a vital element of this objective process. This was underscored by Marx, who noted that "theory also becomes a material force as soon as it has 41 __RUNNING_HEADER_RIGHT__ CH. I. INTENSIFICATION OF THE IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLE gripped the = masses".^^*^^ The same point was made by Lenin, who censured the underestimation of ideas and ideals by those who were inclined to reduce Marxism to economic determinism. He wrote:
"Justice is an empty word, say the intellectuals and those rascals who are inclined to proclaim themselves Marxists on the lofty grounds that they have 'contemplated the hind parts' of economic materialism.
"Ideas become a power when they grip the people. And precisely at the present time the Bolsheviks, i.e., the representatives of revolutionary proletarian internationalism, have embodied in their policy the idea that is motivating countless working people all over the = world."^^**^^
This proposition of Marxist-Leninist theory is the key to understanding the problem of the correlation and interrelation of the ideological and political struggle within society and on an international scale.
In the ideological struggle the basic aim of any class is to bring the largest number of people under the influence of its ideas and tear them away from the spiritual influence of the class adversary. This task inevitably begins with the ideological conquest of the masses of its own class without which the class cannot be united in the struggle for its interests and aims. A class consists of many thousands and even millions of people scattered about the country, engaged in different affairs and in many cases even unaware of their common condition and interests. This is particularly true of a class which is still only fighting for power. For this class a common ideology becomes the principal, and at a definite stage, the only organising element, the means of uniting and mustering its forces, a means that precedes other, including political, instruments of unity. The decisive stage of the struggle for power both by the bourgeoisie and the proletariat began precisely with ideological unity, with propaganda within the class.
At the same time, ideological propaganda is used by a class as a means of undermining the spiritual unity of the class adversary and ensuring to itself the broadest possible influence in his ranks. Naturally, in this respect the _-_-_
^^*^^ Marx and Engels, On Religion, Moscow, 1966, p. 45.
^^**^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 26, pp. 129--30.
42 __RUNNING_HEADER_LEFT__ GEORGI ARBATOV possibillties of the rising class are limited inasmuch as it has to contend with an enemy who is well aware of his aims and interests and is organised for the defence of these, aims and interests. Here it can only be a matter of influencing individual, foremost elements of the other class who are capable of rising above class interests. Such elements have been won over not only by the revolutionary bourgeoisie (from among the aristocracy) but also by the working class (from among the bourgeoisie). The examples are well known and they are rather the exception than the rule in the class struggle.The case is different as regards the ideological influence exercised by the governing class over its class adversaries. The possibilities for exercising such influence are quite considerable and the efforts to ensure this influence comprise an important sphere of the ideological struggle. Marx's proposition that the ideas of the ruling class are predominant in society remains true to this day. This is vividly illustrated by modern bourgeois society, in which the ideological efforts of the ruling class are directed towards ensuring a spiritual influence on the working class, splitting it and cultivating anti-communism, reformism, religious ideology, nationalism and chauvinism in its ranks.
Lastly, the purpose of ideological propaganda is to win the support of the mass of the intermediate classes and social strata. Even in developed bourgeois society, where the working class constitutes a huge section of the population (the majority in some countries), the outcome of the struggle depends to a large extent on the support of the intermediate classes and strata---peasants, urban petty bourgeoisie, white collar workers, intellectuals and so on. This is especially true of countries where capitalist relations have not reached a high level of development and the classes contesting the issue of power do not constitute the majority in society.
Naturally, international relations have their own specifics, which, as we have already noted, spring from the fact that for entire epochs the political struggle on the international scene was, with rare exceptions, waged between socially similar ruling classes. This determined the specifics of the ideological struggle as well.
The situation is changing fundamentally with the world's division into two systems. This division is taking place 43 __RUNNING_HEADER_RIGHT__ CH. I. INTENSIFICATION OF THE IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLE in an epoch witnessing an unprecedented growth of the political activity of the masses and their mounting influence on politics, both internal and external. Also important is the fact that the struggle in international relations is, as we have pointed out earlier, intertwined with the class struggle within society by virtue of its social content. In both cases it is a struggle between two historical types of society---socialism and capitalism---between the two principal classes of the modern epoch, the working class and the bourgeoisie. Moreover, this intertwining has its ideological expression, for in both cases the main conflict acquires an ideological aspect stemming from the collision and struggle between two class philosophies, between the socialist and the bourgeois philosophies.
As a result, many of the partitions that have for centuries separated foreign policy from internal policy are disappearing and giving place to a more profound and closer interlacing of the class struggle within society with the class struggle on a global scale.
Even bourgeois scholars cannot deny these changes. The West German historian Erwin Holzle, who devoted one of his books to the problems arising from the world's division into two systems, says that an "age of world-wide ideology"^^*^^ has commenced in which the boundary between internal arid external policy has melted, while "internal political ideas and forms such as democracy (as Holzle prefers to call capitalism.---G.A.) and communism have become the foreign political ideologies of the whole = world".^^**^^ The American scholar John S. Gibson unequivocally stresses that the war of ideas owes its sharpness to the world's division into two systems, to the fact that "two ways of life oppose each other. Two diametrically different ways of government compete with each other, along with two different economic = systems".^^***^^
But not all bourgeois theorists are prepared to attribute this change directly to the world's division into capitalism _-_-_
^^*^^ Erwin Holzle, Die Revolution der zweigeteilten Welt; eine Geschichte der Machte 1905--1929, Hamburg, 1963, S. 76.
^^**^^ Ibid.
^^***^^ John S. Gibson, Ideology and World Affairs, Boston, 1964, p. 13.
44 __RUNNING_HEADER_LEFT__ GEORGI ARBATOV and = socialism.^^*^^ But the fact that the role of the ideological struggle in the world has undergone a change is no longer denied by anybody.While the fact that ideology and the war of ideas have penetrated international relations is generally recognised, there are diverse opinions regarding the depth and significance of this new factor's influence on foreign policy. Farther down in this book we shall deal in some detail with the views of individual bourgeois theorists, who contend that in our epoch ideology and ideological differences have been the basic cause of the main contradictions and conflicts in the world. We cannot agree with this view. And not only because it nurtures the harmful illusion that in international relations there will be peace and universal concord as soon as the ideological struggle gives way to a "peaceful coexistence of ideas''. This view is essentially misconceived, for whatever role they play ideological differences and the war of ideas are not the cause but the effect of basic sociopolitical contradictions and conflicts, including contradictions in international relations.
Today, more than in the past, we encounter attempts to give various political actions and conflicts an ideological twist despite the fact that underlying them are economic or military-political motives. This is a typical method employed by imperialist policy, which disguises its real aims with arguments about defending freedom and democracy, countering "communist intrigues" and so forth.
This practice, unquestionably, creates a favourable atmosphere for opposite views, according to which ideology and the war of ideas in themselves play no role in international affairs and are sooner a facade screening the same political motivations and realities as hundreds and even thousands of years ago.
For a long time these were the views propounded by the ``realist'' school in United States political science. It holds that the struggle for power, above all for military power, is the immutable substance of all international relations. _-_-_
^^*^^ The West German sociologist Frank Thiess, for instance, attaches more importance to the spiritual and religious conflict linked with the manner in which Christianity had spread in Russia (Die geschichtlichen Grundlagen des Ost-West Geeensatzes. Frankfurt am Main, 1960).
45 __RUNNING_HEADER_RIGHT__ CH. I. INTENSIFICATION OF THE IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLE``Statesmen and peoples,'' writes Hans J. Morgenthau, "may ultimately seek freedom, security, prosperity, or power itself. They may define their goals in terms of a religious, philosophic, economic, or social ideal.... But whenever they strive to realise their goal by means of international politics, they do so by striving for power.... In international politics, in particular, armed strength as a threat or a potentiality is the most important material factor making for the political power of a nation.... The struggle for power is universal in time and = space."^^*^^
It goes without saying that Morgenthau has fpithfully characterised the substance of imperialist policy, which had relied on military strength for a long time and is still trying to do so. But the crux of the problem is that in our day the factors of strength in international politics, one of which is ideology, have grown more complex and broader.
There are ideas and ideas (the American propaganda experts Gordon, Falk and Hodapp rightly note in this connection that "ideas can be inert thoughts, speculations, dreams; they can be spurs to action, fuses for = dynamite"^^**^^). It is a feature of our epoch that with the world's division into two systems ideological strength, the ability to ensure the influence of one's own ideas, has become a new and important source of the strength and influence of states on the international scene.
Today this cannot be denied even by the most ardent admirers of the unconditional priority of military power and other ``material'' sources of strength. This is seen also in the most recent works by representatives of the ``realist'' school. They are far from linking this new factor of strength with the fundamental social processes taking place in the world, above all with the aggravation of the struggle between the two principal classes in individual countries and on the world scene. They are sooner prepared to regard the war of ideas as a new effective instrument of strength in the struggle between states.
In an article published in 1967 Morgenthau wrote: "The United States and the Soviet Union face each other not only as two great powers which in the traditional ways compete _-_-_
^^*^^ Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, New York, 1954, pp. 25, 27, 30.
^^**^^ George Gordon, Irving Falk, William Hodapp, op. cit., p. 9.
46 __RUNNING_HEADER_LEFT__ GEORGI ARBATOV for advantage. They also face each other as the fountainheads of two hostile and incompatible ideologies, systems of government and ways of life, each trying to expand the reach of its respective political values and institutions and to prevent the expansion of the other. Thus the cold war has not only been a conflict between two world powers but also a contest between two secular religions.'' Morgenthau sees as highly significant the fact that the means of ideological struggle make it possible to intervene in the internal affairs of other countries. This struggle, he declares, is the "dynamic force" behind the policy of intervention "all over the globe, sometimes surreptitiously, sometimes openly, sometimes with the accepted methods of diplomatic pressure and propaganda, sometimes with the frowned-upon instruments of covert subversion and open = force".^^*^^The switch towards recognition of a large number of new factors of international politics is in many ways linked with the fact that in recent years many Western politicians and theorists have lost their faith in the potentialities of military power, which had long been regarded as an omnipotent instrument of foreign policy. Today, in the light of the US aggression in Vietnam, conclusions of this kind have become more and more widespread. But some Western scholars arrived at similar conclusions some years ago, long before recent developments had shown the changes in international relations and narrowed down the boundaries for the effective use of military strength. In a book entitled Our Depleted Society, one of these scholars, Seymour Melman, writes: "...most of us have agreed with Voltaire that God is on the side with the heaviest battalions. If it were true that the strongest military power always gets its way, then the United States, possessor of the greatest stock of nuclear military weapons in the world, should be able to exercise its will among other nations with substantial success. But this has not been the case; military power is becoming increasingly ineffective as an instrument of international = policy."^^**^^
This view was expressed long ago by the US Senator J. William Fulbright. Noting that many old formulas are _-_-_
^^*^^ Foreign Affairs, April 1967, pp. 428--29.
^^**^^ Seymour Melman, Our Depleted Society, New York, 1965, p. 157.
47 __RUNNING_HEADER_RIGHT__ CH. I. INTENSIFICATION OF THE IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLE losing their significance in face of the vast means of destruction developed by science and technology, he writes that there is an absolute disproportion between war as an instrument of politics and its possible aims. "Nuclear weapons,'' he stresses, "have deprived force of its utility as an instrument of national = policy."^^*^^ In the light of the experience of the Vietnam war, Fulbright expounds this view in greater detail in the book The Arrogance of = Power.^^**^^Many United States politicians, who have never had the reputation of being pacifists, are coming round to interesting conclusions. Typical in this respect is the statement by Henry A. Kissinger that "power no longer translates automatically into = influence".^^***^^
Indeed, the new factors of power in international politics merit an independent examination. Here we are interested only in the aspect linked with ideology's conversion into one of these factors. A point we should like to make is that Marxists had seen and assessed this factor long before the appearance of nuclear weapons. During the initial years of Soviet power Lenin said: "A certain unstable equilibrium has been reached. Materially---economically and militarily---we are extremely weak; but morally---by which, of course, I mean not abstract morals, but the alignment of the real forces of all classes in all countries---we are the strongest of all. This has been proved in practice; it has been proved not merely by words but by deeds; it has been proved once and, if history takes a certain turn, it will, perhaps, be proved many times = again."^^****^^
Lenin's words that "economically and militarily we are extremely weak" referred, of course, to a certain period in history. The USSR's present enormous economic and military potential is well known. But this does not reduce the significance of the ideological and moral superiority of socialism, which has developed into a colossal power in the course of sharp class struggles in international relations.
_-_-_^^*^^ J. William Fulbright, Old Myths and New Realities, New York, 1964, p. 56.
^^**^^ J. William Fulbright, The Arrogance of Power, New York, 1966.
^^***^^ Agenda for the Nation, Washington, 1968, p. 589.
^^****^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 33, p. 151.
48 __RUNNING_HEADER_LEFT__ GEORGI ARBATOVThe world's division into two systems is thus the principal reason and chief factor of the enhanced role played by the war of ideas in international relations, which are being increasingly determined by the contradictions and struggle between the working class and the bourgeoisie (notably, the imperialist bourgeoisie), the two main classes wielding state power today.
At the same time, the war of ideas is by no means becoming the initial or even the main cause of the struggle, collisions and conflicts on the world scene. It is only one of the forms of the class struggle in international relations. But it is an important form, which in these relations plays an immense role especially in view of the fact that the class struggle in the world and within society intertwines very closely in the sphere of ideology. This makes the war of ideas a serious factor of strength in international politics.
This factor has to be reckoned with by the imperialist rulers, for with its invasion of the sphere of foreign policy, problems of immense importance linked not only with the struggle for traditional foreign political aims but also with the very direction of historical development began to be resolved in international relations.
__ALPHA_LVL2__ 2. THE PEOPLE AND FOREIGN POLICY __ALPHA_LVL3__ [introduction] __NOTE__ 2006.11.23 - added the above LVL3; modified index.tab.The growth of the influence exercised by the masses on foreign policy is another major factor turning the war of ideas into an indispensable and essential aspect of international relations. This factor, first noted by MarxistsLeninists, by those who have always regarded the working masses as their natural ally, is gradually gaining increasing recognition also from bourgeois scholars.
Their ``enlightenment'' in this question began, essentially, after the Second World War. The first works devoted to the increased role played by the masses in foreign policy attracted attention as early as the 1950s. In these works the growing influence of the masses on social life was described as both sensational and undesirable.
"Mass opinion'', wrote the noted American journalist Walter Lippmann, "has acquired mounting power in this century. It has shown itself to be a dangerous master of decisions 49 __RUNNING_HEADER_RIGHT__ CH. I. INTENSIFICATION OF THE IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLE when the stakes are life and = death."^^*^^ The American diplomatic observer Sisley Huddleston, who headed the AngloAmerican Press Association, wrote: "...our epoch is distinguished from preceding epochs by the overwhelming influence of the masses on our communal life.... Nothing remains either of the monarchs by divine right or their agents who shared, in the eyes of the crowd, something of that divine right. Today, the people---that is to say, the crowd---is the natural heir of that divine right, and woe betide those who set themselves up in opposition to the = masses."^^**^^
Within 10--15 years of the time these questions became a topic of serious discussion in bourgeois literature, the people's new role in politics ceased to be a sensation. It began to be treated as a reality by more and more Western sociologists and political theorists. A typical approach is that of the American researcher John S. Gibson, who wrote: "Public opinion in all countries must be taken into consideration by national leaders in the shaping of their domestic and foreign policies. Only a few decades ago, the principal decisions in world affairs were made by the leaders of states, and their diplomats. For the most part, the people within the state had little or no influence in directing the course of national policy. Today, the man in the street or the field or the jungle wants to be = heard."^^***^^
Statements of this kind, of course, must be treated with caution. While they are basically correct, the arguments about the importance of taking public opinion into consideration and references to the demands and will of the man in the street are frequently used in order to conceal the fact that despite the increased influence of the masses, the internal and external policies of the capitalist states continue to be shaped by the ruling bourgeoisie and its political representatives. Nonetheless, the imperialist governments are finding that they have to give more and more consideration to this new socio-political factor. This is seen in their efforts to mould public opinion and in their manoeuvres and concessions when the people's resistance to imperialist policy stiffens.
_-_-_^^*^^ Walter Lippmann, The Public Philosophy, Boston, 1955, p. 20.
^^**^^ Sisley Huddleston, Popular Diplomacy and War, Rindge, New Hampshire, 1954, pp. 145, 147.
^^***^^ John S. Gibson, op. cit., p. 14.
50 __RUNNING_HEADER_LEFT__ GEORGI ARBATOVWhile recognising the people's enhanced role in international affairs, the bourgeois theorists, naturally, seek to explain the origin of this factor.
One of the most widespread explanations is that as a result of the ``distortion'' of democracy the ``crowd'' arbitrarily assumes the right to interfere in affairs of state and tries to use democratic freedoms to influence diplomatic decisions. This, in particular, is the view offered by Walter Lippmann. It is shared by others with the difference that they abstain from negative assessments. Above we have quoted the pertinent passages from the Mansfield-Sprague Committee report and from a book by Gordon, Falk and Hodapp, who attribute the heightened influence of public opinion chiefly to the spread of "democratic ideas'', the extension of suffrage, and so on.
The existence of even formal, curtailed democratic rights and freedoms unquestionably facilitates political activity by the working people and by their parties and organisations, and enables them to exert a more effective influence on state policy (including external policy) and to make it difficult for the monopoly bourgeoisie to carry out its plans. That is why the all-out assault on the democratic rights and freedoms of the people and the intensification of reaction in internal policy are an inalienable element of the preparations of the imperialist states for war and aggression.
But the attempts to attribute the increased role of public opinion in international relations solely to the existence of bourgeois-democratic freedoms are untenable whatever the significance of suffrage and other democratic civil rights under capitalism.
The growth of the people's role in politics is not preceded by democracy. On the contrary, the democratic rights and freedoms enjoyed by the masses sooner depend on this role. These rights and freedoms have never been presented to the working people. They have been won by them as a result of a persevering struggle. It was due to this struggle that some of the institutions and principles of the bourgeois state owe much of their vaunted ``democracy''.
Following the revolution of the 18th century, many of the leaders of the French revolutionary bourgeoisie, to whom bourgeois democracy owes a great deal, were not 51 __RUNNING_HEADER_RIGHT__ CH. I. INTENSIFICATION OF THE IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLE out to establish a republic and had no objection to the preservation of the monarchy as a form of administration, which had for ages reliably protected the basic interests of the propertied classes. It was only under the influence of the people, including the emerging proletariat, that the French bourgeoisie, as Lenin pointed out, "in its entirety was recast into a republican bourgeoisie, retrained, re-educated, reborn"^^*^^ and evolved forms of administration which became the model for bourgeois democracy.
All the more is this true of the modern imperialist bourgeoisie, which has long ago rid itself of any illusion that the social practices benefiting it are immutable and incontestable. It has realised that it can retain power only insofar as it is able to hold the oppressed majority of society in leash. In this situation even any bourgeois-democratic institution remains the object of a continuous struggle. Had it not been for the resistance of the proletariat and other working people, there is no telling what would have remained of suffrage, of formal civil liberties and other attributes of bourgeois democracy, to which the increased socio-political role of the people is ascribed. Thus, it was not bourgeois democracy that enabled the people to influence politics; on the contrary, bourgeois-democratic principles and institutions developed as a result of the people's increased role and activity in social life.
In explaining the reasons for the people's influence on foreign policy, other bourgeois researchers point not to the ``distortion'' of democracy but to the ``distortion'' of the nature of modern diplomacy. Typical in this respect are the arguments of Sisley Huddleston, who says that since the First World War the old, ``traditional'' diplomacy had been supplanted by the new, ``open'' or ``popular'' diplomacy, which, he claims, awakened in the ``crowd'' a sharpened interest in foreign policy.
Put in this way, this argument has many flaws. First and foremost, it is necessary to analyse what is meant by ``open'', ``popular'' diplomacy where the foreign policy of bourgeois countries is concerned. As can be seen from Huddleston's book as well, diplomacy finds itself compelled to appeal to public opinion, to the people, i.e., to enter _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 17, p. 413.
4* 52 __RUNNING_HEADER_LEFT__ GEORGI ARBATOV actively into the ideological struggle. But in this case we again encounter the replacement of the cause (the growth of the people's role in foreign policy) by the effect (the change in the character of diplomacy, the substance of this change being that now diplomacy has to serve state policy not only in the traditional context of government-to-- government relations but also by bringing influence to bear on public opinion).One can understand why bourgeois researchers are unable to offer a tenable explanation of the reasons for the increased role played by the people in international relations. This is one of the issues in which the class interests of the modern bourgeoisie form an insuperable barrier to an objective analysis, for to show the real reasons of this phenomenon it would be necessary to go deep into an analysis of the fundamental socio-political changes linked with capitalism's decline, the upsurge of the new class (the proletariat) and the new social system (socialism), and the growth of their influence on the entire course of historical development.
These are the changes that have led to the growth of the people's role in political affairs generally and in foreign policy and international relations in particular.
One of the corner-stones of the materialist understanding of history is that the development of society is determined not by outstanding personalities but by the masses. This proposition was substantiated by the Marxist-Leninist science on society, by its analysis of the role played by the masses in all the principal spheres of social life---social production, spiritual culture and politics. Here we are interested in the role of the masses in politics.
A distinctive situation took shape in this sphere in the course of the centuries. The very existence of the exploiting system is conceivable only if politics are determined by the exploiting classes and not by the masses. But this does not signify that the Marxist proposition on the masses as the makers of history does not embrace such an important sphere of social life as politics.
First and foremost, the role played by the masses grows immeasurably in the most decisive periods of history, namely, in periods of social revolutions, when they become the prime force behind revolutionary activity which smashes the chains fettering social progress and breaks the old 53 __RUNNING_HEADER_RIGHT__ CH. I. INTENSIFICATION OF THE IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLE relations of production and the old social and state system. Small wonder Lenin called revolutions "festivals of the oppressed and the = exploited".^^*^^ No change from one socioeconomic system to another, in other words, no social progress is possible without revolution.
During the ``peaceful'', ``normal'' periods of the development of exploiting society, the masses, naturally, take no direct part in the shaping of official policy (legislation, the making of government decisions, and so on) and the ruling classes use every means to exclude them from political life. The only means of influence left to the masses during such periods is resistance to the policies of the governing classes.
The situation changes only after the socialist revolution, when the masses emerge from their status of the object of politics to become its subject. Socialism does not simply ``permit'' active historical creativity by the masses but necessarily presupposes such activity, for without it, by virtue of the scale and character of the tasks confronting society, it cannot triumph and develop = normally.^^**^^ That is why, as distinct from all the preceding social systems, even after it triumphs, socialism remains vitally interested in the maximum unfolding of the people's creative revolutionary energy, in the maximum manifestation of their decisive role in the socio-historical processes, and does not and cannot reconcile itself to any hindrances on this road, including, for example, the views and practices of the personality cult. The socialist revolution ushers in a qualitatively new stage of social development, a stage which makes it possible and urgent to awaken the creative energy of the masses and at which, as Lenin put it, history is "independently made by millions and tens of millions of people".^^***^^
In capitalist society the people's role in political life depends primarily on their possibilities of protecting their interests, on their resistance to the official policy of the ruling bourgeoisie. In other words, it depends on the intensity of the working people's class struggle.
_-_-_^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 9, p. 113.
^^**^^ Lenin pointed out that "socialism can be built only when ten and a hundred times more people themselves begin to build the state and the new economic life" (Collected Works, Vol. 28, p. 403).
^^***^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 27, p. 162.
54 __RUNNING_HEADER_LEFT__ GEORGI ARBATOVIn our epoch these possibilities are much greater than under any preceding social system, for the class struggle has been joined by the proletariat, the most politicallyconscious, organised and revolutionary class in history, a class that has its own political parties, professional and other organisations, and a scientific programme with a rich arsenal of forms, methods and tactical means of struggle.
This applies particularly to the contemporary period of capitalist development, to the epoch of its deepening general crisis, which is characterised by a radical shift in the balance of class forces in the world. The growth of the people's socio-political role springing from the basic features of our epoch---the victory of the working people in a number of countries, the world socialist system's conversion into the decisive factor of world development, the upswing of the class struggle of the proletariat in the capitalist countries and of the democratic movements, and the independent historical activity of the millions who had been subjected to colonial oppression---has not only changed the political picture of the world but predicated the immense acceleration of the rate of social development.
Only a century ago, Lenin wrote in 1918, "history was made by handfuls of nobles and a sprinkling of bourgeois intellectuals, while the worker and peasant masses were somnolent and dormant. As a result history at that time could only crawl along at a terribly slow = pace".^^*^^ In 1922, noting that measured in terms of struggle and movement the past decade had been equal to a century, Lenin wrote that the "basic reason for this tremendous acceleration of world development is that new hundreds of millions of people have been drawn into it''. Most of the world's population, he said, "has now awakened and has begun a movement which even the `mightiest' powers cannot = stem".^^**^^
The fundamental socio-political changes that have taken place during the past few decades have thus predicated the growth of the working people's influence not only on internal politics but also on international relations. This creates a particularly sharp contrast in comparison with the past--- _-_-_
^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 27, p. 162.
^^**^^ Ibid., Vol. 33, pp. 349, 350.
55 __RUNNING_HEADER_RIGHT__ CH. I. INTENSIFICATION OF THE IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLE not only with pre-capitalist epochs but also with the preceding periods of the history of capitalism.As a ``realm'' of professional politicians and career diplomats, foreign policy has been zealously guarded against the influence of the masses. It was studiously kept away from the public gaze and every effort was made to conceal its motive forces, including the real sources and causes of wars for which the working people, above all, had to pay a heavy price.
The first signs of change appeared only when the working class entered the arena of history. As the class struggle mounted the masses acquired steadily broader possibilities of influencing foreign policy.
These new possibilities were noted by Marx. Back in the 1860s he wrote that the crimes perpetrated by the reactionary classes in international politics "have taught the working classes the duty to master themselves the mysteries of international politics; to watch the diplomatic acts of their respective governments; to counteract them, if necessary, by all means in their = power".^^*^^
Marx saw the class struggle of the workers as the force capable of influencing the oppressors and disrupting their criminal foreign policy plans. The events of those years, particularly the struggle of the British proletariat against the plans of its national bourgeoisie to intervene in the American Civil War on the side of the Confederacy, convinced Marx of the reality of this force.
In the history of capitalism there have been other casesof the people actively influencing the decision of foreign policy problems. But for a long time all these cases were exceptions. As Lenin wrote, the "most important questions--- war, peace, diplomatic questions---are decided by a small handful of capitalists, who deceive not only the masses, but very often parliament = itself".^^**^^
In this area, too, radical changes have taken place only during the past few decades when capitalism entered the epoch of its general crisis.
In this respect the decisive role was played by the appearance on the stage of history of a fundamentally new type _-_-_
^^*^^ Marx and Engels, Selected Works in three volumes, Vol. 2, Moscow, 1969, p. 18.
^^**^^ V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 30, p. 488.
56 __RUNNING_HEADER_LEFT__ GEORGI ARBATOV of foreign policy and diplomacy, the foreign policy and diplomacy of the socialist countries, which not only expresses the interests and will of the masses but consciously pursues the aim of securing to the working masses the utmost influence on international relations.Moreover, of considerable significance was the fact that although the monopoly bourgeoisie had gathered all the strings of power in the capitalist countries into its own hands and gained control of the state machine, the conditions have arisen, particularly since the Second World War, giving the working masses wider possibilities of fighting for their own foreign policy interests and demands.
Lastly, the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America, who constitute the majority of mankind and had only recently been nothing more than the object of the foreign policy of the imperialist vultures, have awoken to independent state and political life. But the social conditions enabling the masses to play an active role in politics are not emerging in all the new national states. Nonetheless, the foreign policy of many of these countries is being shaped with some account of the people's aspirations and interests, in particular of their desire for peace, national independence and friendly relations with countries belonging to the socialist community.
A feature of the present epoch of mankind's transition from capitalism to socialism is that international relations are to some extent also acquiring a transitional character. These relations form an extraordinarily intricate picture of the intermingling, collision and interaction of elements of the new and the old---of capitalism and the relations among nations engendered by it, on the one hand, and socialism and the new, socialist international relations, on the other; of the traditional foreign policy of the exploiting classes and states and the foreign policy of the socialist states and of the working masses headed by the proletariat.
In addition to the real possibilities of influencing politics, the activity and the scale of the struggle of the working masses depend on the desire of the masses to resolve foreign policy problems. Even where the working masses are able to offer powerful resistance to the oppressors they understandably have recourse to such resistance only in the struggle for foreign policy demands that actually affect 57 __RUNNING_HEADER_RIGHT__ CH. I. INTENSIFICATION OF THE IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLE their vital interests. Another factor that must be taken into consideration is that in order to begin a struggle the masses must not only be objectively interested in the solution of a given foreign policy problem but they must understand that their interests are affected. There have been frequent cases in the past where the working people remained passive observers of developments only because they did not realise the significance or consequences of the given foreign policy actions of the oppressor governments.
Where these two decisive factors are concerned the epoch of the general crisis of capitalism, particularly the period following the Second World War, has brought with it vital modifications. One of these modifications is linked with the new forms and means of waging wars, notably, the development of nuclear-missile weapons of mass annihilation. The other is connected with the open diplomacy of the socialist countries.
__NOTE__ "Dialectics of Materialism" is first occurrence of sub-section title inset to left of first three lines that are shorter than the rest. __ALPHA_LVL3__ DialecticsThe ideological struggle on the international scene was frequently activated in the past during periods of war. At first glance, this may be regarded as a paradox, for if of all the methods and means of struggle for foreign policy objectives the choice falls on war it would be logical to expect other methods and means, including the methods of persuasion, to recede into the background. Why had this not happened and why, having given preference to military means, governments found themselves compelled to activate ideological, propaganda efforts in order to influence their own and other peoples? The answer to this question must be sought in the fact that of all the problems of foreign policy war has always powerfully and directly affected the vital interests of the masses. Also, of all the means of pursuing foreign policy war demands the active participation of more or less considerable masses of the population.
The changes in weapons and methods of warfare, the changes in the character and consequences of war have naturally heightened the interest of the masses in problems of foreign policy and gave them greater possibility of prevailing on this policy.
In recent years bourgeois sociologists have also begun to recognise the link between the changes in weapons and 58 __RUNNING_HEADER_LEFT__ GEORGI ARBATOV the character of wars, on the one hand, and the ideological struggle, on the other. In particular, they refer to the appearance of nuclear weapons as one of the factors determining the increased significance of the ideological struggle in international relations.
Precisely what do they have in mind?
First, the circumstance that the appearance of weapons of mass annihilation makes an all-out thermonuclear war an unsuitable or, in any case, an ``impracticable'' means of struggle for the attainment of imperialism's basic foreign policy objective of crushing the socialist countries. Naturally, this enhances the role of other, including ideological, means of foreign policy.
In the West, it should be noted, this view became widespread not only as a result of the development of nuclear weapons and modern means of delivery. This question was not raised as long as the imperialist powers had the monopoly or, at least, considerable superiority in this sphere. The situation changed only when at the close of the 1950s and the early 1960s the Soviet Union's achievements in the production of nuclear weapons and of the means of delivering them (notably, missiles) had become obvious. That marked the beginning of the period of so-called " painful reassessment" of imperialism's military-political doctrines, when the suicidal concept of ``liberation'' and "massive retaliation" gave way to the doctrine of "flexible response''. The emphasis was shifted to a quest for political means that held out the promise of success without a direct threat of a global missile-nuclear conflict.
This was the period when the new realities in international relations began to receive recognition in Western political literature. Typical in this respect is the way this question is put by Charles H. Donnelly. "Armed force,'' he writes, "remains an important instrument of national foreign policy but, today, the danger inherent in its use has caused the world powers to turn more frequently to other means of attaining national objectives. These means include use of political or diplomatic pressure; economic measures, such as loans, grants, favourable trade arrangements, and technical co-operation; and psychological methods which include propaganda, threats, gestures of goodwill, and sometimes domestic policies intended to impress other 59 __RUNNING_HEADER_RIGHT__ CH. I. INTENSIFICATION OF THE IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLE countries."^^*^^ A concept steadily gaining ground is that weapons are ceasing to be a sword in the sense of a world war and becoming a shield for other methods of foreign policy.
In analysing the possibilities of fighting socialism in the conditions of the "nuclear deadlock'', many Western sociologists have begun to give prominence to means of ideological pressure, to foreign political propaganda. Among them are Gordon, Falk and Hodapp, who write: "... propaganda today has become an arm of diplomacy, and every modern state is vigorously engaged in the invasion of ideas. In the vacuum created by fear of atomic warfare, this war of words may therefore be the life-or-death = struggle".^^**^^ This ``vacuum'' is mentioned also by Walter Joyce, editor of the journal Printer's Ink, which may be regarded as the official mouthpiece of the American advertising business (which has lately been showing a growing interest in foreign political propaganda). In The Propaganda Gap, a book urging an all-out ideological war against communism, he writes: "Now we are approaching a political Armageddon. The military capabilities of the Communists and the Free World have, for all practical purposes, cancelled each other, simply because it would be impracticable for either side to resort to nuclear warfare.'' Hence the accent on the war of ideas, on subordinating politics to its tasks. "Unless we want to and are prepared to launch an all-out war of aggression against the Communists,'' Joyce writes, "there is not a national objective in which psychological aspects are not = predominant."^^***^^
This may be taken as recognition of some of the basic propositions of the principle of peaceful coexistence which the Communists had formulated long ago. But the Communists had enunciated this principle long before the appearance of nuclear weapons, proposing that war should be renounced and that the inevitable struggle between the two systems should be confined to ideological propaganda _-_-_
^^*^^ "Evolution of United States Military Strategic Thought" by Charles H. Donnelly in An American Foreign Policy Reader, edited by Harry Howe Ransom, New York, 1965, p. 143.
^^**^^ G. Gordon, I. Falk, W. Hodapp, op. cit., pp.~28--29.
^^***^^ Walter Joyce, The Propaganda Gap, New York, pp. 28--29, 3.
60 __RUNNING_HEADER_LEFT__ GEORGI ARBATOV and economic competition. Progress in military techniques and the development of unprecedentedly destructive means of mass annihilation have compelled even some of the most bitter enemies of