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The ideological struggle has today acquired such -7 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 -3 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".  [27•* 

Analogous conclusions are offered in many official -4 documents and pronouncements. An example is the report -3 presented by the President’s Committee on Information -5 Activities Abroad (Mansfield-Sprague Committee) to the US President during the last months of the Eisenhower -7 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 -6 governments effectively communicate their policies and actions to all politically influential elements of foreign populations, 28 their programmes can be impeded and their security placed in jeopardy."  [28•* 

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, -4 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."  [28•**  Benton speaks of the appearance of a new type of -11 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".  [28•***  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.  [28•**** 

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.

p In the Mansfield-Sprague Committee’s report, for instance, it is noted: "These changes reflect technical -7 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 29 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."  [29•* 

p 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".  [29•** 

p 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.  [29•*** 

p "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.

p "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.

p "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 30 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."  [30•* 

p 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.

p 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.

p 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.

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p With 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.

p 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.

p 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.

p 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.

p 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.

p The experience of the past few decades has clearly shown that in the class struggle the monopoly over these means 32 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.

p 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.

p The argument is over something else—the social reasons for the growth of the role of ideological propaganda in international relations.

p 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.