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p 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.

p 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.

p "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 when the stakes are life and death."  [49•*  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."  [49•** 

p 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."  [49•*** 

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.

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p While recognising the people’s enhanced role in international affairs, the bourgeois theorists, naturally, seek to explain the origin of this factor.

p 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.

p 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.

p 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.

p 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”.

p 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 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"  [51•*  and evolved forms of administration which became the model for bourgeois democracy.

p 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.

p 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.

p 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 52 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).

p 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.

p 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.

p 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.

p 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.

p 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 relations of production and the old social and state system. Small wonder Lenin called revolutions "festivals of the oppressed and the exploited".  [53•*  No change from one socioeconomic system to another, in other words, no social progress is possible without revolution.

p 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.

p 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.  [53•**  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".  [53•*** 

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.

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p In 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.

p 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.

p 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".  [54•*  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".  [54•** 

p 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— 55 not only with pre-capitalist epochs but also with the preceding periods of the history of capitalism.

p 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.

p 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.

p 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".  [55•* 

p 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.

p 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".  [55•** 

p In this area, too, radical changes have taken place only during the past few decades when capitalism entered the epoch of its general crisis.

p In this respect the decisive role was played by the appearance on the stage of history of a fundamentally new type 56 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.

p 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.

p 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.

p 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.

p 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 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.