A Few Remarks on Revolution

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1. Revolution must be a workers’ newspaper or it must not be at all. A workers’ newspaper is not a newspaper written for workers. Nor is it necessarily a newspaper written by workers. But it must reflect the life of the working class and give timely answers to the questions raised among young workers by events, both large and small.

2. It is necessary to write clearly; to do this it is necessary to understand well both the question being dealt with and the goal of the presentation. Never write merely for the sake of writing, in order to create a lead story, or to fill up a given column.

3. Before writing an article on a specific question, it is necessary to speak with some young workers about the topic and to listen closely to their questions, suggestions, objections, etc. After the article is written, it must be submitted to the young workers’ criticism.

4. Do not copy the big papers either in the layout of the columns or in the treatment of the subject or in the tone of presentation. When an important question for the working class and especially for the youth arises, it is possible and necessary to sweep aside the regular columns and devote the entire issue to that question (for example, unemployment among the youth, an important strike in which youth are taking part, etc.) from different angles: an accurate presentation of the facts, eyewitness reports, a theoretical article on the same theme, analogous episodes from international experience, etc. Such an issue of the paper is like an artillery shell that blasts open its own path.

5. Never adopt the tone of a teacher of little children. Always speak to the readers as your equals, but speak honestly, after study and preparation, without covering up for your deficiencies with empty phrases.

6. Never give articles the character of commentaries on events which it is assumed that the reader knows all about. Each article must contain its own solid framework, composed of precise facts and dates. Commentaries must be sober, flowing from the presentation of the facts themselves. This is the only way to avoid sterile and demeaning didacticism.

7. Do not be afraid to repeat the most elementary things, always refreshing them with new facts.

8. Follow carefully the entire French press — bourgeois and working class, political and trade union, Parisian and local; clip out all facts, even insignificant ones, which relate to the life of working class youth; place the clippings in file folders; consult the files each time an article has to be produced on this or that question.

9. Create immediately a revolutionary reporters’ roster. Assign each reporter a district of the city or a special function (the workers and bourgeois justice, unemployment, soup kitchens, foreign workers, the barracks, etc.). The reporters must also be agitators and recruiters. They must be in constant contact with the milieu they are covering.

10. Once, twice, or four times a month, depending on the frequency of publication, all the writers, reporters, and some young workers should meet to exchange impressions, compile suggestions, and discuss the articles being prepared.

11. The news columns of the press contain heaps of facts which are highly significant for understanding society in general and the life of young workers in particular. Every day brings news of the suicides of young people who have lost all hope, of the murder of children by desperate parents, etc. A whole page can often be filled by carefully matching up these news items and adding short vigorous comments.

12. Signed articles are not very appropriate for the working class press in general and the young workers’ press in particular. The reader should become accustomed to seeing in the newspaper a collective personality, that is, the organization.

13. The question of socialist society as an alternative to capitalist society must be highlighted by this or that feature in each issue and on every possible occasion. It is necessary to find in the writings of the great socialists, starting with the Utopians, penetrating formulations, each a few lines long. Two or three of these should be published on every page.

14. It is absolutely intolerable to use allusions which can be understood only by young “bureaucrats,” slangy insiders’ expressions, and abbreviations which are absolutely incomprehensible for the average young worker.

15. The newspaper can only become a workers’ newspaper provided that all the forces of the organization are directed toward the workers’ districts, the industrial districts, etc. The newspaper which does not recruit workers to the organization does not deserve to exist.

16. Finally, the nature of our epoch must be reflected well by the paper. The essential feature of this epoch is that it raises the most profound questions about society and demands the most radical answers. The prerevolutionary epoch we live in needs only a real combat party to transform it into a revolutionary epoch. The newspaper must be combative and courageous, and aim high.

A Group of Readers [Leon Trotsky]