Welcome to our Contributor’s Guide to the Red Clarion! This page will introduce you to the Red Clarion and its publisher, Unity–Struggle–Unity Press, and provide you with guidelines on writing articles for the Clarion.
We need YOU to write Communist propaganda!
Before we begin, however, we should address the elephant in the room.
A lot of comrades find writing difficult or feel they simply “can’t write.” It’s true that our movement is diverse, and that we all have different skills and interests; it’s also true that many people struggle with developmental disorders and anxieties, find self-expression difficult, or have traumatic personal histories with existing education systems. It may be true, in a more or less “absolute” sense, that some comrades aren’t capable of writing, and that’s alright. It’s only natural that our organizations, and our whole movement, will feature divisions in labor, with comrades accepting tasks corresponding to their differing abilities and the needs of the masses and the revolution.
But we’d like to push back, in a comradely way, on the notion that some of us just “can’t write.” The question is this: What sorts of writing do we need?
Many comrades are made to feel that they “can’t write,” because they’ve been led to believe that in order to say anything worthwhile, they must first become master theoreticians and make novel “advancements” to Marxism. What isn’t widely understood is that behind every great treatise and pamphlet — e.g., every Capital, every State and Revolution, etc. — are literally hundreds of mundane newspaper articles, written in the ordinary language of the day, for a mass audience, mostly made up of undereducated workers. Although they were brilliant theoreticians, the vast majority of the works of Marx, Lenin, and Mao (and of most revolutionaries) are such “mass newspaper” articles and speeches. In other words, while the work of advancing revolutionary theory, experimenting with and innovating upon it, and adapting it to changing conditions is essential, this is by no means the only “literary” work that needs to be done — it doesn’t even form the majority of such work. In fact, we quite frankly have too many amateurish, would-be “theoreticians” attempting (and always, needless to say, failing, with laughably bad results) to “reinvent the wheel” of Marxism. This is simply not what our movement needs.
What the Communist movement in North America really, desperately needs now is to develop organized cadres, serving as mass propagandists and agitators, capable of explaining, in ordinary language, and for a mass audience — an audience that’s been failed by the existing education system — essential Communist ideas. We need effective (and brave) agitators, willing to go directly to oppressed communities and expose, from an uncompromising Communist perspective, the facts of the daily injustices of social life in the U.S. Empire. We need propagandists, capable of revealing the real social relations behind everyday injustices; of connecting any specific injustice in any particular locality, against any particular subset of the oppressed masses, to every injustice, across North America and the whole world, as particular manifestations of the same structural complex of colonialism and capitalist imperialism; and of convincing the masses that another world is possible.
How do we develop cadres of propagandists and agitators? Propagandistic and agitational work is not furnished by natural talent, but by a set of skills, and like all skills, those of the propagandist and agitator are learned and improved through training and practice.
You don’t need to be a confident, proven leader like Lenin or Luxemburg to speak the truth and bring consciousness to the masses. You don’t need to be an electrifying speaker like Fidel Castro or Fred Hampton to inspire mass militancy. You don’t need to be a literary genius like Langston Hughes or Maxim Gorky to say something deeply moving. You don’t need to write books, philosophical treatises, pamphlets, or even long-form essays to contribute to the vital task of raising consciousness. If you tremble with indignation at every injustice (to borrow from Che), and if you are willing and able to ruthlessly expose the injustices you observe, then you can write for a mass audience.
We’ve prepared step-by-step guides for potential contributors, outlining how to write Communist agitation and propaganda, as well as on-the-ground struggle reports, for a mass political newspaper, further on in this Contributor’s Guide (at the bottom of this page).
What is Unity–Struggle–Unity?
Unity–Struggle–Unity (USU) is a new Marxist-Leninist press (est. July 2022), focused on contributing to the advancement of the Communist movement in North America.
While the press is Marxist-Leninist, we welcome contributions from all revolutionary socialists, regardless of declared ideology, tendency, and organizational affiliation (or lack thereof). That said, we will not accept contributions from known reactionaries, regardless of political self-description.
We must clarify that USU Press is not a party, nor any type of cadre organization. The press is democratically run by a small team, which constitutes the General Committee (GC) and elects our three-person Editorial Board (EB) on a rotating basis. Any comrade willing to consistently commit labor to the project (only according to each comrade’s ability) can “join” the team, and thus the GC, after getting approved by a vote of the GC. Because USU Press is not a cadre organization, comrades holding membership in any revolutionary organization, as well as unaffiliated comrades, can “join” the project. We also reserve GC seats for representatives of USU-affiliated organizations, appointed by those organizations.
We recognize as Marxist-Leninists that in order to advance our movement to its next stage, we must unite the Communist movement in North America, and that “unity” must entail the organization of revolutionaries into the refounded Communist Party. But we cannot lay the groundwork for Communist unity merely by forming yet another “party.” This approach has been tried countless times, and every time has failed; it’s a dead-end. What is now really needed is not more “parties,” but a forum, a commons, capable of serving as a “political center” for the best elements of our movement. This is the purpose of the Unity–Struggle–Unity project: We hope that USU Press, by serving to facilitate a political center, can contribute to preparing the groundwork for the refoundation of the Communist Party.
To this end, we plan to launch a diversity of publications, corresponding to the diverse tasks and needs of the U.S. Communist movement. We’re starting with a small team of dedicated comrades, but we have big plans for the future. If you’d like to read more about the Unity–Struggle–Unity project and our planned future publications, as well as our (very abridged) analysis of the present-day U.S. Communist movement, please read our Statement of Intent and Detailed Prospectus.
What is the Red Clarion?
The Red Clarion is our mass political newspaper. The Clarion will mainly feature agitation and propaganda on all matters relevant to the present-day, reawakening revolutionary movement within and against the U.S. Empire and its junior-partner Canada. This will include analysis of ongoing and historical struggles and social issues, both on the North American continent and around the globe; coverage of struggles unfolding in particular localities and regions will be connected with analyses of the relevant contradictions in their broad scope. Additionally, the Clarion will feature occasional “variety” content, such as analysis of popular media, literature, sports, etc., not immediately pertaining to the revolutionary movement, from a “proletarian culture” perspective.
What do we mean by a mass newspaper? We can explain our concept by presenting three essential features:
First, intended audience and literary style. The Red Clarion will be aimed at the broadest possible audience of struggling oppressed masses. This means that articles in the Clarion should be written with maximal accessibility and approachability in mind. Articles for the Clarion should employ ordinary language, rather than specialized discourse, introducing technical terminology where appropriate. That said, we must not condescend. We must regard the working and dispossessed masses as our equals, as a collective revolutionary subject in potentia, whose ideas must be heard, whose criticisms must be taken into account, and whose trust must be earned. We should write for the masses as we’d write for our past selves, before we became Communists.
Second, scope. A mass newspaper will serve to “stitch together” the myriad struggles carrying on across North America into a single revolutionary movement by consciously connecting local struggles at the regional level, regional struggles at the continental or all-empire level, and all-empire struggles at the global level. The point is not to ignore local struggles, but to recontextualize localities as cells in a greater, collective body. Furthermore, by demonstrating that Communism is the movement singularly capable of uniting and carrying forward, under one red banner, the whole diversity of progressive struggles, by transcending the characteristic single-issue narrowness that hinders most progressive causes, we can draw isolated contingents of the revolutionary Left closer to Communism and build the forces not only of this or that struggle, but of the whole revolutionary movement.
Third, prioritization of “mass” political content. The goal of a mass political newspaper is to raise consciousness by communicating and disseminating Communist ideas among the people, and by connecting Communist ideas to the real, tangible facts of daily life. Therefore, topics for Red Clarion articles should be chosen in accordance with the real tasks of raising consciousness and heightening militant activity, and should correspond to the real needs and desires of the oppressed masses we’re serving: What problems of daily life are the masses struggling with now? What specific injustices and general aspects of oppression (i.e., “which contradictions?”) are most acutely affecting the masses at this moment? What will the masses benefit from learning?
Now that we’ve discussed our concept of a mass political newspaper, it’s worth clarifying what a mass political newspaper is not.
Put bluntly, Communists spend too much time talking to each other (and past each other), and not enough time talking to the masses. The goal of a mass political newspaper is not to impress our fellow Communists with poeticism and esotericism; the goal is not to hold irrelevant virtual symposiums on our niche blogs; the goal is not to sell each other our party newspapers, as if we were trading collectable cards. Early on, our team decided that we needed to prioritize Communist literature aimed at the conscious masses generally, rather than set up yet another “blog,” written by Marxists, for other Marxists. As we develop, future USU Press publications will be dedicated to specialized discourse around the Communist movement in North America and to the theoretical advancement of Marxism-Leninism in North America — a monthly magazine and a quarterly theoretical journal, respectively. But our first priority must be to further integrate the movement with the masses, and this demands a newspaper for the masses generally, not a magazine for the perusal of our fellow Marxists.
The purpose of a mass political newspaper also isn’t to provide comprehensive education in revolutionary theory to the masses. This is a critical task, but one beyond the scope of a newspaper. As such, the Red Clarion will not feature long-form theoretical essays; this is simply not its purpose. Instead, propaganda written for the Red Clarion should take the form of concrete, straightforward analysis; a mass propaganda article should focus on a specific issue and explain that issue in its general scope. While mass propaganda should touch upon deeper theoretical aspects, it should do so without inundating the reader in abstract advanced theory. In time, we plan for USU Press to launch a “Popularized Theory Pamphlets” series, which will provide our comrades with accessible and “modern” teaching materials when (for example) organizing study circles. But the Red Clarion will serve as a dedicated mass political newspaper — nothing more, nothing less.
Why are conditions right for a mass political newspaper?
The people need a press! The oppressed masses are rising every day in consciousness and militant activity. Meanwhile, the Communist movement in North America is, at long last, well on the road to recovery; every day, new revolutionaries step up and our forces grow. Moreover, every day our work integrates us ever more closely with the spontaneous struggles of the masses, largely because, in the past few years, especially in the aftermath of the Summer 2020 Uprisings and throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, our movement’s prevailing tactics have shifted to initiatives meant to directly address the needs of the most oppressed contingents of the masses — most often labeled “mutual aid.”
Some have dismissed these initiatives as “red charity,” carried out by local formations that resemble low-budget liberal NGOs. After all, any organization, representing any politics, can distribute food, water, and other essentials to the poor, for any reason; churches, mosques, and liberal NGOs all do so, more consistently and with far greater resources than we can possibly manage for the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, our present “mutual aid” initiatives serve only a small number of people for an afternoon, maybe one or two afternoons per week; this is not serving “the people” as a mass. While these criticisms are not altogether incorrect, they typically fail to acknowledge that this recent proliferation of “red charity” initiatives across the U.S. Empire objectively represents a qualitative leap over the tactics that prevailed in our movement only a few years ago (e.g., ineffectual local protest mobilization), because these initiatives, however flawed, have served to integrate the Communist movement with the various spontaneous struggles of the masses — one “mutual aid” program and one small, local, hard-won victory at a time. In many localities across the U.S. Empire, local Communist formations have already developed relationships with certain oppressed communities through their “mutual aid” initiatives. Furthermore, our analysis must not be limited to mere appearances, but look further and deeper, to the potentialities now developing with regard to the longest-term tasks of the Communist movement. In our view, these various initiatives, under whatever labels, possess the rudimentary features of Serve the People work. This is immensely promising, because serving the people is the elementary stage of building towards a “dual power” situation.
Therefore, the question for us is this: How do we transform “mutual aid” or “red charity” into real Serve the People programs? Or, phrased another way, what sets Serve the People programs apart from mere charity, and how do we bridge the gap?
Serving the people, in the Communist sense, is necessarily a political task, with political content, serving political aims. Serving the people means inculcating their spontaneous struggles with revolutionary consciousness; it means heightening militancy, drawing the masses into the Communist movement and elevating the oppressed masses to conscious agents of their own emancipation. This task starts with meeting the people where they’re at and doing our best to fill deficits in their basic needs, but serving the people doesn’t end there. We must elevate the struggles carrying on in our localities from a series of geographically isolated, narrow, and mostly depoliticized activities to conscious political tactics. Setting up a food distribution table is only the first step — we must organize mass meetings! Defending a houseless encampment is a brave act and a great start, but we must prepare the unhoused masses for the task of community self-defense! And the way to get from passivity to activity, from “doing unto” to struggling alongside, is to raise consciousness; militancy heightens consciousness, and vice-versa.
That’s where the Red Clarion fits in. A mass political newspaper is the tried-and-tested vehicle — proven by a century and more of revolutionary experience on every continent, including North America — for disseminating Communist ideas among the oppressed masses, for raising class consciousness, and for stitching together every progressive struggle, not only at the local level, but at the level of the whole country (in our case, the U.S. Empire and Canada), into a unified revolutionary movement.
How should the Red Clarion be distributed?
Here’s a hint: Not by selling it to random strangers!
While a mass political newspaper is, as we said, the most exhaustively proven vehicle of consciousness-raising work, none of us are so naive as to believe that “selling newspapers” (or handing them out for free) as an isolated act is sufficient to raise consciousness. In fact, just as it is an error to believe that “red charity” initiatives can stand as self-sufficient Communist tactics, we regard it as an error to think of newspaper distribution as a tactic in and of itself. Some Marxist tendencies have become infamous for “selling newspapers” and doing literally nothing else. It is, however, obvious, at least to most Marxists in the U.S., that standing on a street corner and pushing your organization’s literature into the hands of anyone who will stop for a few seconds is, to say the least, ineffective — really, it’s foolish and deeply amateurish. So, what’s the alternative?
Our vision is quite different. In our view, the mass newspaper, insofar as it is a specific (and potentially very effective) tool for raising consciousness, is merely a critical element of a diversity of revolutionary tactics, rather than the tactic itself.
So, the question is, what tactics?
Every vehicle needs a suitable “road,” so to speak. Otherwise, no matter how “effective” the vehicle might be in the abstract, in practice, it won’t go anywhere.
The “road” that facilitates all consciousness-raising work, regardless of the tools utilized, is organizing. This idea is pretty straightforward: When we organize in workplaces, trade and labor unions, tenants councils, community centers, houseless encampments, local campaigns for progressive causes, local elections, mass demonstrations, etc. — in sum, when we go to the masses, meet them where they’re at, and organize and struggle alongside them, where they stand — that opens opportunities to propagate Communist ideas. In the context of our present-day movement, in which we are only very thinly and tenuously integrated with the industrial labor struggle, in which Communists seldom participate in elections (at any level, in any really militant way), and in which we still have only occasional footholds in mass progressive causes, the “roads” for “classic” newspaper dissemination (and consciousness-raising work generally) are mostly closed to us.
However, in the past few years, the paradigm shift towards so-called “red charity” has opened a relatively “new” road, which (for simplicity’s sake) we’ll call the Red Aid station.
In its essence, the Red Aid station consists of a handful of cadres manning a table, set up in a public place, for the purpose of distributing some essential articles (food, clothing, etc.) to the desperately poor. A typical location for a Red Aid station is a public park adjacent to or nearby a houseless encampment. By consistently serving an oppressed community in a specific locality, cadres in a local formation or a branch of an all-empire organization can build a rapport with community members and earn a good reputation among the masses generally — while simultaneously drawing the ire of local bourgeois and propertied-settler interests. Wherever Communists have established such ties with an oppressed community, wherever we have earned credibility through Red Aid work, we have an opportunity and a duty to propagate Communist ideas, to raise consciousness, to heighten militancy, to prove our leadership in the course of struggles against reactionary local forces, and to thereby consolidate “base areas” in local oppressed communities for the Communist movement. As we said, this politicization of our Red Aid work is what’s needed in order to transform so-called “red charity” into Serve the People programs.
But this is still a bit abstract. To make our point really concrete, picture this scenario: A local Red Aid station, set up by a local Communist formation, has been distributing meals in a park, two days per week, for several months. The cadres involved have gotten to know plenty of folks in the local unhoused community, who were initially drawn to the Red Aid station for a hot lunch and a coffee. (It may not occur to most comrades, but from personal experience, I can attest to just how difficult it is to get your hands on a comfort as simple as a cup of coffee when you’re houseless.)
The local home-owners association and certain small business owners have petitioned, so far unsuccessfully, to get the Red Aid station banned, which has only served to make it more popular with the sub-proletarian masses. But now, comrades in the local formation are beginning to consider the long-term efficacy of their work: “Yes, we’re feeding people, and that means the world, but what long-term difference are we making? Are we really building Communism?”
All that’s needed in a situation like this, a situation that one can find in hundreds of towns and neighborhoods across the U.S. Empire, is to add one critical element to an already successful initiative: distribution of Communist literature. This could mean book-sharing, leafleting, reproducing classic texts, or, as we propose, printing and distributing a mass political newspaper.
Again, concretely speaking, this means placing a stack of Communist newspapers, as well as stacks of leaflets, books, pamphlets, etc., on your Red Aid station table, right next to the hot meals, water, coffee, clothes, etc., and enthusiastically offering free literature — we cannot stress enough that Communist literature should always be made freely available to the poor — to the people you’re serving. If you’ve established a rapport with and earned the trust of the oppressed masses in your locality, then chances are that most community members will accept your literature and at least look it over. Not everyone will accept, and not everyone who accepts will read, and not everyone who reads will read the next newspaper issue, leaflet, pamphlet, etc., and while that can be disappointing at times, it’s really no reason to become discouraged or to lose our revolutionary optimism. For the Communist movement to advance, we don’t need every individual worker and poor person to become a Communist. We “only” need to integrate the Communist movement with the spontaneous struggles of the masses.
To reiterate, just pushing a newspaper into the hands of a worker or poor person is not doing the work of disseminating Communist ideas. Building credibility and a rapport with the masses means speaking with the masses. This may sound obvious, but it is clearly not so obvious to certain Marxists, who seem to believe that once another newspaper has changed hands, another Communist has been created, or at least seeded. A mass political newspaper may be a “seed” of Communism, but seeds must be watered, given sunlight, defended from parasites, and otherwise nurtured. In other words, distributing the Red Clarion cannot end with merely handing it out. The Red Clarion should serve as a gateway to fuller conversations of Communism with the conscious masses, and, in good time, to the organization of mass political education.
On this last point, it’s worth noting that Communist movements have historically begun with study circles and reading groups. Our primary task among the people is to unite the actively struggling elements of the masses with a revolutionary consciousness, which is achieved by mass political education. Although, as we said, a mass political newspaper like the Red Clarion cannot provide this education on its own — this is a task for a different toolset, namely popularized theoretical materials, to be utilized in a different variety of tactics, namely education programs — distribution of the newspaper, coupled with consistent engagement with the masses in conversations on its revolutionary content, can serve as a first step toward drawing the relatively advanced masses into mass political education programs. The first step is to instill a movement consciousness, a class consciousness — that is, a consciousness not merely of the necessity of struggle in the here and now, which the relatively advanced masses already possess, and which drives their spontaneous activity, but of the need to heighten the militancy of their struggles by integrating with the revolutionary movement and struggling as a class. Ultimately, this is how we induct new revolutionaries into the Communist movement and replenish and expand our forces.
What are the advantages of a mass political newspaper?
We encourage our comrades to combine all of the above tools of consciousness-raising work — local-issue leaflets, reproduced classics, pamphlets, etc. — in addition to a mass political newspaper. But we believe that the mass political newspaper format has certain advantages that, when combined, give it centrality. This speaks to why we’re prioritizing the Red Clarion as the first USU Press publication: because we believe that a mass political newspaper should be the central element of any Red Aid-integrated literature distribution efforts. The advantages of the mass political newspaper format not only give priority to this element, but can also serve to augment every other element.
For one, the mass political newspaper has the advantage, over classic Marxist texts, of providing up-to-date “news and analysis” (agitation and propaganda). The classics are classics for a reason, namely that they’re profound and, in a certain sense, even “timeless.” But republishing the classics can’t be a substitute for doing the work of writing literature for our own situation, to suit the needs of our present-day movement. The classics were written in different historical contexts, for different mass and revolutionary audiences, in different “tones” than are common in 21st-Century North America, even though for essentially the same purpose — to advance Communism. Some are more approachable and dense, some less, but this is beside the point: We must meet the masses where they are, not where we, the revolutionaries, are, and not where we wish the masses to be.
Moreover, the work of writing propaganda and agitation for a mass audience compels us, as Communists, to rededicate ourselves to studying revolutionary theory and history; this work therefore has the potential not only to raise the consciousness of the masses, but also to elevate our theoretical work, and to thereby ideologically advance our movement. In other words, as we elevate our struggle among the masses, as we bring political discipline and political education to the people, so too do we increase our own knowledge and discipline.
For another, the mass newspaper has the advantage, over local-issue leafleting, of consciously connecting the ongoing struggles in one locality to every struggle in every locality across the whole U.S. Empire, and thereby to all problems of the revolutionary movement in their general scope — not merely by giving a nod to the larger context, but by actually reporting on and analyzing it for a mass audience. To quote Lenin,
The type of agitation which has hitherto prevailed almost without exception — agitation by means of locally published leaflets — is now inadequate; it is narrow, it deals only with local and mainly economic questions. We must try to create a higher form of agitation by means of the newspaper, which must contain a regular record of workers’ grievances, workers’ strikes, and other forms of proletarian struggle, as well as all manifestations of political tyranny in the whole of Russia; which must draw definite conclusions from each of these manifestations in accordance with the ultimate aim of socialism and the political tasks of the Russian proletariat.
Draft of a Declaration of the Editorial Board of Iskra and Zarya, 1900, Lenin Collected Works, vol. 4, Progress Publishers (Moscow: 1964), p. 320-330.
While Lenin was dealing with the Communist movement in the Russian Empire, the same advantages he outlined — the power of the mass newspaper to elevate agitational work from the purely economic to the political, and to form connections between a diversity of struggles, in the broadest possible scope — hold true for a mass political newspaper in the 21st-Century U.S. Empire. But there’s no reason that the elevation of agitation from locally-confined leaflets to a mass political newspaper should eliminate local agitation; on the contrary, this elevation should integrate local agitation with the mass newspaper.
Finally, the mass political newspaper has the advantage, over pamphlets, books, and other long-form materials, of being far more readily accessible, approachable, and digestible by the oppressed masses generally. Reading a whole book, or even a relatively thin pamphlet, is a substantial commitment on the part of someone who is still unsure and wary of Communism (a commitment that, as Marxists, we may take for granted). But newspaper articles can be read by most people in a single brief sitting, e.g., while eating a meal or taking the bus. Furthermore, the mass propaganda we have in mind for the Red Clarion will be written in plain, ordinary language, and will concern immediate problems of daily life, rather than deeper and more abstract and removed areas of revolutionary theory and history. It is our hope that by introducing workers and poor folks to Communist ideas in the mass political newspaper format, we can open many of them to reading longer-form literature, such as books and pamphlets — both the Marxist “classics” and, in time, our own substantive contributions to Marxism.
How to write agitational articles for the Red Clarion
Step 1. Observe an event in your community, locality, or in a nearby area, especially an injustice committed against the oppressed masses by our enemies, that you believe has the potential to spark outrage and serve as the impetus for heightening revolutionary activity.
Step 2. Gather all the relevant facts concerning the event: Who has been directly and indirectly affected by the injustice? What is the class composition of the community that’s been harmed? Who perpetrated the injustice? And so on.
Step 3. Analyze the situation and determine the nature of the event and the injustice: What are the underlying contradictions at play? What general social problem is this event an instance of? Who stands to benefit from this injustice? How does this injustice pertain to the class struggle? And so on.
Step 4. Formulate a list of definite, clearly stated demands — demands for justice and for popular power — that effectively reframe, in revolutionary socialist terms, the desires of the oppressed masses in the affected community.
Step 5. Work with your comrades, both in your local formation or branch and in other organizations with a local presence, as well as certain reformists who stand as temporary political allies, to plan a definite course of action (e.g., a protest, a mass meeting, etc.) in response to the event. These actions must provide the oppressed masses in the affected community with a means of actively fighting back — not just passively petitioning, but actively and militantly struggling for definite, concrete demands. Effective agitation heightens militancy in order to heighten consciousness, and vice-versa.
Step 6. You’re now ready to write the article. In your article, you’ll need to accomplish the following tasks:
- Describe the events surrounding the injustice.
- Recontextualize this injustice in terms of the class struggle and explain why and against whom it is an injustice.
- Report on the grievances you’ve heard from members of the affected community (for this purpose, anonymously quoting individuals can be very effective) and tie these grievances to the list of concrete popular demands you’ve formulated.
- Issue general calls to the masses, as well as to local activists (not exclusively revolutionaries), to join the actions you’ve planned.
Keep in mind that an agitational article is aimed primarily at the oppressed masses in the affected community, secondarily at the oppressed masses generally, not at your comrades and political allies. As such, agitation needs to directly address the masses, not your fellow revolutionaries and activists.
As a rule, agitation should be published and circulated in the immediate aftermath of the injustice at hand (at most, within a few days), on the eve of or a few days before your planned action. Our policy will be to publish all agitational articles on the Red Clarion section of the USU Press website (https://www.unity-struggle-unity.org/clarion/clarion) as soon as we receive them. However, in order to agitate in the timeliest possible fashion, it may be advisable for your local formation or branch to first circulate the article in print as a leaflet — meaning, to go out leafleting in the affected community, and in your broader locality, to spread local awareness of the injustice and to raise support for your upcoming action — rather than wait for the next issue of the Red Clarion.
We suggest word counts of between 600-1,500 for agitation articles, as this corresponds to a small leaflet. Narrower agitation (in the geographic sense) should prefer the lower end, while broader agitation should prefer the higher end.
How to write propaganda articles for the Red Clarion
Step 1. Identify a definite social issue — any issue — that stands out to you. It might help if you have some personal experience with the problem you’re addressing, but this isn’t necessary; it may also help if you’re actively engaged in organized revolutionary work around this issue in question, as your practical experience will augment your analysis. The issue must be specific enough that concrete (as opposed to abstracted) analysis of it is possible in the space of several hundred to a few thousand words. For example, rather than choosing a very general and vague problem, such as “the oppression of LGBT people,” choose a specific aspect of that oppression and struggle, in the form of a definite issue; for instance, you might write an article analyzing a recent wave of anti-trans legislation in state governments and the struggle of transgender people for basic civil rights.
Step 2. Now identify the contradictions at work, underlying the issue at hand. If we keep to our example of anti-trans legislation, then we might identify the contradiction as one between, on the one hand, various reactionary institutions and movements that serve to maintain the heterosexual social contract in the U.S. by enforcing gender norms (e.g., eugenics, Evangelical Protestantism, collaborationist cis-feminism, etc.) and, on the other hand, transgender people. Go further by considering how these contradictions go from latent to manifest in the course of struggle, and tie the contradictions at play to the greater structure. In our example, consider how the struggle of transgender people for basic civil rights has revealed not only the abysmal conditions suffered by transgender persons in the U.S. Empire, but also, moreover, certain underlying contradictions in the structure of patriarchal oppression itself.
Step 3. Study the history of the issue and struggle you’re writing about and root the present in its historical antecedents. You’ll want to provide readers with some historical background, to show that this isn’t a “new” problem and to foster a sense of continuity between ongoing revolutionary struggles and revolutionary history. At the same time, we don’t want to get lost in history. Taking our example, you might discuss the history of anti-trans laws and of state and institutional violence against transgender persons in the U.S. Empire, as well as the history of the struggle of transgender persons, spontaneous and conscious, anarchistic and organized, reformist and revolutionary, etc., for civil rights. But you don’t need to paint a picture of the dawn of patriarchy, explain at length the origins of bioessentialism in modern medicine, or get sidetracked by a discourse on performativity, etc., in the same article. Remember: Keep it focused.
Step 4. Make the issue tangible by naming both our political enemies and allies. Rebuke the forces of reaction, while also praising the organizations and movements that have taken a leading role in advancing the struggle. In our example, you may want to condemn the anti-trans proposals of various legislators, the actions of certain anti-trans hate groups, etc., while also lauding the work of certain trans advocacy organizations. It’s fine to identify certain reformist forces as our political allies, but only when and insofar as they’re taking (even unintentionally) a conditionally revolutionary role in a given struggle, so long as in doing so we also explain where our politics differ, i.e., the limits of reformism and the need for revolutionary solutions. If applicable, you may briefly polemicize against progressive reformists, as well as reactionary forces within the Left, including, more narrowly, within the U.S. Communist movement, but please keep in mind that the Red Clarion is a mass newspaper, and consider the extent to which such a focused attack will actually bear relevance to the struggling oppressed masses generally. We should never be afraid to reveal controversies within our movement to the masses, but we also need to remember that the masses, quite understandably, might be far less interested in our internal struggles than we’d care to admit.
Step 5. Outline your article, think on it, and then write it, one paragraph, point, or section at a time. Here’s a suggested outline:
- Open your piece with a harsh condemnation of a recent reactionary assault on the oppressed, setting the stage for your analysis.
- Next, discuss the actions planned and already taken by our comrades and political allies, as well as by the oppressed masses themselves, spontaneously, to fight back.
- Move on to your analysis of the issue in general and the contradictions at work, while tying this analysis to the underlying social structure (without getting lost in theoretical abstractions); this is also where you might discuss the issue’s history (again, without getting lost in history).
- Explain that only by abolishing the specific institutions in question, and all existing social relations, can the specific oppression you’re analyzing, and all oppression, be brought to an end.
- Outline the essential points of a revolutionary line and program on the issue at hand; make the problem and its solution politically “real.” Illustrate the social transformations that only a revolution can bring about, and will bring about.
In our example, an article on anti-trans legislation and the struggle for trans civil rights might open with a summary and condemnation of legislation recently passed in state governments across the U.S. Empire (and related legislation). The article would then discuss the ongoing struggle for trans civil rights: the organized Left response, from reformist progressive-liberal LGBT rights organizations to Communists. From there, it would proceed to a discussion of the contradiction itself and explain how transphobia is rooted in the structure of patriarchy. Throughout, the article would also discuss the history of the oppression of transgender people and the struggle for trans rights, both within the U.S. Empire (or North America) and around the world.
Step 6. Conclude your article with revolutionary optimism. It’s likely that the subject of your article is grim, but we cannot lead the conscious masses to despair. Celebrate our heroes and martyrs. Proclaim that we are living through the final epoch of class society; that we are fast approaching the eve of the final revolutions.
We suggest a word count of 1,500-3,000 for most standard propaganda articles, with a preference for the middle of the range. But we can accommodate articles that overshoot this suggestion, and we can serialize exceptionally long pieces, if necessary.
How to write on-the-ground struggle reports for the Red Clarion
The efficacy of a mass political newspaper, in its task of consciously connecting all struggles in all localities across North America and around the world, will be improved by supplementing the standard propaganda and agitation with more straightforward “dispatches” from locally organized comrades. Readers will benefit from becoming aware of local struggles carrying on across the U.S. Empire and beyond its borders, especially when a reader finds that the struggles taking place in their community are taking place in communities just like theirs, and thus begins to see these geographically dispersed local struggles as one and the same.
The “point” of on-the-ground struggle reports is to raise a general awareness of the class struggle — its existence, its continuity, its ubiquity, and its power — among the masses, by informing the masses of specific developments, and by presenting these developments as relatable “news” stories. The “point” is not, however, to “persuade” (not directly), but merely to inform. Dispatches from locally organized comrades need not include recontextualization or direct provocation, as with agitation, nor generalizing analysis, as with propaganda.
Instead, on-the-ground struggle reports should answer five basic questions:
- First, what are the conditions of the oppressed masses in your locality?
- Second, what are locally organized revolutionaries (your formation and comrades in other formations) doing to serve the people?
- Third, what challenges have you encountered in the course of organizing?
- Fourth, what victories and defeats have organized revolutionaries in your locality and the masses you’re struggling alongside experienced?
- Fifth, what differences has your praxis made to strengthening the organization, raising the consciousness, and heightening the militancy of the masses in your locality, and to integrating their struggles with the Communist movement?
On-the-ground struggle reports can really be any length, from a few paragraphs (a few hundred words) describing an initiative or battle, to extensive narratives, chronicling the progression of a struggle over months and years. Again, we can serialize reports that are too long to fit into a single Red Clarion issue.
Concluding words to potential Red Clarion contributors
We hope that this guide has provided clarity concerning what the Red Clarion is and what sorts of contributions we need. We also hope that this guide will serve to dispel some of the apprehensions we commonly hear from comrades regarding propaganda work.
We don’t need ready-made expert propagandists and agitators. We don’t need professorial theoreticians and literary geniuses. We just need comrades who are willing to do the work of going to the masses, conversing with them, hearing them and learning their needs, and propagating Communist ideas to them. If comrades are willing to put in that work, then the task of filling our movement with politically developed cadres, capable of serving as effective propagandists and agitators, is only a matter of practice.
To this end, if you want to contribute, but you don’t know where to start, you’re anxious about your ability to write, or you just want advice, please reach out to the Editorial Board through our contact page. We will happily make time to discuss potential contributions and walk you through the planning, writing, and editing process. We have also provided a submissions form on the website (https://www.unity-struggle-unity.org/clarion/submissions) in order to streamline pitches, if you want to work on the general idea of an article before sending it to us. The Editorial Board can always be reached at USUEditorial@protonmail.com.
A mass political newspaper is just the beginning. It is a clarion call to our comrades: Let us take the next step forward! Let us make the leap from Red Aid charity to really serving the people! Let us activate ourselves by activating the masses! Let us raise consciousness by heightening militancy! Let us unite every progressive struggle under the banner of Communism! Let us advance the Communist movement to its next stage!