By VALERIO ARCARY*
The messenger must study the audience he is addressing and assess the correlation of forces. This is why many speakers fear speaking first, and rightly so.
“Water washes away everything except gossip.”
“Flattery seeks friends, truth seeks enemies.”
“Ambition is the daughter of pride.”
(Popular Portuguese proverbs)
Determination, confidence, commitment and therefore courage. This is the first and perhaps the most important quality of a socialist speaker.
Confidence will be greater or lesser depending on the speaker's level of preparation. The more he or she masters the content of his or her message, the greater his or her confidence will be. Nothing can replace prior study and research on the topic. Teamwork is the key to a good speech. The quality of the repertoire of the speaker who intends to address a topic determines the respect he or she can expect from the audience. But a team's repertoire is always superior to individual effort. The messenger is a spokesperson and is at the service of the message, not the other way around. Just a spokesperson, no more, no less.
The speaker needs to have confidence in himself and his message. Some great speakers compensate for their lack of self-confidence by the strength of their adherence to the ideas they defend. Others are very confident in themselves, and this confidence compensates for any doubts they may have about the message. But only those who have a serious commitment and mature engagement will find the strength necessary to win in the public debate of ideas. Serious activists do not harbor suspicions, do not insult, do not foster intrigue, and never lie. Revolutionaries are activists of a program, not of themselves.
Vanity should not be underestimated. The narcissistic danger is that the speaker will capitulate to the pressure of only saying what the audience is already predisposed to agree with. It is not uncommon and natural for a young activist to prioritize the pursuit of easy applause. Nor is it rare for even experienced activists to have become addicted to saying only what they know the audience wants to hear.
Dialogue with the audience is essential, but the duty of a socialist speaker is to say what needs to be said: to criticize the common sense that is adaptation to the weight of bourgeois hegemony, to explain that the interests of the ruling class are different from ours, and to point out the path of struggle. There is no unfavorable situation that cannot be changed. To increase the people's confidence in themselves and to demonstrate that there are no invincible enemies.
Some degree of pride is plausible, but it must be balanced by the pressure of teamwork. Socialist activists must be educated in the perception that the applause they receive is applause for the ideas they defend. In the political and social struggle, in the sphere of unions, social movements and parties, all militancy must be teamwork with division of tasks.
The fact that someone is chosen as a spokesperson for a collective, at a given moment, does not authorize the comrade to conclude that he is the “king of the coconut candy”. Those who lose their sense of humility are “clueless” people, that is, immature, with no sense of proportion. Personalism, stardom, therefore, individualism is ridiculous. Sad and pathetic. In the age of social networks, the danger has increased. Activists must be, on a personal level, simple and also discreet about themselves.
Every debate is a challenge. An assembly, whether large or small, is an active subject, a collective subject. It does not just listen to the words that are addressed to it. It examines everything in those who try to convince it of something. It listens to the message and judges the messenger. It supports or disapproves of what is being argued to it. In order to influence the consciousness of the workers present at an assembly, a firm and powerful will that translates into confidence is essential.
In addition to the pressure from the audience, there are also opponents, either physically or ideologically, and sometimes enemies. Not all opponents are enemies. Sectarians consider all those who disagree with their opinions, even the most tactical ones, as enemies. It is essential to differentiate one from the other. The main enemy is always the strength of the ideas of the ruling class.
In popular movements, it is essential to have the clarity to understand that the main enemy is the ruling class that exercises political and ideological hegemony over the entire society, including our social base. Fascist ideas today poison the consciousness of a portion of workers and the people. There is no point in simply mocking the far right. There is no point in insulting Bolsonaro supporters. It is necessary to respond to their arguments. It is unreasonable to assume that it is already clear that they are a fatal danger.
Without determination, the speaker will allow himself to be intimidated. Intimidation is the antechamber of failure. The speaker can only expect provocations from his enemies. He must ignore them or, as a last resort, but only in the extreme, when he cannot even make the intervention, and if the provocations are public and visible to the audience, he must denounce them, asking for the support of the audience so that he can exercise the democratic right to speak.
At the time of the speech, a relationship is established between the speaker. He is the active subject who wants to convince, and the audience, the collective subject. This relationship is necessarily conflictual. Giving a speech is participating in a struggle of ideas that translate, to some extent, different interests. Since it is a struggle, it is obvious that there will be clashes, collisions, disagreements, combat, therefore, struggle, tension, discomfort and, in some way, exhaustion.
Even friendly debates can more or less explicitly question the coherence of one or the other debater. Even experienced speakers feel exhausted at the end of a speech, especially a delicate one. This is normal and human. That is why we should embrace our comrades after they have fought on our behalf. The speaker should know that he is not alone.
The relationship between speaker and assembly is, to a greater or lesser extent, conflictual for many reasons. There are three main ones for a revolutionary speaker. There is no reason to imagine that the audience will all be available, or even very interested in what the speaker is going to say. It is most likely that some of the audience will, at first, be indifferent. There will be a buzz. The greater the authority of the one giving the speech, the greater the probability that those listening will be attentive.
It turns out that most speakers do not yet have the kind of authority that imposes silence on its own. It is therefore essential, first and foremost, to gain the audience's attention. This requires patience and self-confidence, and a great deal of commitment to the importance of the message. Secondly, a socialist speaker must understand that, in most circumstances in which he decides to speak, he will be presenting ideas that partly go against common sense, that contradict the majority mood, at that moment, among those listening to him.
Therefore, most of the audience will not be predisposed to agree with the message. Any speaker, even an inexperienced one, will realize, as soon as he begins to speak, that he will encounter some resistance. He should not let this discourage him. He should not conclude that the aversion is directed against him. Opposition or partial reluctance, greater or lesser, to egalitarian, radical, anti-capitalist ideas is normal. The dominant ideas, in any era, are the ideas of the ruling class.
You must therefore ignore this rejection and accept as natural that a portion of the audience present may be indifferent or even hostile. The challenge is immense, because it involves carrying out, through discourse, an educational process that aims to convince the audience that the opinions they hold are wrong.
Thirdly, the speaker must understand that when we are speaking in public, any man or woman has the right, and rightly so, not to be credulous. Credulity is a privilege of childhood. Adults know that they should not judge people by what they say, but by what they do. Therefore, any and every audience has the right not to believe what we are saying. Why? Because we have all been deceived at some point in our lives.
Growing up means losing our gullibility, learning to be critical, or a little suspicious. And we socialists want the most critical people in our ranks. We want people with their eyes open, people who don't want to be fooled. Of course, just as there is an excess of gullibility, there is also an excess of distrust. Everyone deserves credit until proven otherwise. This is a balanced attitude. However, the speaker should not be discouraged if he detects a certain distrust.
Determination is not to be confused with aggression. No debate is won by shouting, by scandal, or by desperation. The intensity of the speech cannot be achieved by raising the tone of voice alone. Form and content are indivisible, inseparable, they constitute a whole, and the form is at the service of the content. But the form is also content. The content is expressed in the form.
The messenger must study the audience he is addressing and assess the balance of power. This is why many speakers fear speaking first, and rightly so. The advantage of speaking first is that the meeting is not yet tired. The disadvantage is that the degree of exposure makes the activist more vulnerable to a response, especially if he does not have the right to reply. Studying the audience is a complex exercise. It involves assessing the mood, the mood, the preferences of the audience. This assessment should not ignore the balance of power, which may be more favourable or more unfavourable. The balance of power is a proportion of who is in favour or against a proposal or an idea.
Being in the minority at the beginning of a debate is very different from being in the majority. Swimming against the current is a test of fire for any speaker. It is very easy to say only what we already know will correspond to what the majority can agree with. In the consciousness of the masses there is always a mixture, an amalgam, a combination of true and false elements. The average consciousness of the masses is, more often than not, behind in relation to their needs. The art of leadership is to be able to dialogue with the elements of true consciousness present in the masses, in order to deconstruct false consciousness.
The balance of power is an objective fact, a decisive piece of information, external to the speaker's will, something that imposes itself. But it is not immovable, it is not unchangeable. Allowing oneself to be defeated before one's time because the balance of power is unfavorable is fatal. It is not the mood of the majority that should guide the content of a speech. But a correct characterization of the balance of power is essential to define the form. Going against the current is the "tatibate" of socialist militancy.
People enter an assembly with a disposition. But the assembly itself is a catalytic event that can alter the disposition of the majority. An intervention is essentially an attempt to alter the balance of forces that previously existed. This requires determination, the power of a will that believes in the power of ideas. To win, one must have the courage to believe that it is possible to win. The greatness of a socialist speaker rests on three factors: the confidence he has in his program, the confidence he has in the workers, and the confidence in himself.
No one in the workers' and youth movements is obliged to speak in public. It is a division of tasks. No one should feel obliged, because they want to be an activist, to have to face this kind of challenge. This challenge is a choice. It involves overcoming many fears. Some are real fears and others are imaginary.
In public speaking and in any fight, it is impossible to take risks. As they say, life demands courage from us.
* Valerio Arcary is a retired professor of history at the IFSP. Author, among other books, of No one said it would be Easy (boitempo). [https://amzn.to/3OWSRAc]
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