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World Revolutionary Propaganda Quotes
World Revolutionary Propaganda: A Chicago Study
by
Harold D. Lasswell3 ratings, 2.33 average rating, 2 reviews
World Revolutionary Propaganda Quotes
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“We are not prophets, although we are concerned about the shape of things to come. We cannot gather facts about the future because there are no facts about the future.
How, then, do we proceed? The starting-point is a developmental construction. We set up tentative expectations about the course of history. We use some words to refer to future events, and other words to refer to past events. We treat intervening events as approximations of one pattern or the other.
Such constructions may enter into political propaganda and affect the course of history. Thus the propagandists of Communism declare that the world is passing from "class states" to a "classless" society. Whatever approximates the "classless society," or increases the probability of its appearance, is "revolutionary."
Whatever repeats the pattern of "class states," or strengthens it, is "counter-revolutionary."
As propaganda, developmental constructions are mythology.
But such constructions are not always or not only propaganda. If tentatively and critically held, they are means to the end of orientation.
Hence developmental constructions are related both to method and to myth. And method must evaluate their potential effectiveness as myth. This leads to uncertainty, since uncertainty is inseparable from the consideration of the future.
We have to do with comparative probabilities and not with inevitabilities. Probability is a category of method; inevitability is a tool of myth.”
― World Revolutionary Propaganda: A Chicago Study
How, then, do we proceed? The starting-point is a developmental construction. We set up tentative expectations about the course of history. We use some words to refer to future events, and other words to refer to past events. We treat intervening events as approximations of one pattern or the other.
Such constructions may enter into political propaganda and affect the course of history. Thus the propagandists of Communism declare that the world is passing from "class states" to a "classless" society. Whatever approximates the "classless society," or increases the probability of its appearance, is "revolutionary."
Whatever repeats the pattern of "class states," or strengthens it, is "counter-revolutionary."
As propaganda, developmental constructions are mythology.
But such constructions are not always or not only propaganda. If tentatively and critically held, they are means to the end of orientation.
Hence developmental constructions are related both to method and to myth. And method must evaluate their potential effectiveness as myth. This leads to uncertainty, since uncertainty is inseparable from the consideration of the future.
We have to do with comparative probabilities and not with inevitabilities. Probability is a category of method; inevitability is a tool of myth.”
― World Revolutionary Propaganda: A Chicago Study
