Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 16 - From Marx to Mao

FACTION OF SUPPORTERS OF OTZOVISM AND GOD-BUILDERS33There you have the best justification of the editorial boardof Proletary, why it had to remove political leaders whospread such ideas among the masses.Get this into your heads, O unjustly removed ones: whenthe conditions of acute and increasing reaction are reallypresent, when the mechanical force of this reaction reallysevers the connection with the masses, makes sufficientlybroad work difficult and weakens the Party, it is then thatthe specific task of the Party becomes to master the parliamentaryweapon of struggle; and that, O unjustly removedones, is not because parliamentary struggle is higher thanany other forms of struggle; no, it is just because it is lowerthan them, lower, for example, than a struggle which drawsinto the mass movement even the armed forces, which givesrise to mass strikes, uprisings, etc. Then why does masteryof the lowest form of struggle become the specific (i.e., distinguishingthe present moment from other moments) task ofthe Party? Because the stronger the mechanical force of reactionand the weaker the connection with the masses, themore immediate becomes the task of preparing the minds of themasses (and not the task of direct action), the more immediatebecomes the task of utilising the methods of propagandaand agitation created by the old regime (and not a directonslaught of the masses against this old regime).IIFor any Marxist who has at all pondered over the philosophyof Marx and Engels, for any Social-Democrat who isat all acquainted with the history of the international socialistmovement, this conversion of one of the lowest forms ofstruggle into the specific weapon of struggle of a specialhistoric moment contains nothing surprising. The anarchistshave absolutely never been able to understand this simplething. Now our otzovists and their removed echoers aretrying to introduce anarchist modes of thought amongRussian Social-Democrats, crying out (like Maximov andCo.) that Proletary is dominated by the theory of “parliamentarismat any price”.To show how stupid and un-Social-Democratic these outcriesof Maximov and Co. are, we shall once more have to