Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 13 - From Marx to Mao

AGAINST BOYCOTT19Secondly, this boycott took place under conditions of asweeping, universal, powerful, and rapid upswing of therevolution.Let us examine the first circumstance. All boycott isa struggle, not within the framework of a given institution,but against its emergence, or, to put it more broadly,against it becoming operative. Therefore, those who, likePlekhanov and many other Mensheviks, opposed the boycotton the general grounds that it was necessary for a Marxistto make use of representative institutions, therebyonly revealed absurd doctrinairism. To argue like thatmeant evading the real issue by repeating self-evidenttruths. Unquestionably, a Marxist should make use of representativeinstitutions. Does that imply that a Marxistcannot, under certain conditions, stand for a struggle notwithin the framework of a given institution but againstthat institution being brought into existence? No, it doesnot, because this general argument applies only to thosecases where there is no room for a struggle to prevent suchan institution from coming into being. The boycott is acontroversial question precisely because it is a questionof whether there is room for a struggle to prevent the emergenceof such institutions. By their arguments againstthe boycott Plekhanov and Co. showed that they failed tounderstand what the question was about.Further. If all boycott is a struggle not within the frameworkof a given institution, but to prevent it from cominginto existence, then the boycott of the Bulygin Duma,apart from everything else, was a struggle to prevent awhole system of institutions of a monarchist-constitutionaltype from coming into existence. The year 1905 clearlyshowed the possibility of direct mass struggle in the shapeof general strikes (the strike wave after the Ninth of January6 ) and mutinies (Potemkin 7 ). The direct revolutionarystruggle of the masses was, therefore, a fact. No less afact, on the other hand, was the law of August 6, whichattempted to switch the movement from the revolutionary(in the most direct and narrow sense of the word) path tothe path of a monarchist constitution. It was objectivelyinevitable that these paths should come into conflict witheach other. There was to be, so to speak, a choice of paths