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

36V. I. LENINvailing, it is only natural that we should seek to have seriousgrounds for “proclaiming” a slogan which is meaninglessunless the conditions exist which make fighting callsfeasible.If anyone wants to persuade the Social-Democratic proletariatthat the slogan of boycott is a correct one, he mustnot allow himself to be carried away by the mere soundof words that in their time played a great and gloriousrevolutionary role. He must weigh the objective conditionsfor applying such a slogan and realise that to launch itassumes indirectly the existence of conditions making fora sweeping, universal, powerful, and rapid revolutionaryupswing. But in periods such as we are now living in, inperiods of a temporary lull in the revolution, such a conditioncan in no circumstances be indirectly assumed. Itmust be directly and distinctly realised and made clearboth to oneself and to the whole working class. Otherwiseone runs the risk of finding oneself in the position of a personwho uses big words without understanding their truemeaning or who hesitates to speak plainly and call a spadea spade.VThe boycott is one of the finest revolutionary traditionsof the most eventful and heroic period of the Russian revolution.We said above that it is one of our tasks to carefullyguard these traditions in general, to cultivate them,and to purge them of liberal (and opportunist) parasites.We must dwell a little on the analysis of this task in ordercorrectly to define what it implies and to avoid misinterpretationsand misunderstandings that might easily arise.Marxism differs from all other socialist theories in theremarkable way it combines complete scientific sobrietyin the analysis of the objective state of affairs and the objectivecourse of evolution with the most emphatic recognitionof the importance of the revolutionary energy, revolutionarycreative genius, and revolutionary initiativeof the masses—and also, of course, of individuals, groups,organisations, and parties that are able to discover andachieve contact with one or another class. A high apprais-