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Special pages :
The Boycott Tactic
| Author(s) | Leon Trotsky |
|---|---|
| Written | 5 February 1931 |
… I think that you will hardly be able to cast aside the slogan of the revolutionary constituent Cortes. Peasants account for more than 70 percent of Spain's population. How will they understand the slogan "workers' republic"? The Socialists and the republicans, on the one hand, and the priests, on the other, will tell the peasants that the workers want to wrap the peasants around their little fingers and to command them. What will you reply to this? I know of only one reply under the circumstances: we want the workers and peasants to drive out the officials appointed from above and, in general, all the oppressors and their accomplices, and to express their own free will on the basis of universal suffrage. The peasants may be led to the workers' republic, that is, to the dictatorship of the proletariat, in the process of the struggle that will take place for the land, etc. But it is impossible to propose to the peasants a dictatorship of the proletariat as an a priori formula.
… The communists obviously committed an error by failing to take the initiative in the boycott. They alone, at the head of the revolutionary workers, could have given the boycott campaign a bold and militant character. The sentiment for boycott, nevertheless, is clearly very widespread in the opposition parties and is a reflection and symptom of the profound restlessness among the popular masses. The latest dispatches seem to confirm the news that the republicans and Socialists have come out in favour of the boycott. If the communists had vigorously confronted them at the proper time, the republicans and Socialists would have infinitely more difficulty in renouncing this plan for a boycott. In the meantime, Berenguer and his government have bound themselves up very tightly with the March 1 elections. Had the boycott compelled Berenguer to make a retreat of some sort, it would have had formidable consequences in the sense of raising the revolutionary consciousness of the masses, particularly if the leaders of this boycott tactic had been the communists.