 Original cover | |
| Author | Vladimir Lenin (as N. Lenin) |
|---|---|
| Original title | Что дѣлать? Наболѣвшіе вопросы нашего движенія |
| Language | Russian |
| Published | 1902 |
What Is to Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement[a] is a politicalpamphlet written byVladimir Lenin (credited as N. Lenin) in 1901 and published in March 1902. He previewed the work in a May 1901Iskra article, "Where to Begin", which he called "a skeleton plan to be developed in greater detail in a pamphlet now in preparation for print".[1][2] The title ofWhat Is to Be Done? was taken from an 1863novel of the same name by Russian revolutionaryNikolai Chernyshevsky.
The pamphlet's central focus is the ideological formation of theproletariat.[3]: 30 Lenin argues that theworking class will not become politically advanced simply by fighting economic battles against employers overwages,hours, and the like. To imbue the working class withMarxist principles, he recommends a cadre of dedicated revolutionaries form avanguardpolitical party that can teach Marxism to workers.
The legacy ofWhat Is to Be Done? has been much debated. The ideas put forth in the pamphlet regarding the composition and organization of a successful revolutionary party were said to have precipitated the 1903 split of theRussian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) into theBolshevik ("majority") faction andMenshevik ("minority") faction.[4] Some, including Lenin, claimed that readers ofWhat Is to Be Done? misrepresented its contents to further their own agendas.[5]
Lenin first confronts the so-calledeconomist trend in Russiansocial democracy that followed the line of the German MarxistEduard Bernstein.[3]: 30 Lenin labels Bernstein's positionopportunistic, a point proven (in Lenin's estimation) when FrenchsocialistAlexandre Millerand accepted a cabinet post in his country'sbourgeois government.[6] In response to the economists' demand for freedom of criticism, Lenin asserts thatorthodox Marxists must have the same right to criticize. He emphasizes that in fighting thebourgeoisie, Russian revolutionaries should pay particular attention to theoretical questions, recallingFriedrich Engels' statement that in the struggle for social democracy, the theoretical form of struggle was as important as the political and economic.[7]
Lenin explains that workers will not automatically developclass consciousness as a result of economic conflicts with their employers or through actions like spontaneous strikes and demonstrations.[3]: 30 Instead, professional revolutionaries need to form a political party to advocate Marxist ideas and persuade workers to join the movement for change.[3]: 30 He writes that political understanding requires understanding the entirety of society, not just what happens in the workplace:
Classpolitical consciousness can be brought to the workersonly from without; that is, only from outside the economic struggle, from outside the sphere of relations between workers and employers. The sphere from which alone it is possible to obtain this knowledge is the sphere of relationships (ofall classes and strata) to the state and the government, the sphere of the interrelations betweenall classes.[8]
Reflecting on the wave of strikes in late 19th century Russia, Lenin observes that "the history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own efforts, is able to develop only trade union consciousness"; that is, the conviction that it must combine intounions, petition the government for pro-labor legislation, etc. However, socialist theory in Russia, and elsewhere in Europe, was the product of the "educated representatives of the propertied classes", theintellectuals or "revolutionary socialistintelligentsia".[9] Lenin states thatMarx and Engels themselves, the founders of modernscientific socialism, belonged to this bourgeois intelligentsia.[10]
The ideas expressed inWhat Is to Be Done?, especially regarding the "Concept of The Party" and the need for a core of professional revolutionaries, stirred controversy and contributed to the Bolshevik-Menshevik split in 1903 at the Second Congress of theRSDLP.[11] In a preface to his collectionTwelve Years, published in 1907, Lenin said his arguments inWhat Is to Be Done? were exaggerated and distorted by the Mensheviks; that the pamphlet was "a summary ofIskra tactics andIskra organisational policy in 1901 and 1902. Precisely a 'summary', no more and no less"; and that it was part of the struggle against "the thendominant trend of Economism".[12]
Hal Draper wrote in 1990 that "Leninologists" in theKremlin later treatedWhat Is to Be Done? like it was Lenin's last word on revolutionary organizing, when it was merely an early formulation by him on how a small group of Russian social democrats could begin to build an effective movement, and how vital it was to not focus solely on the economic dimensions of the working-class struggle.[13] Draper also noted that people misread Lenin's views inWITBD on spontaneity vs. conscious organization:
No one in the movement, certainly not Lenin, had any doubts about the important and positive role played by "spontaneity" – spontaneous revolts, struggles, etc.... What Lenin argued against inWITBD and elsewhere was theglorification of spontaneity for its own sake; for what this glorification meant in actuality was a decrying of conscious organizational activity or party work or leadership.... The claim that Lenin washostile to "spontaneous" struggles verges on nonsense. Whenever a Leninologist purports to quote Lenin on this subject, what he really quotes are Lenin's arguments againstrelying only on spontaneity to usher in socialism by some millennial date.[5]
RussianWikisource has original text related to this article:Что делать? Works related toWhat Is to Be Done? at Wikisource
What Shall We Do? public domain audiobook atLibriVox| International | |
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