Lenin redescubierto: El "¿Qué hacer?" en contexto

Historical Materialism #9

by Lars T. Lih

En un prólogo a la recopilación de sus artículos y folletos escritos en 1895-1905, Lenin se defiende ante las manipulaciones mencheviques respondiendo que «el ¿Qué hacer? rectifica polémicamente el “economicismo”, y sería erróneo examinar su contenido al margen de dicha tarea del folleto». A la hora de enfrentarnos a un libro, y no digamos ya a la obra completa, de una persona, debemos situarla en el conjunto de circunstancias, suposiciones y objetivos que la engloban y nos es ajeno. «Es imposible entender a Lenin solamente leyendo a Lenin», dice Lih, lo cual debería resultar evidente cuando nos paramos un momento a analizar su contexto y vemos por un lado la influencia de la socialdemocracia internacional —especialmente la del SPD alemán— y por otro lado el ascenso revolucionario que vivía Rusia en aquella época, con todas las necesidades de agitación y de disputar la hegemonía del ala de la socialdemocracia rusa que ello conllevaba. Este libro rectifica ese ofuscamiento que nos tienta a leer el ¿Qué hacer? —aunque bien podría servirnos como mantra general para nuestra formación política— aislado de sus determinaciones, como si fuera la receta perfectamente acabada contra realidades tan conflictivas como la espontaneidad o la lucha económica. Lenin escribía para las necesidades de su tiempo, y nosotros deberíamos leer para las del nuestro. El puente entre ambas es frágil, así que guías de viaje como esta son tremendamente valiosas.

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction, Lenin, Philosophy, Theory, Russia

708 pages, Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 2003

Reviews

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing book from start to finish. If you like books that give painstaking analysis to obscure passages from Russian Marxists emigres circa early 1900's, then this is the book for you!!

In all seriousness, this a lucid and scholarly book which brings out the content of what the future Russian Revolution and the revolutionaries who made it were debating all those years; Namely organizational questions.

Lih's book is an attempt to put Lenin on the side of the anti-conspiratorial, democratic, worker-run party who was optimistic about winning the 'battle of democracy' in Autocratic Russia, arguing against those who thought it was either impossible or impractical.

[Jeremy Gong · Rating 5 out of 5]

Life-changing book. Basically a bible of Marxist politics. Additionally, he lays out the context for all the debates preceding and throughout Lenin's "What Is To Be Done?", so that by the time you read Lih's new translation of WITBD, you are able to understand and enjoy every page of it.

[Reid tries to read · Rating 5 out of 5]

A game changer for me

The merger formula
“Anyone reading Lenin's early writings will often run across the formula 'Social Democracy is the merger of socialism and the worker movement’. At one point he describes this formula as 'Karl Kautsky's expression that reproduces the basic ideas of The Communist Manifesto'. In this way, Lenin draws a link between what for him were two foundational books: The Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels (1848) and the Erfurt Programme by Karl Kautsky (1891). So important were these books to the young Lenin that he translated both of them into Russian” (p. 41)

“The logic of the merger narrative is deeply embedded in The Communist Manifesto - or, in any event, Lenin strongly believed this to be the case. The Communist Manifesto states that the Communists 'fight for the attainment of those aims and interests of the working class that lie immediately to hand, but they are also the voice in the present movement of the future of the movement'. This sentence expresses the specifically Marxist road-map to socialism: merging the day-to-day interests that gave rise to the worker movement with the final aim of socialism” (p. 45)

“The five targets subjected to critique in the final section of the Manifesto are not just a random assortment but represent most of the logical possibilities of opposition to the merger strategy… The first target is feudal or reactionary socialists. The merger strategy will not work here because these are the wrong socialists. Their demagogic flirting with the workers covers up a will to dominate the worker movement… In his next target - 'petty-bourgeois socialism' - Marx argues that the merger strategy will fail because it is based on the wrong workers. The interests of the petty bourgeoisie - peasants and shopkeepers - do not lead them toward a viable socialist society but toward a 'reactionary utopia' in which economic independence is based on small individual property…. In the fourth and fifth targets, we see the right workers and the right socialists - but outside the merger, outside the great synthesis. If the worker movement refuses to adopt the revolutionary­ socialist point of view, it becomes mere bourgeois reformism… If the socialists continue to regard the workers as incapable of emancipating themselves, they will dwindle into a set of cranks.” (p. 47)

“(according to Kautskly) the term 'worker movement' used in the merger formula is a technical one with a fairly precise meaning within Social-Democratic discourse. The worker movement is neither the proletariat as a whole, nor is it Social Democracy. It is the militant or fighting proletariat - the section of the proletariat animated by a spirit of organised resistance.” (p. 76)

“over time, there is a tendency for the inner, more aware, circles to expand. Social Democracy becomes a greater and greater portion of the worker movement, while the worker movement becomes a greater and greater portion of the whole proletariat. At the limit, all the circles collapse into one circle of complete awareness.” (p. 77)

“In order for the socialist and the worker movements to become reconciled and to become fused into a single movement, socialism had to break out of the utopian way of thinking. This was the world-historical deed of Marx and Engels. In the Communist Manifesto of 1847 they laid the scientific foundations of a new modern socialism, or, as we say today, of Social Democracy.” (Kautsky)

The importance of political freedom
“The insistence on political freedom was basic not only to Russian but to all Social Democrats: it was what distinguished the political strategy of Marx-based Social Democracy from all other nineteenth-century socialists, revolutionaries and worker-movement activists.” (p. 50)

“The Social-Democratic mission of educating and organising on a national level is crippled at the outset if political freedom is absent. Secret organisations are a highly ineffectual substitute for 'open' ones for purposes of a nation-wide class struggle. The crucial weapon of the socialist press is particularly dependent on political freedom. “ (p. 88)

“Even if the worst came to the worst and the bourgeoisie was to scurry under the skirts of reaction for fear of the workers and to appeal to the power of those elements hostile to itself for protection against the workers - even then the worker party would have no choice but, notwithstanding the bourgeoisie, to continue its agitation for bourgeois freedom, freedom of the press and rights of assembly and association which the bourgeoisie had betrayed. Without these freedoms it will be unable to move freely itself; in this fight it is fighting to establish its own life-element, to obtain the air it needs to breathe.” (Engels)

“Premise Number One is that political freedom is an absolute necessity for Social Democracy. From this premise, it follows that 'in countries where there is only a pretend parliamentary regime, another weighty task falls to the proletariat: the conquest of a genuinely parliamentary regime’ (Kautsky)” (p. 99)

“Premise Number Two is that the people as a whole also have an interest in the political freedom that will protect them from abuse of power” (p. 99)

“Premise Number Three is that the bourgeoisie's interest in political freedom goes down as the proletariat's interest in it goes up” (p. 99)

“The power of these pronouncements does not stem merely from Kautsky's authoritative status. His various opinions are unified and anchored in three ways: by the narrative logic of the merger formula, by the authority of The Communist Manifesto, and by the prestige of actually existing Social Democracy in Germany” (p. 102)

Tactics of social democracy
“The Russian Erfurtians had a vision, squarely based on the SPD model, of an independent worker political party leading the struggle for democratic transformation of Russia” (p. 239)

“The central task for Russian Social Democrats in the immediate period ahead was clear: to consummate the merger, to give the national Social-Democratic Party a flesh-and-bones existence and to turn all energies toward fulfilling the historic task of bringing political freedom to Russia. What this meant in concrete terms can be summarised by the popular triadic formula of organisation, programme, tactics. Organisation: create functioning national party institutions that would be granted enough legitimacy by local organisations to make genuine co-ordination possible. Programme: adopt a precise Social-Democratic programme and clear the way for this programme by criticising prevalent misunderstandings of what Social Democracy was all about. Tactics: continue to galvanise the society-wide onslaught against the autocracy by revealing the worker movement as the front-line fighter for democracy.” (p. 160)

“Terrorism sucked away the Party's best and most energetic forces and distracted it from its basic task: educating the proletariat in the principles of Social Democratism.” (p. 206)

“we do not mean to say that fistfights with the police are the best form of struggle. On the contrary, we have always told the workers that it is in their interest to make the struggle calmer and more controlled and to try to direct all dissatisfaction to the support of the organised struggle of the revolutionary party. But the main source that nourishes revolutionary Social Democracy is precisely this spirit of revolt in the worker masses that, despite the oppression and violence that surround the worker, breaks through from time to time in desperate outbursts. These outbursts awaken to purposive life the widest strata of workers crushed by need and darkness. They disseminate in them the spirit of a noble hatred of the oppressors and the enemies of freedom” (Lenin)

“Erfurtian Social Democrats such as Plekhanov and Lenin also assume that 'life' in the form of the political obstacles experienced by workers in their economic struggle would be an important source of increased class awareness.” (p. 246)

“In his Vademecum, Plekhanov responded that correct leadership could accelerate historical development, using a version of the 'sooner or later' argument: 'The workers know only two things: their own clearly perceived concrete interest and their position among other classes. This also needs to be analysed. Do the workers always know their own interests and their position among other classes? We, the partisans of the materialist view of history, believe the answer is: far from always. We do not doubt that the awareness of people is determined by their social existence. The appearance of new aspects of reality are the cause of a new content of awareness. But this determination of awareness by existence is an entire process that is completed in the course of a more or less extended period. For this reason, the workers do not always know their 'real interests’” (p. 227)

If workers did not immediately or automatically perceive their true interests, then there was a role for what Prokopovich dismissively termed the 'revolutionary bacilli / intellectuals' . This term became something of a catch­ phrase (Lenin alludes to it in WITBD}. Plekhanov's comment brings out the essential disagreement: ‘Mr.[Prokopovich] wants to say that the awareness of the masses always falls behind the development of social relations. This is more or less correct. But the only logical conclusion that follows from this is that the 'revolutionary bacilli' (it makes no difference whether these come from the intelligentsia or the workers) should use all means in their power to ensure that the awareness of the worker falls as little behind the development of the real relations of a given society. The task of the bacilli is precisely this: to further the development of the self-awareness of the proletariat.’ ” (p. 227)

“ 'The final result is that in the whole wide world of political and social life there is not one fact that does not sooner or later call for Social-Democratic intervention. Everything, starting from major political shifts and ending with petty scandals, is transformed into a means of social revolutionary agitation’ As we shall see, Parvus here expresses one of Lenin's key theses in WITBD.” (p. 232)

“the standard Erfurtian vision of the spread of awareness: Social-Democratic organisations should act as the leader/guides and the teachers, as the purposive vanguard (advanced detachment), of the worker masses. The job of these advanced detachments was to bring insight and organisation to the worker movement” (p. 293-294)

“Lenin's use of stikhiinyi in this passage illustrates yet another vernacular connotation of this word: a stikhiinyi explosion is an unplanned, chaotic, sudden, surprising and unstoppably powerful event: ‘We have spoken all the while only of systematic and plan-like preparation, but in no way do we wish to imply by this that the autocracy can fall exclusively from a correctly executed siege or from an organised storming. Such an attitude would be absurd doctrinairism. On the contrary, it is fully possible and historically much more likely that the autocracy will fall under the pressure of one of those stikhiinyi explosions or unexpected political complications that constantly threaten it from all sides. But no political party, unless it falls into adventurism, can base its activity solely on the expectation of such explosions and complications. We must travel along our own path, carrying out our systematic work without deviation, and the less we base our calculations on unexpected occurrences, the greater the possibility that no 'historical turning-point' will catch us flat-footed!’ ” (p. 310-311)

“According to Lenin, Nadezhdin formulated in an insightful way the underlying problem of creating effective national organisations: the national organisations had to be supported by local committees who shared a similar outlook, but the committees obtained a similar outlook only via common nation-wide institutions. But from Iskra's point of view, Nadezhdin's own solution to this dilemma was magical - he called on everyone simply to inoculate themselves with the revolutionary fervour of the middle workers. Much more solid was Iskra's plan, according to which a proto-national institution (such as Iskra itself) created sufficient unity, both ideologically and practically, prior to the creation of central institutions.” (p. 369)

How to spread awareness and the purposive worker
“Lenin asserts that workers are ready to become revolutionary and that proper leadership can make a difference… (he) asserts that the spread of awareness must remain the key goal of the Party not only in times of quiet but also in times of revolutionary excitement.” (p. 337)

“The key figure in the spread of awareness is the purposive worker” (p. 337)

“ awareness is knowledge that guides action while 'purposiveness' is action guided by knowledge. Awareness is not just neutral knowledge, but the kind of knowledge that impels and compels action - the knowledge, for example, of one's historical mission. Purposiveness is a quality of action. When action is controlled by knowledge - by a firm and clear sense of purpose and by a solid grasp of ends and means - it is purposive. Workers can be purposive long before they have socialist awareness. Impelled by their situation to resist their exploiters, the workers first realise that purposive action is even possible, they then realise that only collective action has a chance of success.” (p. 338)

“As Lenin put it in 1899, ‘Strikes are carried out successfully only where the workers are already sufficiently purposive’ ” (p. 338)

“In contrast, awareness is a matter of doctrine, of the teaching of scientific socialism… Social-Democratic awareness is basically a matter of mental outlook. Thus, roughly speaking, purposiveness is a quality of the worker movement and awareness is a quality of socialism. The merger narrative is, therefore, also the story of awareness and purposiveness coming together. To use Kautsky's metaphor from the Erfurt Programme , the purposive workers are the main recruiting ground for Sodal Democracy” (p. 338-339)

“Lenin's views on the role of the purposive worker in Russia, as formulated on the eve of the Iskra period, can be paraphrased as follows: The history of all countries shows that the worker movement always creates purposive workers in great numbers. They learn purposive ways while leading strikes and they naturally go on to become socialists and even theorists of the movement… The purposive workers are an utterly essential link in the spread of awareness. They are the first to hear and to heed the Social-Democratic good news. In turn, they are able to pass it on to the mass of workers who turn to them instinctively as their leaders in the fight against oppression. Without the protective influence of the Social­ Democratic purposive worker, the more backward workers can be led astray by the competing messages of the bourgeois and government elite. Russian Social Democracy must, therefore, take the purposive worker as its principal target audience in all its propaganda and agitation. Under no circumstances should Social Democracy ignore the purposive worker in the hope of appealing to the lower standards of the average worker” (p. 343-344)

“The central point is this: it's not true that the masses will not understand the idea of political struggle. The most backward [samyi seryi] worker will understand this idea, on the following condition: if an agitator or propagandist knows how to approach him in a way that will communicate this idea - knows how to translate it into understandable language while relying on facts well-known to him from everyday life.” (Lenin)
“the economist tendency merely reflected the most immediate demands of the least developed section of the proletariat” (p. 357)

“Lenin inhabits a thoroughly rational political universe, Everybody in it acts for good reasons, on the basis, that is, of the information available to them, Everybody, especially the workers, is strongly motivated to search out information and arguments in order to better understand their true interest, Not everybody has a correct view of their true interest at present, but the teaching brought by the Social Democrats and still more by events will remedy this situation, and that very soon” (p. 397)

“Lenin observes that bourgeois ideology is older, better worked out and more widely disseminated than the rival ideology of the socialists… The workers are not acting irrationally when they rely on bourgeois explanations of social life, if these are the only explanations available to them. The indicated course for the socialists is, therefore, to put all their energy in making sure the workers are provided with a better explanation” (p. 398)

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Since its publication in 2006, Lars T. Lih’s Lenin Rediscovered: What Is to Be Done? in Context has become, alongside Mike McNair’s Revolutionary Strategy , a key text in the so-called Neo-Kautskyist revival. Originating in the Weekly Worker , the newspaper of the Communist Party of Great Britain (Provisional Central Committee), this tendency reclaims the legacy of Second International socialism and critically (and sometimes less critically) reappropriates the work of Karl Kautsky from the condescension of history. While nowadays associated with particular factions and publications on the American and British left (see: Cosmonaut magazine, the Marxist Unity Group, and Prometheus), let it not be forgotten the role the revival played in pre-2020s Jacobin magazine, with Eric Blanc seeming to be the only Jacobinite still playing at being a good orthodox centenarian social democrat. Lih’s work, going beyond even Lenin Rediscovered , plays an important role in thawing Kautsky and Second International Social Democracy from the frozen lake of Cocytus by characterizing Bolshevism and Leninism, not as a principled break from the Marxism of the Second International, but its most consistent and principled representative.

In order to present Lenin as an orthodox Social Democrat, Lih went against what he calls the textbook interpretation of Lenin shared by anti-communist Cold Warriors and Leninists of various stripes. According to this interpretation, the 1902 pamphlet What Is to Be Done? («Что делать?») was the founding document of Bolshevism/Leninism wherein Lenin first worked out a “Party of a New Type.” The textbook Lenin worried that the “spontaneous” working-class movement could only develop trade-union consciousness unless it is directed away from its natural course from without by intellectuals. Implied therein is a paternalist vanguard party tightly controlled by bourgeois professional revolutionaries ruling over the working-class rank-and-file. Lih’s Lenin, by contrast, is neither innovative nor worried about the workers. Instead, this Lenin, an aggressively orthodox Russian Social Democrat, was anything but pessimistic about the workers. Rather than criticize the workers for their spontaneity, this Lenin criticized socialist leadership for lagging behind the “elemental” upsurge of working-class militancy. Rather than What Is to Be Done? (WITBD) being the bedrock of Bolshevism, according to Lih, WITBD was a hastily written polemic against a few opponents left to the dustbin of history. While Lih presents this Lenin more forcefully and thoroughly than anyone else, his Lenin is not a new one. His interpretation of Lenin and Bolshevism has precedent in the scholarship of Hal Draper, John Plamenatz, Robert Tucker, Moira Donald, Henry Reichman, and Neil Harding. 

To describe Lenin’s politics, Lih coins a neologism: Erfurtianism. He defines an Erfurtian as someone who “(a) accepts the SPD party that met at Erfurt as a model in both organisation and activity; (b) accepts the programme adopted by the Erfurt Congress as a model Social-Democratic programme; (c) accepts Kautsky's commentary on the Erfurt Programme as authoritative” (113). Part I of the book is concerned with defining Erfurtianism (i.e. what was taken to be Marxist orthodoxy during the Second International), demonstrating the Erfurtian color to Lenin’s writings leading up to WITBD , and explaining the outlook of Iskra , of which WITBD may be taken as something of a manifesto explicating Iskra -ism. 

Part II looks at the Russian Social Democrats that Lenin defines his position against in WITBD . Lih brings to light the exact articles that brought about the polemicism of WITBD , which have been relatively ignored in the literature. In this way, he is able to bring under the microscope the exact issues under dispute which have been distorted by both later history, but also by Lenin himself who, in his desire to label all his opponents as Economists, stretches their position to fit this label so he can knock them down in one blow. For example, later readers who have only read Lenin, might assume that Rabochaia mysl and Rabochee delo are equally guilty of economism and straying from the Erfurtian Social Democratic mission. However, as Lih points out, Rabochee delo were Erfurtians who disagreed with the Iskra -ists over tactics rather than principles. By comparing the two papers, Lenin was accusing the latter of being guilty of the economism of the former, a position that all parties involved condemned by 1902. These polemical distortions combined with Lenin’s tendency to pick up the terminology of his opponents, according to Lih, is part of what leads to the misunderstandings of the textbook reading of WITBD .

Part III looks at the immediate reality of Russian Social Democracy that informed WITBD , in particular the realities of the underground and how Lenin made its norms explicit. In the last chapter, Lih examines the Bolshevik/Menshevik split, not for its importance to WITBD , but for its role in distorting the typical understanding of a pamphlet that would have been uncontroversial to those on both sides of the divide at the time of its publication. 

At around 800 pages, Lars Lih thoroughly, one might even claim exhaustively, examines the context and assumptions that inform WITBD . To the credit of his arguments, I have yet to see any convincing arguments against his interpretation of WITBD , only special pleading for over a century of misunderstandings and exaggerations brought about by the later split of the Social Democratic movement in 1914. My issues with Lih’s Lenin only arise in later work where he attempts to insist upon absolute continuity and consistency throughout Lenin’s life, but none of that is present here. The Lenin of 1902 was an orthodox Russian Social Democrat. My only issue, however slight, in the picture Lih paints is the omission of his Russian Social Democratic forefathers. In particular, Plekhanov goes almost unremarked upon. Not that an excursion into Plekhanov would change the overall picture of the Erfurtian Lenin, but is a notable omission. 

As regarding Lih’s translation of WITBD , I do not see any decisions I would say are necessarily wrong , but I question if some of them are necessary. While he may be justified in not translating stikhiinost as spontaneity (although for readability, I would have rather he had not left it untranslated), I am less certain if it matters significantly to translate sovlech as divert or “from without.” I would also say that his decision to forgo “working class” for “worker class” is entirely unnecessary and only sounds unnatural. In addition, the decision to not translate Tred-iunionism as “trade unionism” is rather silly. 

When finished with Lenin Rediscovered , I found myself asking what is the relevance of What Is to Be Done? today? Marxist-Leninist sects obviously still find it relevant, at least in the textbook sense, of setting out a Party of a New Type. Even those who take Lih’s interpretation, such as the Marxist Unity Group, put both Lenin Rediscovered and What Is to be Done? on their reading lists. What do I think? For one, I agree with Lars Lih that WITBD is not even the summation of Lenin’s views, but a polemic in a particular context in a particular period of Russian Social Democracy that, at most, summarizes a particular set of assumptions of a particular group of people gained from a decade of practical experience. We are not in that particular context in that particular period and we do not have their particular experiences. 

For one thing, we cannot take the naive view of democracy that Social Democrats living in an autocratic society might take. We live in a society that to those very same Social Democrats would have appeared as the most democratic society in the world. And far from being the light and air to socialists, this bourgeois democracy has been one of the largest impediments to workers attaining an awareness of their class position. The later Lenin of State and Revolution , a text where Lenin notably attacks the “pre-renegade” Kautsky, takes this question far more seriously. 

In addition, the Erfurtian merger narrative, wherein workers fighting for their day-to-day interests and socialists fighting for the overcoming of capitalism fuse into the Social Democratic movement, while a true account of the Social Democracy of its day does not and cannot account for our present conditions when socialism and the workers movement has been separated. Unlike the prior separation in the nineteenth century, owing in part to the distrust of the workers by the socialists, this separation is not because the socialists necessarily lack faith in the workers. Rather, the post-war period has seen decades of declassing of the proletariat. Nowadays it is a miracle if workers can even achieve trade-union consciousness. Yes, the merger must be made, but when Lenin wrote WITBD , the merger was already made and the only threat to this merger was that the socialists did not keep pace with the militancy of the workers. In the twenty-first century, we are not playing this catch-up game because there is no working class movement to keep pace with . So, then, what is to be done?

[Reuben Woolley · Rating 4 out of 5]

The dreaded combo of ‘a real slog to read’ and ‘very useful and informative’

[Javier · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting book that, through a well researched and argued case, challenges the (mis)conceptions around Lenin's thought common in academia and political organizations. In addition, it could be interesting if the reader is concerned about the history of russian socialdemocracy at the beginning of the XXth century and the polemics that took place there.

[Jehiel L · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lenin never blamed workers; problems of Social Democracy were always the fault of leaders. Everything Lenin argued must be read with that truth in mind.

[Morgan]

Surrounds a new translation of Lenin's What Is to Be Done? with about as much context as is humanly possible, to demonstrate that almost nobody has understood either the book or its author.

The first chapter provides a powerful reassessment of Kautsky and the Second International in general, introducing the term 'Erfurtianism' to denote the common assumptions of every socialist of the period, from Lenin to Kautsky to Luxemburg. It is easily the most important and most universal part of the book, and is well worth reading on its own. The second chapter proves beyond a doubt that Lenin was an Erfurtian for whom Kautsky was at least as important as Marx and Engels. Chapter eight demonstrates that the 'conspiratorial' proposals of WITBD were nothing more than particularly forceful expressions of the already existing norms of the Russian underground - shared by social-democrats and SRs alike. Chapter nine shows that even the Bolshevik-Menshevik split is completely misunderstood, and that the anti-Lenin polemics at the time - particularly Luxemburg's 'Organizational Questions of Russian Social-Democracy' (often misleadingly titled 'Leninism or Marxism?') - have little to do with Lenin's actual politics anno 1904. These are only some of the most outstanding highlights - every chapter in this book is filled to the brim with peerless insight.

Lih's own summary from the conclusion:

WITBD is a fascinating historical document, but not because it is a pathbreaking new innovation or a charter document of a new type of party. It sums up the aspirations and the practical experience of people who tried to apply a particular set of assumptions to a particular situation. [...]

As we set about the task of rediscovering Lenin’s actual outlook, the terms ‘party of a new type’ and ‘vanguard party’ are actually helpful - but only if they are applied to the SPD as well as the Bolsheviks. The SPD was a vanguard party, first because it defined its own mission as ‘filling up’ the proletariat with the awareness and skills needed to fulfil its own world-historical mission, and second because the SPD developed an innovative panoply of methods for spreading enlightenment and ‘combination’. The term ‘vanguard party’ was not used during this period (I do not believe the term can be found in Lenin’s writings), but ‘vanguard’ was, and this is what people meant by it. Any other definition is historically misleading and confusing.

Ultimately, the vanguard outlook derives from the key Marxist assumption that ‘the emancipation of the working classes must be the work of the working classes themselves’. Sometimes this dictum is viewed as the opposite of the vanguard outlook, but, in actuality, it makes vanguardism almost inevitable. If the proletariat is the only agent capable of introducing socialism, then it must go through some process that will prepare it to carry out that great deed. [...]

Lenin’s political programme thus became: let us build a party as much like the SPD as possible under underground conditions so that we can overthrow the tsar and become even more like the SPD. Achieving political freedom was the centre of this programme. Lenin wanted political freedom because he thought it would bring immeasurable benefit to Russia, to the workers, and to Social Democracy. He gave advice on how to build an effective party in the underground, but the reason he wanted an effective party was to be able to leave behind forever the stifling atmosphere of the underground.

(pp. 555-557)

Reading this book has more effectively than anything else demonstrated to me how easily history can be misinterpreted, and how crucial it is for us to make the effort to truly understand the past, to approach every interpretation of past texts critically, to actually read them rather than rely on secondary accounts. This is doubly true for the socialists of the past, who have been obscured by the combined muddle of bourgeois propaganda and intra-socialist polemics. A lot of work remains to be done before we can look at the history of the socialist movement 'with eyes unclouded'.

[الغازي محمد · Rating 5 out of 5]

gave me a LOT of Headaches (in a good way)

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really refreshing deep dive into an important period of Lenin's thought, argues compellingly that he was committed to adapting European-style Erfurtian revolutionary social democracy to Russia. Many of the polemics it discusses are still debated today, made me wonder about how many debates on the Left are really new and how many are just rehashing older ones. Clarified words that get thrown around a lot but aren't understood well in context like "vanguard," "spontaneity," "substitutionism" etc. I listened on audiobook here and it was really well done: https://cosmonautmag.com/2021/09/audi...

[Jasmine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though I gnashed my teeth through large swathes of this book, I also found it to be very useful. Reading What Is To Be Done? without the intellectual history and historical context Lih provides would likely have been a far less productive experience. This book is too eurocentric and too overly long to recommend broadly. I wish there was a modern accompaniment to What Is To Be Done? that spent a little less time on Kautsky and a little more time looking forward to the ripples of this book and the debates featured within it. Still, for the reader eager to learn about movement building and hoping to turn to theoretical works from 120 years ago to do so, it’s an excellent read. Full review here.

[Soph Nova · Rating 5 out of 5]

This took over a year and a half to finish but I'm glad I pushed through and read the whole thing (including the updated translation of What is To Be Done that makes up the back 1/4 end of the book). So many lessons here from Lih's masterful exegesis of the text, but the biggest one is the one that is at the core and emphasized over and over. Agitate and organize and build power!

[Alek · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lars Lih re-interprets Lenin's What is To Be Done from the perspective of the Second International, rather than reading its eventual betrayal by the German SPD, and Lenin's resistance to this betrayal, back in time, as do most leftists who read this work. Rather than treating the Second International as a doomed and stupid project he takes it seriously on its own terms, which is necessary for this task because it turns out Lenin also took it very very seriously. He also places it properly as a somewhat unimportant polemical text within a specific dispute where specific things deserved emphasis for effect, rather than the founding document of a entire style of organizing. Essentially this corrects the stalinist, trotskyist, and liberal-academic consensus about Lenin's pamphlet, in the process allowing us to reevaluate Lenin from the perspective of the movement he spent most of his life as a part of, prior to the collapse of all of Europe into the violence of WW1. Includes a new translation with annotations.

[Jason Schulman · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you think you understand Lenin, you probably don't, unless you've plowed through this book. Lih's comprehensive research and, in particular, his new translations of heretofore badly translated Russian terms, make it clear that Lenin was not, in 1902 (when Lenin’s pamphlet What Is to Be Done? was published), the elitist-minded reviser of Marxism that he is generally thought to be, nor was Bolshevism an authoritarian political trend prior to the Russian Civil War. For most of his political career Lenin's political beliefs were the same as those of the "pope of Marxism," Karl Kautsky, who claimed that political liberty and democracy were "the light and the air" of the workers' movement; hence, the authoritarian “vanguard party” allegedly outlined in WITBD? did not, and could not, ever exist in real life before the Russian Civil War.

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

all this drama just cause the guy wanted to start a newspaper....

this is an amazing book if you want to understand (early) Lenin, and his roots in the German SPD/Erfurtian tradition. Hefty and painstakingly thorough at 700 pages (+ the new translation of WITBD), it puts the work in context, digging into the polemics, and reevaluating the traditional interpretation of the work that tries to find evidence, often in bad faith, of Lenin's anti-worker, elitist, dictatorial views, when in reality it was often just the opposite. If you can get past Lenin's jerkish tirades, the interpretation is much more favorable (and still relevant, of course).

If you have inclination for a deep dive, this is a great way to understand the theoretical Lenin. Lih is very readable and a pleasure to get through.

[Online-University of-the-Left · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very Good, so far. Includes a new translation of 'What Is To Be Done' and puts everything in historical context. It upgrades Kautsky's role and influence on Lenin.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

Masterpiece of scholarship. One of the best things I’ve ever read.

[Andrew Feist · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really Important history. What Is To Be Done is of course a masterpiece, to study it closely requires understanding the context and the meaning of the terms. This work is a wonderful and thorough explanation of that book. He is not a partisan of Lenin, although he seems to agree. The overall thesis of the book is that What Is To Be Done is less original than a distillation of "Erfurtianism"/Second International Socialist strategy and the lessons of revolutionary-cadres' on the ground in Russia. The best part of this book is dispelling a lot of bogus ideas about the book foreshadowing the bad parts of Stalinism.

What I think the book misses - perhaps outside the scope of the book - is why its so important and relevant. In other words, why the book has been read (out of context!!) across the world. My take is that, beyond Lenin's individual genius, the conditions of Russia Bolshevik party existed in a prolonged revolutionary situation and drew enormous insights into how to navigate this. The tradition in Russia of attempting to overthrow the Tsar goes back decades before Russian Marxism, before WITBD, of course before 1917. Of course Lenin's brother was an anarchist terrorist who was murdered by the Tsarist state. The hatred of the Tsar was so palpable by so many that building a revolutionary organization and hashing out the serious debates of strategy had an extra sense of seriousness and urgency. This comes through clearly in the book WITDB.

Moreover, Lenin is writing 15 years before they came to power. His strict centralism and need for discipline, which Lih accurately depicts as uncontroversial at the time, was a complete reflection of the needs of working is such conditions. In his later works, "Left" Wing Communism, he elaborates the need to limit organization democracy in order to work in illegal circumstances. This became a reality for all socialist organizations in the period of crises when revolution was a real threat. But most of the communists in these countries were unable to adapt to illegal work.

What made the work so much harder in Russia in the early years made the Bolsheviks ready for 1917. Underground work was their bread and butter. The other side of this is that the splits, above all between the Bolshevik and Mensheviks, as well as all the "sectarian squabbles" armed the Russian socialists with a clarity about the lines. While the German Socialists downplayed their internal differences, the Russians exagerated them. That turned out to be important.

All in all, any revoluationary needs to know revolutionary history. Given the enormous influence of the ideas of Lenin and his book (misunderstood as they may have been) and the objective basis of that influence: his genius in leading the October Revolution, this chapter is essential. It proved correct that he knew what needed to be done. And now we need to as well.

[Barry Smirnoff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lih is a political scientist who has written an analysis of V I Lenin’s What Is To Be Done, along with a new translation of the book. His goal is to replace the standard textbook theory that traces a theme of authoritarianism from Lenin to Stalin. While this theory is supported by Trotsky’s and Luxemberg’s criticism of Lenin, Lih demonstrates that Lenin wanted a party that was capable of leading the working class to its most important role, emancipating the itself and the other classes.
The commentary is surgical, going after rival interpretations of the text on a point by point basis. Lih concludes that Lenin was neither a Jacobin nor a a Narodnik Terrorist. He needed professional revolutionaries to write leaflets and newspapers. The “konspiratsiia” characteristic of the party was important because the underground had to avoid getting arrested in order to grow the movement for the overthrow of the autocracy. Tight organization is necessary and the underground must prepare the ground for the transition to a mass workers party like the SPD.
This book is not for the casual reader, as it is 667 pages of commentary and is a political analysis of Russian Social Democracy during the Iskra period. It it is very useful in understanding the evolution of Lenin’s thought, pure Orthodox Marxism.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Throughout this work, Lih demonstrates an immense knowledge of Marxist theory and the history of Marxist movements. In providing the appropriate context of Lenin's 'What Is to Be Done?', alongside a new translation, Lih is able to transform the work, propel it into the modern world, and so much more. Importantly, Lih is only able to do this because of the classic nature of much of Lenin's writing. In restoring lost interpretations, providing new contexts, and making unique points, Lih is able to capture the essence of Lenin's work well and give us a peak into what a work like 'What Is to Be Done?' would feel like today.

Lih paints Lenin as an optimistic figure, filled with confidence about the merits of scientific socialism and the potential of the proletariat. Such optimism is required, and Lih's analysis of Lenin's political character shows us exactly how. Simply essential reading.

[blank · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very exhaustive account of the historical context giving rise to Lenin's WITBD in 1902. I would recommend this work to the inquisitive student of revolutionary theory looking to build organisation. Many of the debates within the RSDWP in this time period will prove to be relevant to contemporary debates about the role of workers and theorists in organisation, and the development of purposiveness, continuity, and organisational longevity in the worker movement. Lih does an excellent job breaking the debates into their respective parts, mincing no pages to except an uncharitable interpretation and breaking down the complexes of both ardent 'Leninists' who may overlook his debt to Kautsky and German Social Democracy and likewise those complexes of followers of Luxemburg and Trotsky or otherwise detractors of Lenin who take an incorrect interpretation of events as authoritative and delegitimising.

[Marc Aura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finally free.

Un bon llibre malgrat algunes qüestions: primer, l'objectiu no queda gaire clar. Lih vol defendre la seua postura de Lenin com a «erfurtià», però davant de qui? Sembla que la seua batalla és contra acadèmics i per tant, tot i parlar que es recolza molt en les fonts militants (cosa que és de veres a mitges) l'aportació i les conclusions estan més a prop del debat entre erudits que no pas d'una aportació genuïna a la lluita de classes (tot i que el llibre hi siga útil). D'altra banda, l'estil és força repetitiu (matxaca una i altra volta el mateix argument) i algunes parts manquen de sentit perquè van adreçades al lector angloparlant i els problemes de traducció de l'obra de Lenin. En darrer lloc, de vegades no queda gaire clar quan és una citació, quan parafraseja Lenin o altres personatges o quan expressa el seu punt de vista, cosa que fa la lectura més enrevesada.

He llegit l'edició castellana d'Ediciones Extáticas (hi ha el pdf debades al seu web).

[Minäpäminä · Rating 3 out of 5]

An extremely thorough study of Lenin's "What Is To Be Done?" in its contemporary context. Basically Lih shows how Lenin was not more of an authoritarian or an elitist than most other revolutionary social democrats of the period and how this is mostly a retrospectively created view, which is surprisingly common (even in academic research on Lenin), considering how unfounded it is. Lih attributes its prevalence to the inability of most western researchers to read Russian and to bother with the (sometimes extremely petty) polemics in which Lenin was replying to with his work. Rosa Luxemburg BTFO!!! Highly recommended for autists.

[Carl · Rating 3 out of 5]

At this point I'm pretty tired of talking about leninism, trotskyism, stalinism, maoism or whatever. I mean, I am a leninist. The contributions lenin (or really an entire generation of marxists) made to the understanding of the class character of the state and the need for a revolutionary process to transcend capitalism have been borne out objectively by history. There are still valuable lessons to apply to the contemporary struggle.

Still, as commandante Chavez always highlighted, we need to build our own path to socialism: a path rooted in the conditions of the 21st century, in the context of our national historicity. We can't paper over the contradictions of our own society or seek to apply a standard formula to the challenge of constructing socialism. Unfortunately, many US (and intl) left formations struggle w/ an actual materialist perspective on the path forward. None of us have all the answers and we need to study the past, but far too many left groups fall into the anti-scientific approach of thinking they can replicate the bolshevik experience.

That's where Lih's book shines: highlighting the granularity and specificity of the bolsheviks tactics in the period from ~1900 to 1917. He dispels many of the myths of the modern leninist movement. There never was (at least until after 1921) a highly centralized Bolshevik organization. The cadre model adopted by the party at a certain point does not mirror the modern cadre based 'democratic' (more typically bureaucratic) centralist organizations. Lih presents an alternative history, rooted in tremendous amount of original research that effectively dispels much of the mythology around Lenin and tactics of of the Russian communists.

This will almost certainly be the last book I read about the 2nd international period (at least for a long time). Socialist need to stop living in the past. We're not going to win the great majority of the popular classes (not narrowly working class in the traditional marxist sense) to a movement if we blather on about Kautsky or the lessons of October or blah blah blah. Sure there are some things to glean here and we should be intellectually curious. But also, socialists need to work on being normal, or at least putting on a face normalcy because riding the dick of some dead revolutionary born in the beylorussian tsarist period is frankly a turn off to most people. It's weird.

US socialist should be thinking about building connections to our own history that will resonate more w/ modern folks. We need to be thinking about new strategies and tactics, not just imitating the past (or more accurately: dubious conceptions of the past). Of course, we don't want to veer into chauvinism. We've got to find the dialectical synthesis. Those historical specificites are what Lih draw out so well.

[dunya · Rating 4 out of 5]

really good book no other comment

[Steven R]

Mind blowing, absolutely essential for understanding WITBD and the Bolsheviks and Lenin more broadly.

[Mary Carpenter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Honestly? Essential reading. Lih's vision of Lenin is one that every western marxist must take into account from now on.

[Tynan Brooks]

I don't agree on every conclusion Lih makes, but he's convincing in arguing that Lenin hardly strayed from the norms of pre-war Social Democracy, however you want to take that conclusion.

[Drew · Rating 5 out of 5]

An extremely in depth work covering the context behind What Is to Be Done along with a new translation. The first 600 pages cover the context and the last 150-200 contain the translation along with some extra context on how and why certain decisions were made in contrast to other translations. The context section covers the debates within the Second International as well as Russian Marxism. It is a long text but I wouldn't say that any of the information was superfluous since so much of it did converge on the "scandalous passages" that can be read and translated in so many ways and rely so much on debates around groups and publications that had become defunct even by the time that WITBD was published. Even if 600 pages of context seems like too much I would still recommend the new translation which is clear, to the point, and explicit in the translation decisions made.

[Sam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolute must-read. What Lenin *really* said (early on, anyway).