What Is to Be Done? (Russian: Что делать? Chto dyelat’?) was a political pamphlet, written by Vladimir Lenin at the end of 1901 and early 1902. The title is inspired by the novel of Nikolai Chernyshevsky with the same name. The piece called for the formation of a revolutionary vanguardist party that would direct the efforts of the working class. Lenin thought that, left to their own devices, workers would be merely satisfied with "trade unionism," and that only a revolutionary party could direct a "scientific" socialist revolution. "The history of all countries shows," he wrote, "that the working class, exclusively by its own efforts, is able to develop only trade-union consciousness," that is, combining into unions, etc. Socialism, however, is the product of the intellectuals.
The piece partly precipitated the split of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. The Bolsheviks became Lenin's revolutionary party, while the Mensheviks preferred to take a more moderate path to liberal government that they hoped might eventually lead to socialist revolution.
Lih interpretation
However, it has recently been argued in a book on the pamphlet by the translator Lars Lih that What Is to be Done? has been widely misinterpreted[1], partly due to mistranslations of key terms used by Lenin.
"Lih also argues that even if we examine the controversial passages in WITBD we misunderstand them if we are not alive to the meanings of the words used. Some of these have been translated in such a way as to confuse or even to draw readers to the opposite of what Lenin’s real views were. Pages and pages of Lih's book therefore are devoted to explaining why and how the word stikhiinyi, when translated as spontaneity, distorts his views; how konspiratsiia does not mean ‘conspiracy’; tred-iunionizm does not mean ‘trade unionism’ and revoliutsioner po professii should not be translated as ‘professional revolutionary.’"[2][1]
References
- Malia, Martin (1994). The Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia, 1917-1991. New York: The Free Press. ISBN 978-0-02-919795-0.
- ^ a b Lih, Lars (2005). Lenin Rediscovered: What is to be Done? in Context. Brill Academic Publishers. ISBN 978-90-04-13120-0.
- ^ Joe Craig, Review – ‘Lenin Rediscovered: What is to be Done? In Context’ by Lars T Lih, Brill Publishers, Leiden & Boston Part 1 The Merger Formula 10 November 2006. http://www.socialistdemocracy.org/Reviews/ReviewLeninRediscoveredPart1.html
External links
- What Is To Be Done?, by V.I. Lenin
- review of Lih's book from Socialist Democracy (Ireland)
- What They Did to What is to be Done?, Hal Draper's classic essay contextualizing WITBD
- Against Substitutionism, A Critique on some questions in Lenin's "What is to be done?"
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