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What Is to Be Done?
From Lenin, Vladimir. "What Is to Be Done?" As reproduced in Collected
Works, trans. Nathaniel Knight, vol. 5 (Moscow: 1964), 352-353,
354-355, 369-370, 374-375, 389, 452-453, 464.
Any understanding of what transpired in Russia during
and after 1917 must begin with a study of Vladimir Ilyich Ulianov
(1870-1924), who took the name of Lenin. Russia had a large
revolutionary movement dating back to the mid-1800s, and Lenin adopted
many of its traditions and ideas in his own works. Above all, however,
Lenin was influenced by the writings of Karl Marx, and he attempted to
translate Marx's ideas into a Russian context. In his most important
theoretical work, "What Is to Be Done?" (the
same title as N. Chernyshevsky's
vastly influential 1862 revolutionary novel), Lenin sketched the
specifics of a new Marxist revolutionary party. Lenin's Bolshevik
Party, founded in 1903, adopted the model he outlined.
Criticism
of Menshevik Ideology:
It is no secret that two trends have taken form in the present-day
international Social-Democracy. The conflict between these trends now
flares up in a bright flame, and now dies down and smolders under the
ashes of imposing "truce resolutions." The essence of the "new" trend,
which adopts a "critical" attitude towards "obsolete dogmatic" Marxism,
has been presented clearly enough by Bernstein, and demonstrated by
Millerand. Social-Democracy must change from a party of the social
revolution into a democratic party of social reforms. Bernstein has
surrounded this political demand with a whole battery of symmetrically
arranged "new" arguments and reasonings.
Denied was the possibility of putting Socialism on a scientific basis
and of demonstrating its necessity and inevitability from the point of
view of the materialist conception of history. Denied was the fact of
the growing impoverishment, the process of proletarianisation
and the intensification of capitalist contradictions; the very concept,
"ultimate aim," was declared to be unsound, and the idea of the
dictatorship of the proletariat was completely rejected. Denied was the
antithesis in principle between liberalism and socialism. Denied was
the theory of the class struggle on the grounds that it could not be
applied to a strictly democratic society, governed according to the
will of the majority, etc. Thus, the demand for a decisive turn from
revolutionary Social-Democracy to bourgeois social-reformism was
accompanied by a no less resolute turn towards bourgeois criticism of
all the fundamental ideas of Marxism. . . .
He who does not deliberately close his eyes cannot fail to see that the
new "critical" trend in socialism is nothing more nor less than a new
variety of opportunism. And if we judge people not by the glittering
uniforms they don, not by the high-sounding appellations they give
themselves, but by their actions, and by what they actually advocate,
it will be clear that "freedom of criticism" means freedom for an
opportunistic trend in Social-Democracy, the freedom to convert
Social-Democracy into a democratic party of reform, the freedom to
introduce bourgeois ideas and bourgeois elements into Socialism. . . .
Bolshevik
Revolutionary Ideology:
Without a revolutionary theory there can be no
revolutionary movement. This thought cannot be insisted upon too
strongly at a time when the fashionable preaching of opportunism goes
hand in hand with an infatuation for the narrowest forms of practical
activity. . . .
Our
Party is only in process of formation, its features are only just
becoming outlined, and it is yet far from having settled accounts with
other trends of revolutionary thought, which threaten to divert the
movement from the correct path. . . .
The national tasks of Russian Social-Democracy are such as have never
confronted any other socialist party in the world. . . . The role of
vanguard fighter can be fulfilled only by a party that is guided by the
most advanced theory. . . .
The systematic strikes [of the 1890s in St. Petersburg] represented the
class struggle in embryo, but only in embryo. Taken by themselves,
these strikes were simply trade union struggles, but not yet
Social-Democratic struggles. They marked the awakening antagonisms
between workers and employers, but the workers were not, and could not
be, conscious of the irreconcilable antagonism of their interests to
the whole of the modern political and social system, i.e., theirs was
not yet Social-Democratic consciousness. In this sense, the strikes of
the nineties despite the enormous progress they represented as compared
with [earlier] "revolts," remained a purely spontaneous movement.
We have said that there could not have been Social-Democratic
consciousness among the workers. It could only be brought to them from
without. The history of all countries shows that the working class,
exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union
consciousness, i.e., the conviction that it is necessary to combine in
unions, fight the employers and strive to compel the government to pass
necessary labour
legislation, etc.
The
Intellectual Vanguard of the Revolution (Keepers of Ideology):
The theory of socialism, however, grew out of the
philosophic, historical and economic theories elaborated by educated
representatives of the propertied classes, the intellectuals. By their
social status, the founders of modern scientific socialism, Marx and
Engels, themselves
belonged to the bourgeois intelligentsia. In the very same way, in
Russia, the theoretical doctrine of Social-Democracy arose quite
independently of the spontaneous growth of the working-class movement;
it arose as a natural and inevitable outcome of the development of
thought among the revolutionary socialist intelligentsia. Hence, we had
both the spontaneous awakening of the masses of the workers, the
awakening to conscious life and conscious struggle, and a revolutionary
youth, armed with the Social-Democratic theory, eager to come into
contact with the workers.
Since there can be no talk of an independent ideology formulated by the
working masses themselves in the process of their movement, the only
choice is--either bourgeois or socialist ideology. There is no middle
course (for humanity has not created a "third" ideology, and, moreover,
in a society torn by class antagonisms there can never be a non-class
or above-class ideology). Hence, to belittle the socialist ideology in
any way, to turn away from it in the slightest degree means to
strengthen bourgeois ideology.
Trade
Unionism vs. Professional Revolutionaries (ie
The Party):
The
political struggle of Social-Democracy is far more extensive and
complex than the economic struggle of the workers against the employers
and the government. Similarly (indeed for that reason), the
organization of a revolutionary Social-Democratic party must inevitably
be of a kind different from the organization of the workers designed
for this struggle. A workers' organization must in the first place be a
trade organization; secondly, it must be as broad as possible; and
thirdly, it must be as little clandestine as possible (here, and
further on, of course, I have only autocratic Russia in mind). On the
other hand, the organizations of revolutionaries must consist first,
foremost and mainly of people who make revolutionary activity their
profession (that is why I speak of organizations of revolutionaries,
meaning revolutionary Social-Democrats). In view of this common feature
of the members of such an organization, all distinctions as between
workers and intellectuals, not to speak of distinctions of trade and
profession, in both categories must be obliterated. Such an
organization must of necessity be not too extensive and as secret as
possible. . . .
I assert:
- that no revolutionary movement can endure without a
stable organization of leaders maintaining continuity;
- that the broader the popular mass drawn
spontaneously into the struggle, forming the basis of the movement and
participating in it, the more urgent the need for such an organization,
and the more solid this organization must be (for it is much easier for
demagogues to side track the more backward sections of the masses);
- that such an organization must consist chiefly of
people professionally engaged in revolutionary activity;
- that in an autocratic state, the more we confine
the membership of such an organization to people who are professionally
engaged in revolutionary activity and to have been professionally
trained in the art of combating the political police, the more
difficult will it be to wipe out such an organization, and
- the greater will be the number of people of the
working class and of the other classes of society who will be able to
join the movement and perform active work in it. . . .
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Our worst sin with regard to organization is that by our
amateurishness we have lowered the prestige of revolutionaries in
Russia. A person who is flabby and shaky on questions of theory, who
has a narrow outlook, who pleads the spontaneity of the masses as an
excuse for his own sluggishness, who resembles a trade union secretary
more than a spokesman of the people, who is unable to conceive of a
broad and bold plan that would command the respect even of opponents,
and who is inexperienced and clumsy in his own professional art--the
art of combating the political police--why, such a man is not a
revolutionary but a wretched amateur!
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