- by Graham Holton
- The Guardian
- Issue #2201
The Sunshine Coast Branch education book club classes on Lenin’s important and influential work, 1902’s What Is to Be Done? have been very rewarding.
Lenin argues that the working class cannot spontaneously develop revolutionary socialist consciousness through economic struggles. It requires a disciplined revolutionary party to provide political leadership and to organise the struggle against capitalism. A successful social transformation requires not only popular discontent but also theory, organisation, and disciplined political leadership.
While the pamphlet was written for the specific conditions of Tsarist Russia in 1901 - 1902, the booklet profoundly influenced revolutionary movements and Communist parties around the world. These parties adopted its organisational principles of Democratic Centralism, disciplined party organisation, emphasis on political education, and combining legal and clandestine forms of struggle where necessary.
In the early chapters Lenin strongly criticises ‘Economism.’ While trade union struggles for higher wages and better conditions are important, by themselves they can only produce ‘trade-union consciousness.’ Workers become trade unionists without challenging the capitalist system.
Lenin’s central argument is that socialist consciousness must be brought to the working class through a revolutionary political organisation that studies Marxist theory and connects everyday grievances with the broader struggle against Capitalism and the state.
Socialist consciousness must be brought to workers ‘from without.’ Lenin advocates a professional organisation of dedicated revolutionaries, a vanguard party. Such a party would coordinate activity, educate workers, maintain secrecy under repression, and provide strategic leadership. Lenin writes on the role of theory: ‘Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.’
He believed a scientifically grounded understanding of society was essential for a successful revolutionary practice. Socialists must expose every form of political oppression – not just workplace exploitation – and campaign for democratic freedoms alongside socialist goals. It is political struggle versus economic struggle.
The pamphlet was written during the final years of Tsarist rule, when socialist organisations operated illegally. It became a foundational text for the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, particularly the Bolshevik faction. After the 1905 Revolution, when political conditions briefly became more open, he argued that the party should recruit thousands of workers and become a genuine mass party.
Because Tsarist Russia was a police state, Lenin argues that full-time, trained revolutionaries were necessary to withstand surveillance, arrests, and infiltration. He proposes that an all-Russian newspaper is more than a publication, as it acts as a collective organiser, linking socialist groups into a unified movement. Lenin’s proposals reflect the realities of operating under an authoritarian regime and were intended to make revolutionary organisation possible under such conditions.
Lenin maintained the core ideas of the booklet: the importance of revolutionary theory; the need for a disciplined political organisation; combining economic and political struggles; and the necessity of national coordination rather than isolated local activism. These tenets remained central to his later One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, The State and Revolution, and Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder.
What Is to Be Done? is a great piece of writing to study; whether members are new or old. From every reading one gets more out of the text. The booklet clearly explains so much about how Communist parties, such as the CPA, developed and why we do what we do.
