Vladimir Lenin: What Is to Be Done - Analysis | Milestone Documents - Milestone Documents

Vladimir Lenin: What Is to Be Done?

( 1902 ) Commentary by Brian Bonhomme, Youngstown State University
  • “The [main] strength of the current movement [for worker liberation] is the awakening of the masses (primarily the industrial proletariat), while its [main] weakness is the insufficiency of consciousness and initiative among revolutionary leaders.” - II: The Spontaneity of the Masses and the Consciousness of Social Democracy
  • “We have said there could not have been social democratic consciousness among the workers. It could be brought [to them] only from outside.… By its own efforts the working class is capable only of working out trade union consciousness—that is, the conviction that it is necessary to combine into unions [in order to] carry on a struggle with the owners, win from the authorities passage of this or that vital law, and so on.” - II: The Spontaneity of the Masses and the Consciousness of Social Democracy
  • “The political struggle of social democracy is much broader and more complex than the economic struggle that pits the workers against their bosses and the authorities. In just the same way (indeed, because of this), the organization of the revolutionary social democratic party must also be of a different sort than the organization of workers.” - IV: The Amateurishness of the Economists and the Organization of Revolutionaries
  • “First of all, the workers must be organized by trade; second, their organizations must be as broad as possible; third, they must be as un-conspiratorial as possible.… In contrast, the organization of revolutionaries must encompass first and foremost people who are revolutionary-activists by trade.” - IV: The Amateurishness of the Economists and the Organization of Revolutionaries
  • “No revolutionary organization can be durable without a stable organization of leaders to preserve continuity.… Such an organization must consist chiefly of persons engaged in revolutionary activity as their profession.” - IV: The Amateurishness of the Economists and the Organization of Revolutionaries
  • “But the concentration of all conspiratorial functions in the hands of the smallest possible number of professional revolutionaries does not at all mean that these few will ‘think for everyone,’ or that the crowd will not take part in the movement. Quite the opposite, the crowd will itself produce these professional revolutionaries.” - IV: The Amateurishness of the Economists and the Organization of Revolutionaries
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Vladimir Lenin (Library of Congress)

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