Lenin rediscovered : what is to be done? in context
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Lenin rediscovered : what is to be done? in context
（Historical materialism book series, 9）
Brill, 2006
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Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. [841]-851) and index
Contents of Works
- What is to be done? : burning questions of our movement / by N. Lenin
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Lenin's What is to Be Done? (1902) has long been seen as the founding document of a 'party of a new type'. For some, it provided a model of 'vanguard party' that was the essence of Bolshevism, for others it manifested Lenin's elitist and manipulatory attitude towards the workers.
This substantial new commentary, based on contemporary Russian- and German-language sources, provides hitherto unavailable contextual information that undermines these views and shows how Lenin's argument rests squarely on an optimistic confidence in the workers' revolutionary inclinations and on his admiration of German Social Democracy in particular. Lenin's outlook cannot be understood, Lih claims here, outside the context of international Social Democracy, the disputes within Russian Social Democracy and the institutions of the revolutionary underground.
The new translation focuses attention on hard-to-translate key terms. This study raises new and unsettling questions about the legacy of Marx, Bolshevism as a historical force, and the course of Soviet history, but, most of all, it will revolutionise the conventional interpretations of Lenin.
Table of Contents
Illustrations, Note on the Text, Glossary, Acknowledgements
COMMENTARY
Introduction
Part I Erfurtianism
1. 'The Merger of Socialism and the Worker Movement'
2. A Russian Erfurtian
3. The Iskra Period
Part II Lenin's Significant Others
4. Russian Foes of Erfurtianism
5. A Feud Within Russian Erfurtianism
6. The Purposive Worker and the Spread of Awareness
Part III The World of What Is to Be Done?
7. Lenin's Erfurtian Drama
8. The Organisational Question: Lenin and the Underground
9. After the Second Congress
Conclusion
Annotations Part One: Section Analysis
Annotations Part Two: Scandalous Passages
TRANSLATION
Note on the Translation
Lenin's What Is to Be Done?
Foreword
Chapter I: Dogmatism and 'Freedom of Criticism'
Chapter II: The Stikhiinost of the Masses and the Purposiveness of Social Democracy
Chapter III: Tred-iunionist Politics and Social-Democratic Politics
Chapter IV: The Artisanal Limitations of the Economists and the Organisation of Revolutionaries
Chapter V: The 'Plan' for an All-Russian Political
Newspaper
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
List of Illustrations
Figure 1.1: Kautsky's Circles of Awareness
Table 2.1: List of Lenin's Programmatic Writings in the 1890s
Table 3.1: Titles in Lenin's Political Agitation Series
by "Nielsen BookData"
