In [the first chapter of *What Is To Be Done?*,](https://www.samsonzhang.com/2021/01/24/the-importance-of-theory-to-revolution-notes-on-lenins-what-is-to-be-done-chapter-1.html) Lenin begins to introduce his theory-centric vision for the shape of Russian Social-Democratic struggle. [In the second chapter](https://www.samsonzhang.com/2021/02/01/the-necessity-of-externally-introduced-consciousness-for-revolutionary-change-notes-on-lenins-what-is-to-be-done-chapter-2.html), Lenin introduced two key concepts for the direction of revolutionary struggle: spontaneity and consciousness, asserting that the task of revolutionary leaders is to instill consciousness and struggle against spontaneity in the working masses.

In the third chapter, Lenin expands on what instilling this consciousness actually looks like, and how a broadened political scope is necessary for developing a Social-Democratic party into the vanguard of a successful revolutionary movement. 

## Economism is Trade-Unionism

Lenin opens the chapter in a very familiar way: by attacking the Russian Social-Democratic publications *Rabocheye Dyelo* and *Rabochaya Mysl* as non-revolutionary Economists, offering readers a review of the Social-Democratic movement's need to go beyond economic struggle.

The fundamental claims of Economism are that "political agitation must follow economic agitation," and economic struggle "is the most widely applicable means" of drawing masses into the political struggle. The job of Social-Democracy is of "lending the economic struggle itself a political character," Lenin quotes *Rabocheye Dyelo*.

Lenin acknowledges the power of practical economic struggle. "As soon as the workers realized that the Social-Democratic study circles desired to, and could, supply them with a new kind of leaflet that told the whole truth about their miserable existence...they began to flood us with correspondence from the factories and workshops," Lenin writes. "In the overwhelming majority of cases these 'leaflets' were in truth a declaration of war, because the exposures served greatly to agitate the workers; they evoked among them common demands for the removal of the most glaring outrages and roused in them a readiness to support the demands with strikes." In this way, Social-Democratc revolutionaries were able to mobilize masses of workers in pursuit of systemic change: factory owners eventually so feared the power of these exposures that they didn't even wait for strikes to begin, Lenin recounts. They conceded to demands as soon as leaflets appeared.

"These exposures could have served...as a beginning and component part of Social-Democratic activity," Lenin says, but on their own they do not constitute Social-Democratic struggle. "The exposures merely dealt with the relations between the workers in a given trade and their employers, and all they achieved was that sellers of labour power learned to sell their 'commodity' on better terms and to fight the purchasers over a purely commerical deal," Lenin writes. "Social-Democracy leads the struggle of the working class, not only for better terms for the sale lf labour-power, but for the abolition of the social system that compels the property-less to sell themselves to the rich."

"Social-Democracy represents the working class, not in its relation to a given group of employers alone, but in its relation to all classes of modern society and to the state as an organized political force," Lenin writes. In order for this political consciousness to be developed in the working class, not only the exposure of specific industries and working conditions but the "political exposure of the autocracy in all its aspects" is necessary as a task of the Social-Democratic movement.

The Economist mission of "lending the economic struggle itself a political character" sounds profound, Lenin writes, but what it means in reality is to restrict the political scope of workers' movements to purely economic struggle: i.e. only trying to improve their own conditions, making no progress towards actually overthrowing the larger system. Social-Democrats who focus all their efforts on economic exposures and condemn struggles of a larger scope, constituting "the overwhelming majority of Russian Social-Democrats...of late," are holding the revolutionary movement back rather than pushing it forwards, Lenin asserts.

"'Economic struggle against the government' is precisely trade-unionist politics, which is still very far from being Social-Democratic politics," Lenin concludes.

## Social-Democrats As Political Educators of the Proletariet

"Why do the Russian workers will manifest little revolutionary activity in response to the brutal treatment of people by the police, the persecution of religious sects, the flogging of peasants, the outrageous censorship, the torture of soldiers, the persecutions of the most innocent cultural undertakings, etc.?" Lenin asks.

To answer that this is because the workers only care for economic struggle is to underestimate workers and place the blame on them rather than on the shortcomings of the Social-Democratic movement, Lenin asserts. "We must blame ourselves, our lagging behind the mass movement, for still being unable to organize sufficiently wide, striking, and rapid exposures of all the shameful outrages."

Spontaneity naturally drives workers to protest, Lenin writes: to construe this drive as something necessary for Social-Democrats to manufacture, that the movement must limit itself to, is to belittle both the revolutionary potential of the workers and the revolutionary task of Russian Social-Democracy. Lenin points to the events of 1901, when Russian workers joined students in street protests. "The spontaneous striving of the workers to defend the students who are being assaulted by the police and the Coassacks surpasses the activity of the Social-Democratic organization!" Lenin exclaims.

Lenin compares Economists who purely stoke economic agitation to terrorists who stoke unrest through random chaos and destruction. Both are blinded by spontaneity and thus are unable to contribute substantively to the larger struggle, Lenin asserts.  About terrorists: "Are there not enough outrages committed in Russian life without special 'excitants' having to be invented? On the other hand, is it not obvious that those who are not, and cannot be, roused to excitement even by Russian tyranny will stand by 'twiddling their thumbs' and watch a handful of terrorists engaged in single combat with the government?" The same questioning is applied to purely economic agitation: economic reason for unrest is more than sufficient without external contribution. Social-Democrats must contribute more to workers than spontaneous agitation.

That "more" is political consciousness, Lenin laid out in chapter 2. "Class political consciousness can be brought to the workers only from without...the sphere of relations between workers and employees," Lenin reminds us. Most contemporary Russian Social-Democratic leaders strive to be "trade-union secretaries" rather than political leaders, Lenin writes: they help workers and comrades expose abuses, laws, and injustices related to factory operations, but they very rarely go beyond this, i.e. educate workers about Russia's economic evolution, broader government injustices, and revolutionary history. What is instead needed is for the Social-Democratic movement to be "*the tribune of the people*, who is able to react to every manifestation of tyranny and oppression, no matter where it appears, no matter what stratum or class of the people it affects."

This is what Lenin means by going beyond purely economic struggle and developing a broader political consciousness in the working class: workers must be educated about all social and political struggles across class and strata lines, not just their own. "In order to become a Social-Democrat, the worker must have a clear picture in his mind of the economic nature and the social and political features of the landlord and the priest, the high state official and the peasant, the student and the vagabond," Lenin writes. "He must understand what interests are reflected by certain institutions and certain lwas and how they are reflected."

The Social-Democratic leader, then, must be "able to generalize all these manifestations and produce a single picture of police violence and capitalist exploitation...to take advantage of every event, however small, in order to set forth *before all* his socialist convictions and his democratic demands, in order to clarify for *all* and everyone the world-historic significance of the struggle for the emancipation of the proletariet."

Under this kind of leadership and education, "the most backward worker will understand, *or will feel*, that the students and the religious sects, the peasantas and the authors are being abused and outraged by those same dark forces that are oppressing and crushing him at every step of his life. Feeling that, he himself will be filled with an irrestible desire to act," Lenin writes. These are the conditions under which workers are able to mobilize en masse not just for trade-union struggles, but for Social-Democratic revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and autocracy, and these are the conditions that Social-Democrats have the task of creating.

## Political Agitation Across Class and Social Lines

The last new point Lenin makes is that, in addition to educating the working class about the conditions and struggles of all other classes under the Russian autocracy, the Social-Democratic party must also directly agitate members of all other classes and social strata in order to serve as the vanguard of the revolutionary movement.

Lenin criticizes contemporary revolutionary leader Aleksandr Martynov's claim that "Social-Democrats cannot simultaneously guide the activities of various opposition strata, we cannot dictate to them a positive program of action." Various groups will march separately in their struggle against the autocracy, Martynov asserts: Social-Democrats cannot represent these groups' immediate interests, and should thus focus on the struggle of the working class.

Lenin links the view of Social-Democrats only standing for the immediate interests of the proletariet, i.e. economic struggle for better working and living conditions, back to Economism and trade-unionism. "*Iskra* [Lenin's publication] is the organ of the revolutionary opposition which exposes the state of affairs in our country, particularly the political state of affairs, insofar as it affects the interests of the most varied strata of the population," Lenin quotes Martynov as writing. "We, however, work and will continue to work for the cause of the working class in close organic contact with the proletarian struggle." Martynov writes this as an attack against Lenin, but Lenin embraces this framing. "*Iskra* desires to *elevate* the trade-unionist politics of the working class...to the level of Social-Democratic politics," Lenin asserts. "*Rabocheye Dyelo*, however, desires to *degrade* Social-Democratic politics to trade-unionist politics."

In earlier stages of the revolutionary struggle, lack of resources provided ample reason to limit activities to economic agitation among the working class, Lenin writes. But now the movement has "sufficient forces to direct our propaganda and agitation among *all* social classes."

"We must arouse in every section of the population that is at all politically conscious a passion for *political* exposure," Lenin references his own 1901 article "Where To Begin". There are many groups who experience the tyranny of the Russian autocracy, who, in part energized by the mobilization of the working masses in protest, are willing to be a part of broader revolutionary unrest, Lenin says. The reason why this unrest has not been present is not for lack of discontent or potential energy, but because there has not been a channel that would lend such energy sufficient force against the "'omnipotent' Russian Government."

The task Social-Democratic parties, then, is to "provide a tribune for the nation-wide exposure of the tsarist government," to harness the discontent of people across all class and social strata, and organize them into a political force for Social-Democratic revolution. "We must train our Social-Democratic practical workers to become political leaders, able to guide all the manifestations of this all-round struggle," Lenin declares, "able at the right time to 'dictate a positive program of action for the aroused students, the discontented Zemstvo [rural peasant governments set up after the abolition of feudalism in 1864] people, the incensed religious sects, the offended elementary schoolteachers, etc., etc."

How can this mass mobilization be achieved? Lenin counters critics' concerns that wide mobilization will weaken the dedication of the movement to the proletarian struggle: the two drive each other, and will only bring more power to the movement, Lenin writes. "[Non-working-class exposers] will come to *us* with their complaints only when they see that these complaints can really have effect, and that we represent a *political force*," Lenin writes. "We Social-Democrats will organize these nation-wide exposures; all questions raised by the agitation will be explained in a consistently Social-Democratic spirit, without any concessions to deliberate or undeliberate distortions of Marxism; the all-round political agitation will be conducted by a party which unites into one inseparable whole the assult on the govnerment in the name of the entire people, the revolutionary training of the proletariet...and the utilization of all its spontaneous conflicts with its exploiters which rouse and bring into our camp increasing numbers of the proletariet."

"Political exposures are as much a declaration of war against the *government* as economic exposures are a declaration of war against the factory owners," Lenin writes. "Political exposures in themselves serve as a powerful instrument for disintegrating the system we oppose, as a means for diverting from the enemy his casual or temporary allies, as a means for spreading hostility and distrust among the permanent partners of the autocracy."

## Social-Democracy as the Vanguard of All Political Struggle

In closing of the chapter, Lenin references a question posed by *Rabocheye Dyelo*: Why have recent Russian events pushed forwards the power of non-Social-Democratic opposition groups rather than increasing the strength of Social-Democracy?[^foreshadowing]

"The reason lies in the fact that we failed to cope with our tasks," Lenin re-emphasizes. "The masses of the workers proved to be more active than we. We lacked adequately trained revolutionary leaders and organizers possessed of a thorough knowledge of the mood prevailing among all the opposition strata and able to head the movement, to turn a spontaneous demonstration into a political one, broaden its political character, etc."

Lenin points to the activity of German Social-Democrats as an example of what the political activity of a vanguard revolutionary party can look like. "Why is there not a single political event in Germany that does not add to the authority and prestige of Social-Democracy? Because Social-Democracy is always found to be in advance of all others in furnishing the most revolutionary appraisal of every given event and in championing every protest against tyranny," Lenin writes. "It intervenes in every sphere and in every question of social and political life; in the matter of Wilhelm's refusal to endorse a bourgeois progressist as city mayor...in the matter of the law against 'obscene' publications and pictures; in the matter of governmental influence on the election of professors, etc., etc. Everywhere the Social-Democrats are found at the forefront, rousing political discontent among all classes."

This is the kind of political force that a Social-Democratic party must create to build a revolutionary movement, not simply leading Russian workers in trade-union struggles.

From a broader lens: Marxism's scientific understandings tell us that the development of capitalism will create the conditions for socialist revolution, but once they are created there is no inevitable progression to socialism. Such conditions can be squandered by the reduction of revolutionary struggles to simply trade-union struggles, as they had in industrial England, with the practical and political force of socialist and democratic ideologies dying out with any parties and movements.

Lenin's assertion, then, is that there is no time to waste; there is no compromising with other Social-Democratic groups who advocate only for limited economic struggle in Russia. Larger-scope political agitation must be struggled for, lest non-Social-Democratic forces take hold and the moment for revolution pass by.

[^foreshadowing]: An assessment that foretells the failed 1905 revolution two years later, in which a liberal parliament was established without the overthrow of the Tsar.

Revolutionary Social-Democracy as the Vanguard of All Democratic Struggle | Notes on Chapter 3 of Lenin's "What Is To Be Done?"

## Spontaneity and Consciousness

Lenin refers to two concepts in this second chapter: spontaneity and consciousness.

Spontaneity is what drives actual working-class protests. Workers unhappy with wages or working conditions strike, destroy machinery, and make demands of their employers.

Consciousness is the realization that change can and must be made at a larger level, not just in isolated cases.

Workers' movements have driven some progress in developing the political consciousness of working class, Lenin writes. In particular, he refers to "the famous St. Petersburg industrial war of 1896," in which more than 15,000 textile workers across different cotton mills were mobilized to strike for shorter work hours and other demands.

Yet there's a limit to the level of consciousness that the working class can achieve on its own -- namely, this limit is "trade union consciousness." Lenin writes that the strikes of the 1890s "were simply trade union struggles, 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." Thus, in terms of Social-Democratic consciousness, the strikes "remained a purely spontaneous movement."

Lenin asserts that this is not just the case for the 1896 St. Petersburg strikes, but of purely working class movements in general. "The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness," he writes.

In contrast, socialist ideology arises not from the working class movement, but necessarily from bourgeois intelligentsia. "The theory of socialism...grew out of philosophic, historicla, and economic theories elaborated by the educated representatives of the propertied classes," Lenin writes. "The theoretical doctrine of Social-Democracy arose altogether independently of the spontaneous growth of the working-class movement."

In addition to agitating for workers' protests to build the mass movement, then, a critical task of Social Democratic organizations and leaders is to connect the working-class movement with intelligentsia-developed Social-Democratic consciousness.

## Socialist and Bourgeois Ideology: The Necessity of Struggling Against Spontaneity

As in the first chapter, Lenin spends much of this second chapter attacking Economists and other Social-Democratic organizations that prioritize spontaneity over politics and theory. Not only is it necessary to go beyond spontaneity; "a fierce struggle against spontaneity" is a necessary component of the Social-Democratic struggle, Lenin writes, with organizations prioritizing spontaneity over consciousness a threat to the entire movement.

The reason for this lies in the fundamental assertion that the interests of the proletariet and bourgeoisie are diametrically opposed. Any ideology that arises in a movement or organization -- i.e. the scope and frame through which the potential for change is assessed and strove for -- is necessarily pulled towards either bourgeois or socialist ideology. "Mankind has not created a 'third' ideology," Lenin writes, "and, moreover, in a society torn by class antagonisms there can never be a non-class or an above-class ideology."

Spontaneous movements develop "along the line of least resistance," Lenin writes. Naturally, then it falls into bourgeois ideology, i.e. the assumption that the owning- and working-classes are necessarily separate and opposed. Thus progress is limited to trade-unionism, i.e. pushing for changes within this class structure without ever thinking of overthrowing it. There is no inherent reason this has to be the case; rather, this assumption is made simply because its underlying structure has been that of society for longer, the systems holding it in place much more thoroughly developed.

Thus, in building a Social-Democratic movement, spontaneity can never be worshipped or prioritized over the struggle for theoretical and political consciousness. Marx argued that capitalistic economic development naturally create the conditions for socialism, but Lenin clarifies that **socialist ideology and consciousness do not naturally arise from this development**. Rather, by default, the working-class movement arising from class struggle tends not towards the overthrow of the class structure, but the strenghtening of the default bourgeois ideology. "The spontaneous working-class movement is trade-unionism....and trade unionism means the ideological enslavement of the workers by the bourgeoisie," Lenin writes.

"The mass movement places before us new theoretical, political, and organizational tasks, far more complicated than those that might have satisfied us in the period before the rise of the mass movement," Lenin writes. He attacks Social-Democratic publications *Rabochaya Mysl* and *Rabocheye Dyelo* for not only ignoring but belittling and denouncing these tasks, claiming that "Politics always obediently follows economics" and attacking Lenin's own publications and organizations.
 
Responding fo *Rabocheye Dyelo*'s attack on Lenin's organizations as "a spirit hovering over the formless chaos," Lenin writes: "What else is the function of Social-Democracy if not to be a 'spirit' that not only hovers over the spontaneous movement, but also *raises* this movement *to the level* of 'its programme'?"

## Parallels to American White Supremacy

Here's where the chapter summary stops and some personal/reading club commentary begins.

In thinking about the application of these concepts to our contemporary society and struggles, issues of race in America come to mind.

Ignoring for a moment the assertion of class struggle being a more fundational structure on which other modes of oppression manifest, the parallels with the struggle for racial liberation are strong. As Lenin characterizes society at large as "torn by class antagonisms," we may say that American society, since its inception as a colony founded on the genocide of its native people, has been "torn by race antagonisms."

As with spontaneous and conscious class struggles, the former of which will not result in structural change but the latter of which does not arise naturally, there are individualistic and systemic understandings of racism, as my friend Izzy Grandic wrote about recently in [a piece on Robin DiAngelo's *White Fragility*](https://izzygrandic.medium.com/were-understanding-society-with-a-microscope-and-it-s-dangerous-fdc406fe98).

Individualistic understandings of racism are spontaneous, triggered by specific events without requiring understanding of any larger system. "When white northerners saw the violence black people — including women and children — endured during the civil rights protests, they were appalled," DiAngelo gives as an example. "These images became the archetypes of racists...racism first needed to be reduced to simple, isolated and extreme acts of prejudice."

But fighting individual racism won't get us anywhere. Like spontaneous working-class protests default towards bourgeois ideologies rather than socialist revolution overthrowing the root of oppression, those who *don't* particularly care to confront racism and their role in perpetuating it take up individualistic interpretations of racism even more happily than activists. It's easy to call out individual cases of racism, denouncing someone here or there to maintain that you yourself are not a racist. This understanding is even turned back on the movement, with declarations of affirmative action and injustice-protesting movements as "reverse racist", attacking any confrontations with race as deviating from the ideology of color-blindness.

What individualistic understandings of racism ignore and deliberately mask, of course, is that racism is not individualistic. It's systemic and societal, cultural and political. Race itself is a construction largely intertwined with white supremacy, its manifestations embedded in every aspect of our culture and society. To deconstruct it requires not individualistic reductions and spontaneous confrontations, but overarching theoretical understandings of race and white supremacy, and movements dedicated to overthrowing the whole system for a radically new order.

The use of individualistic understandings of racism to avoid confrontation with the systemic nature of the problem is not just used by conservatives, but very often by the leaders of American progressivism too. "In one month, we begin to heal," tweeted now-President Joe Biden on December 20, 2020. Though there are many inflictions for America to heal from, it's impossible not to read unrest about racial injustice in 2020 as one of them.

The dominant progressive rhetoric, subtly or otherwise, seems to view the unrest itself as the fracture from which to heal, and not the injustice it rose up in response to. This is indeed the case, if we take no issue with white supremacy! And it's easy to see, with conversation about police defunding and prison abolition having lost its momentum just months after the mass protests of the summer, that spontaneous movements -- or movements taken as such -- will not result in structural change. It's easy to see that, in a society where non-anti-racist ideology means white supremacist ideology, a successful movement must be charged with consciousness of the entire system of white supremacy, rather than only the spontaneous energy of singular events.[^blackpanther]

[^blackpanther]: This isn't to invalidate spontaneity or immediate needs, though. A member of the reading club referenced this quote from Black Panther Party leader Huey Newton:

	> We recognized that in order to bring the people to the level of consciousness where they would seize the time, it would be necessary to serve their interests in survival by developing programs which would help them to meet their daily needs...these programs satisfy the deep needs of the community but they are not solutions to our problem. That is why we call them survival programs, meaning survival pending revolution.

	The conditions for revolution don't necessarily coincide with repressed people needing help. "People don't have the luxury of waiting for revolution," my friend in the reading club puts it.

Working-class Spontaneity and Revolutionary Consciousness: Notes on Chapter 2 of Lenin's "What Is to Be Done?"

At the turn of the 20th century, while Western Europe had industrialized and instituted democratic or constitutional governments, Russian peasants labored as serfs under the rule of an autocratic Tsar. Alexander II abolished serfdom in 1861, but conditions for the newly emancipated Russian peasants were just as bad as before, only with landowning capitalists keeping them in poverty rather than feudal lords.

With the development of Marxist theory and movements in Western Europe in the 19th century, unrest in Russia sprang up in the 60s and 70s, even leading to Alexander II's assassination, but continuous crackdowns suppressed revolutionaries or exiled them from the country.

It's in this context that Lenin, exiled to Western Europe in 1902, wrote *What Is To Be Done?*, a political pamphlet containing the foundations of what would become the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. Three years after the publication of the pamphlet, revolution broke out in Russia, though it failed to unseat the Tsar. Twelve years after that, the February Revolution would successfully topple the Tsardom, and five years later the Bolsheviks established the Soviet Union.

The first chapter of the five-chapter, titled "Dogmatism and the 'Freedom of Criticism'", contains Lenin's "firm and definite lines of demarcation" (p. 11) for the principles of his revolutionary program. In particular, Lenin emphasizes the importance of theory, putting it on an equal level as political and economic fronts of the struggle, and attacking Social-Democrats who ignore theory as opportunists threatening the very existence of the movement.

## Bernsteinism and opportunism

Lenin spends the bulk of the chapter attacking Bernsteinism, a movement advocating for legal reform rather than revolution advanced by German theorist Eduard Bernstein. As Lenin summarizes, this movement asserts that "Social Democracy must change from a party of social revolution into a democratic party of social reforms."

Lenin argues that Bernsteinism is an attack on Marxism itself. Since the publication of the Communist Manifesto in 1848, "an entire generation of the educated classes has been systematically reared for decades on [bourgeois criticism of all the fundamental ideas of Marxism]," Lenin asserts. Bernsteinism demands "a decisive turn from revolutionary Social-Democracy to bourgeois social-reformism," Lenin writes. To be a reformist and still claim to be a Marxist or revolutionary is thus a case of opportunism.

## Freedom of Criticism

Lenin points to a quote from the political paper of the Union of Russian Social-Democrats abroad, which he criticizes for defending reformism and opportunism: "For a durable unity [of Social-Democratic organizations operating abroad], there must be freedom of criticism." The freedom of criticism being advocated for is the criticism of revolution that Bernsteinism calls for, but as earlier, Lenin argues that this criticism is in fact un-Marxist and must be condemned by Social-Democratic organizations and movements.

Further, because these critics still call themselves Marxists -- Lenin quotes the same paper: "the socialist movement...including the most pronounced Bernsteinians, stands on the basis of the class interests of the proletariat and its class struggle for political and economic emancipation" -- advocating for "freedom of criticism" is not, in fact, arguing for constructive discourse and innovation, but rather a shield used to avoid confrontation with theory altogether.

"Those who are really convinced that they have made progress in science would not demand freedom for the new views to continue side by side with the old, but the substitution of the new views for the old," Lenin writes. (p.3)

## Legal criticism and illegal Economism

Lenin calls reformism "legal criticism" and relates it to its counterpart, "illegal Economism." If reformism limits the political and theoretical pursuits of socialist ideals to the legal rather than revolutionary, Economism limits the illegal pursuits of socialist ideals to the economic rather than political and theoretical.

Economism dismisses ideological revolutionary activity in favor of protests only for practical gains, such as higher wages and workers' rights.

"The Bernsteinian and 'critical' trend...demoralized the socialist consciousness by vulgarising Marxism...by declaring the idea of the social revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat to be absurd, by reducing the working-class movement and the class struggle to narrow trade-unionism and to a 'realistic' struggle for petty, gradual reforms," Lenin writes. "The was synonymous with bourgeois democracy's denial of socialism's right to independence and, consequently, of its right to existence."

Lenin again roots his attack in the class struggle. Reformism and Economism concede political and theoretical struggle to bourgeois liberals and "[strive] to convert the nascent working-class movement into an appendage of the liberals," Lenin writes.

What's the big deal with liberal reforms? Why is social revolution necessary? When the actual state of class relations is examined, anything short of social revolution is futile and regressive, Lenin asserts, which becomes clear "after the shooting-down of workers by gendarmes has exposed, for the hundredth and thousandth time, the real nature of the democratic collaboration of classes..." (p. 2)

Here Lenin writes a powerful paragraph I can't help but quote in full:

> We are marching in a compact group along a precipitous and difficult path, firmly holding each other by the hand. We are surrounded on all sides by enemies, and we have to advance almost constantly under their fire. We have combined, by a freely adopted decision, for the purpose of fighting the enemy, and not of retreating into the neighboring marsh, the inhabitants of which, from the very outset, have reproached us with having separated ourselves into an exclusive group and with having chosen the path of struggle instead of the path of conciliation. And now some among us begin to cry out: Let us go into the marsh! And when we begin to shame them, they retort: What backward people you are!! Are you not ashamed to deny us the liberty to invite you to take a better road! Oh yes, gentlemen! You are free not only to invite us, but to go yourselves wherever you will, even into the marsh. In fact, we think that the marsh is your proper place, and we areprepared to render you every assistance to get there. Only let go of our hands, don't clutch at us and don't besmirch the grand word freedom, for we too are "free" to go where we please, free to fight not only against the marsh, but also against those who are turning towards the marsh! (p. 3)

## The necessity and limitations of political alliances

As crucial as it is to defend illegal social revolution and not slip into legal reformism, Lenin acknowledges that political alliances with those with compromising ideologies are necessary. "Not a single political party could exist without such alliances," Lenin asserts. The alliance between revolutionary Social-Democrats and legal Marxists in Russia was what allowed for Marxist ideas to become widespread in an autocratic nation with a heavily censored press. "Only those who are not sure of themselves can fear to enter into temporary alliances even with unreliable people," Lenin says.

In such alliances, though, compromise on principles is unacceptable, and when compromise is proposed a rupture must be made. Lenin cites Marx's ideas in his letter criticizing the Gotha Program (paraphrased by Lenin): "If you must unite...enter into agreements to satisfy the practical aims of the movement, but do not allow any bargaining over principles, do not make theoretical 'concessions'." Lenin gets more specific in his criticism of Bernsteinism: "an essential condition for such an alliance must be the full opportunity for the socialists to reveal to the working class that its interests are diametrically opposed to the interests of the bourgeoisie," Lenin writes, a condition that Bernsteinians and other reformists bury completely.

## The importance of theory: Russia as the next vanguard of international social democracy

"Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement," Lenin asserts.

Lenin closes the first chapter by emphasizing the importance of theory to the movement in general, but especially to Russian Social-Democrats. He presents several paragraphs from recommendations Engel gave to the German working-class movement in 1874, listing three reasons for the importance of theory:

1. The Russian Social-Democratic Party is only beginning to form, its principles unsolidified and countless rival Social-Democratic and non-Social-Democratic trends threatening to knock it off course. A solid theoretical grounding is crucial to prevent cascading mistakes.

2. Successive Social-Democratic movements must look outside country lines and learn from the successes and failures of past organization. The most recently-emerged and successful German Social-Democratic movement, for example, built off of earlier English and French movements. Yet it is not enough to take history at face value. "What is required is the ability to treat these experiences critically and to test them independently," Lenin argues, necessitating a great "reserve of theoretical forces and political (as well as revolutionary) experience." The German Social-Democratic movement was so successful because of the nation's deep theoretical roots, i.e. its philosophical legacy. The Russian revolutionary movements of the 70s was similarly supported by rich revolutionary theory and internationally influential Russian literature. Continuous theoretical effort will be required for current and future Russian Social-Democratic movements to succeed.

3. Russia is in a far more dire condition than English, France, or Germany before it. "The Russian proletariat...will have to fight a monster compared with which an antisocialist law in a constitutional country [i.e. the 1878 German Anti-Socialist Laws] seems but a dwarf. History has now confronted us with an immediate task which is the *most revolutionary* of all the *immediate* tasks confronting the proletariat of any country," Lenin writes. "The fulfillment of this task...would make the Russian proletariat the vanguard of the international revolutionary proletariat," and "the *role of the vanguard fighter can be fulfilled only by a party that is guided by the most advanced theory*," Lenin emphasizes. The Russian Social-Democratic movement will need to draw on all historical and theoretical resources available to drive the international revolutionary movement forwards.

## Conclusion

In this first chapter, Lenin outlines a basic historical analysis of the Russian Social-Democratic movement at hand, and especially emphasizes the importance of theoretical as well as political and economic revolutionary struggle. He attacks Bernsteinism and Economism for threatening to undermine the conditions for successful revolution.

Lenin sets the stage for exploring the three fronts of revolutionary struggle in the coming chapters: theory in the second chapter, "The Spontaneity of the Masses and the Consciousness of the Social-Democrats"; politics in the third chapter, "Trade-unionist Politics and Social-Democratic Politics"; and practical organization in the fourth and fifth chapters, "The Primitiveness of the Economists and the Organization of the Revolutionaries" and "The 'Plan' for an All-Russia Political Newspaper".

The pertinent question at mind is, of course, how do these declarations apply today? What does revolutionary socialism look like today? The Democratic-Socialists of America, of which one member of the book club I organized to read this book in leads a school chapter of, is essentially a force for liberal/progressive politicians, for example. Should legal reform such as this still be condemned as conceding the force of the working-class movement to the bourgeoise, and triple-fronted revolution be pushed for?

"What's a very complicated question," a member of the book club I organized to read this in says. "And that's what this book is about -- *What is to be done?*"

The book is Lenin's declaration specifically about what is to be done by Russian Social-Democrats in 1902, however. There is no Tsardom to overthrow in 21st century America.

As Lenin says, there is no easy, history-based answer to this question. Revolutionary movements must build on the experiences of preceding ones, analyzed critically through a deep understanding of theory.

"What are your theoretical conclusions? What practice does it lead you to?" a member of the reading club frames it. "Do Lenin's principles apply today? Is reform the way forwards until a certain turning point?"

So, over the next few weeks in this book club, building knowledge of revolutionary theory and seeking some sort of answer to our questions about social revolution in present-day America, will be our goal.

Tag: #lenin

Revolutionary Social-Democracy as the Vanguard of All Democratic Struggle | Notes on Chapter 3 of Lenin's "What Is To Be Done?"

Working-class Spontaneity and Revolutionary Consciousness: Notes on Chapter 2 of Lenin's "What Is to Be Done?"

The Importance of Theory to Revolution | Notes on Chapter 1 of Lenin's "What Is to Be Done?"

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