Poor choice. Would not recommend. Almost all the references are going over my head, and I really don't feel like chasing them down. Maybe I'll pick it back up after studying the 1905 revolution or if I really get into German social democrat history or whatever. I'll finish it I guess, but I expect to retain nothing and learn very little.
Nobody (save for those with an interest in pre-Revolution Bolshevik internal politics) should be reading it. The title is fantastic but it's on the lower tier of Lenin's works and, as you've discovered, requires a whole lot of context to get anything out of it.
State and Revolution is a infinitely better starting point with Lenin, and readable without a lot of context. It's clear, concise, and a classic for a reason. Lots of his works are great. I'm sorry the one you're reading right now isn't.
Yeah I'm not deterred from reading more Lenin, just disappointed at the moment and wanting to vent on the internet. I'm glad I'm not the only one that finds this mostly useless.
Glad to hear it! And yeah that's even the academic consensus in some circles. Lars Lih in Lenin Rediscovered: What Is To Be Done? In Context, argues as much (more or less), and spends the rest of the book attempting to contextualize the content of What Is To Be Done within the larger sphere of debate in the Bolshevik/Menshevik world. It's not worth reading or studying without that context, and there's no much you're going to get from it outside of academic curiosities. In fact, much of what Lenin states in the book were just standard democratic socialist (the word had a different context at the time, lol) assumptions widely held by communists across Europe. For actual strategies and innovations of Lenin that pushed him beyond those, you need to look elsewhere at his later works.
Before you read another page, listen to this Red Menace episode. Mike Duncan also had a decent episode (or maybe multiple?) of the Revolutions podcast dedicated to explaining economism and Narodism but I can't remember which one it was. What is to be Done is absolutely an essential text. Granted it is a tougher read and if you're trying to keep track of your late 19th century social democratic Russian newspapers you'll probably get lost in the weeds, but it is the foundation of Leninist party organization and theory.
That was my experience as well. Still going to try Imperialism and State And Revolution.
The State and Revolution is really good. It's a much more interesting read.
Check out Rosa Luxemburg's Imperialism too, it offers a very different, but still compelling, critique from Lenin's (who was also cribbing Hilferding). It's like the most interesting thing she wrote that's not read often.
That's why people read these in groups or ask help from other comrades. People say "oh but why would you want to read it, it's about some specific thing" but that's the point. People learn all the foundational concepts and then they never see what a concrete application looks like. Of course there is also the flipside of people not properly judging what is generalizable and applicable to their circumstances and what isn't. The infantile book is kinda similar in that regard but imo more relevant especially for people here. S&R and the Imperialism book are more general.
To actually fully contextualize everything I recommend Lenin Rediscovered, which is in the middle of being turned into an audiobook by Cosmonaut.
Does your version have footnotes? I just read the footnotes and, while it does make the start rather slow, after the first few chapters it becomes a lot easier and way less footnotes.
Yes. Part IV is easier to follow than the first half so far. Hopefully this keeps up.
The best part is chasing the references that don't exist lol (S&R is worse at this, but there's a couple refs in WITBD that you can't find the reference for iirc though maybe I'm just misremembering and it's all in S&R). TBH, WITBD is such a context specific to the time work that I don't really recommend it. If you want to understand what Lenin was doing at the time check out Lars Lih's work on it Lenin Rediscovered: What is To Be Done In Context, and then feel embarrassed for the libs and some MLs who took is way too dogmatically lol.
If you get a decent version with good footnotes to explain the weirdly specific references it helps ground it in concrete conditions which is kind of the whole point of Marxism ino
My version does not have footnotes or things explaining the context. Another comrade already recommended Red Menace’s episode which I also recommend. There’s some really good insights and quotes you can take from the book, but unless you study Russian history at that time or were there, the shit taking will of over your head.
Yeah I tried reading it and only got two things:
- Rabocheye Dyelo were a bunch of hacks
- Lenin was a messy bitch who loved drama
