Lenin, after seeing off his critics, concludes What is to be Done? with an examination of the importance of the workers’ press. “We could, in the not too distant future, establish a weekly newspaper”, he says “…This newspaper would become part of an enormous pair of smith’s bellows that would fan every spark of the class struggle and of popular indignation into a general conflagration. Around what is in itself still a very innocuous and very small, but regular and common, effort, in the full sense of the word, a regular army of tried fighters would systematically gather and receive their training. On the ladders and scaffolding of this general organisational structure there would soon develop and come to the fore Social-Democratic Zhelyabovs[1] from among our revolutionaries and Russian Bebels[2] from among our workers, who would take their place at the head of the mobilised army and rouse the whole people to settle accounts with the shame and the curse of Russia. That is what we should dream of!”

In October 1917, all this hard work turned this dream into a reality. Lenin had trained a whole generation of cadre-Bolsheviks that were to become the framework for the building of a mass Bolshevik Party. Under the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky, the party was to draw around itself the best of the working class and peasantry to conquer state power. Today’s Marxists must also learn these lessons to prepare ourselves for the new Octobers that impend. A study of Lenin’s What is to be Done? is an essential part and parcel of this preparation.

Endnotes

  1. Andrey Ivanovich Zhelyabov (29 August [O.S. 17 August] 1851 – 15 April [O.S. 3 April] 1881) was a Russian revolutionary and member of the Executive Committee of Narodnaya Volya.

  2. August Bebel (22 February 1840 – 13 August 1913) was a German Marxist politician, writer, and orator. A collaborator of Marx and Engels, he is best remembered as one of the founders of the Social-Democratic Workers’ Party of Germany (SDAP) in 1869, which in 1875 merged with the General German Workers’ Association into the Socialist Workers’ Party of Germany (SAPD). During the repression under the terms of the Anti-Socialist Laws, Bebel became the leading figure of the social-democratic movement in Germany and from 1892 until his death served as chairman of the Social-Democratic Party of Germany.