Lars T. Lih - Lenin Rediscovered: What Is to Be Done In Context

LENIN REDISCOVERED

Historical Materialism Book Series

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LENIN REDISCOVERED

WHAT Is TO BE DONE? IN CONTEXT

LARS T. LIH

f'!) Ha

arket Books Chicago, Illinois

First published in 2005 by Brill Academic Publishers, The Netherlands @ 2006 Koninklijke Brill N

Leiden, The Netherlands

Published in paperback in 2008 by Haymarket Books P.O. Box 180165 Chicago, IL 60618 773-583-7884 www.haymarketbooks.org

Trade distribution: In the U.S. through Consortium Book Sales, www.cbsd.com In the UK, Turnaround Publisher Services, www.turnaround-ps1.com In Australia, Palgrave MacMillan, www.palgravemacmillan.com.au

Cover art: Detail from Composition IV by Wassily Kandinsky, 1911 @ 2008 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ ADAG

Paris, -Roethel T. I n0383 p.366.

This book was published with the generous support of the Wallace Global Fund.

Printed in Canada with union labor.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lih, Lars T. Lenin rediscovered: what is to be done? In context / by Lars T. Lih. p. em. -- (Historical materialism) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-931859-58-5 (pbk.) 1. Socialism--Russia. 2. Rossiiskaia sotsial-demokraticheskaia rabochaia partiia. 3. Lenin, Vladimir Il?ich, 1870-1924. Chto delat?? I. Lenin, Vladimir Il?ich, 1870-1924. Chto delat?? English. 2005. II. Title. HX314.L57 2008 335.430947 --dc22

2008010318

IJ MIX P.,., from rMpo............... !.

FSce C103587

l!

to Robert Tucker

The basic mistake made by people who polemicise with What Is to Be Done? at the present time is that they tear this production completely out of a specific historical context, out of a specific and by now long-past period in the develop men t of our party.

Lenin, 1907

Contents III ustra ti ons .................................................................................................... Xl Note on the Text ............................................................................................ XII Glossary .......................................................................................................... XIII Acknow ledgemen ts ...................................................................................... Xv COMMENTARY In trod u cti on.................................................................................................... 3 Part I Erfurtianism 1. 'The Merger of Socialism and the Worker Movement' ...................... 41 2. A Russian Erfurtian .................................................................................. 111 3. The Iskra Period ........................................................................................ 159 Part II Lenin's Significant Others 4. Russian Foes of Erfurtianism .................................................................. 217 5. A Feud Within Russian Erfurtianism .................................................... 279 6. The Purposive Worker and the Spread of Awareness ........................ 335 Part III The World of What Is to Be Done? 7. Lenin's Erfurtian Drama .......................................................................... 387 8. The Organisational Question: Lenin and the Underground ............ 433 9. After the Second Congress ...................................................................... 489

x Contents

Concl usion ...................................................................................................... 554 Annotations Part One: Section Analysis .................................................... 561 Annotations Part Two: Scandalous Passages ............................................ 613

TRANSLATION

Note on the Translation ................................................................................ 671

Lenin's What Is to Be Done?

Fore word.......................................................................................................... 677

Chapter I: Dogmatism and 'Freedom of Criticism' ............................ 681

Chapter II: The Stikhiinost of the Masses and the Purposiveness of Social Democracy 700

Chapter III: Tred-iunionist Politics and Social-Democratic Politics 723

Chapter IV: The Artisanal Limitations of the Economists and the Organisation of Revolutionaries ........................................ 763

Chapter V: The 'Plan' for an All-Russian Political News pa per............................................................................ 813

Conclusion

Bibliography

Ind ex ................................................................................................................ 853

List of Illustrations

Figure 1.1: Kautsky's Circles of Awareness ............................................ 77 Table 2.1: List of Lenin's Programmatic Writings in the 1890s 112 Table 3.1: Titles in Lenin's Political Agitation Series .......................... 192

Note on the Text

All Lenin quotations are taken from the Polnoe sobranie sochineniia (Complete Collection of Works), 5th edition, published in Moscow from 1958 to 1965. References are in the following form: Lenin 1958-65, 6, p. 101 (= volume 6, p. 101). In the 1920s and 1930s, the 2nd and 3rd editions of Lenin's Sochinelliia (Works) were published in the Soviet Union. The relation between these two editions is difficult to pin down, since they were issued to a large extent concurrently and the 3rd edition describes itself as only a reprint of the 2nd edition. Political changes seem to account for this odd procedure. The chief editor of the 2nd edition was Lev Kamenev (a Stalin foe) and the chief editors of the 3rd edition are listed as V.V. Adoratski, V.M. Molotov (!), and M.A. Savelev. Although the 3rd edition is more easily available, I believe it is more proper to cite the 2nd edition (1926-35, Moscow: Gosizdat) as the original source. This edition is used here for its invaluable notes and appended documents and is cited in the following form: Lenin 1926-35, 6, p. 101 (= Volume 6, p. 101). When I refer to a chapter in WITBD itself, I use a Roman numeral (for example, Chapter I). When I refer to a chapter in my commentary, I write the number out (for example, Chapter One). I drop the soft sign in the transliteration of Russian words when I find it interferes with readability, which is most of the time. For a number of key terms, I have chosen translations different from the usual ones. The following Glossary lists these terms and provides references where appropriate to more extended discussions of the rationale for my choices.