What Is to Be Done?

A 1902 pamphlet by Vladimir Lenin arguing that Russia’s socialist movement needed a centralized party of professional revolutionaries to organize political struggle.

Vanguardism: The view that a politically conscious revolutionary organization should lead and organize a broader working-class movement. Lenin argues that a disciplined party must bring socialist political consciousness into the workers’ movement.
Russian Social Democratic Labour Party: A Marxist political party founded in 1898 to organize socialists in the Russian Empire. Lenin wrote amid efforts to turn this fragmented party into a functioning underground organization.
Bolsheviks: The faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party that became a separate party under Lenin’s leadership. The pamphlet’s organizational arguments are associated with the faction Lenin later led.
Spontaneity: The emergence of collective action without centralized planning or direction. Lenin argues that spontaneous worker struggle alone does not produce a comprehensive socialist politics.
Democratic centralism: A party principle combining internal discussion with unified action after decisions are made. The pamphlet’s case for coordinated organization helped shape later debates over party discipline.
Economism: A tendency in Russian socialism that prioritized workers’ economic struggles over broader political agitation. The pamphlet attacks Economism for narrowing socialist activity to workplace demands.
Mensheviks: The faction that split from the Bolsheviks in 1903 and favored a broader, less centralized party. Their disagreement over party membership and organization echoed tensions raised by Lenin’s pamphlet.
Mass party: A political party organized around broad membership and participation rather than a small cadre of full-time activists. This model contrasts with the clandestine professional-revolutionary organization Lenin advocates.
Trade-union consciousness: Workers’ awareness of shared workplace interests, pursued chiefly through collective bargaining and economic struggle. Lenin distinguishes this immediate consciousness from the wider political consciousness he says a party must foster.
Vladimir Lenin: A Russian revolutionary and Marxist theorist who led the Bolsheviks and later the Soviet government. Lenin authored the pamphlet and used it to intervene in disputes over party organization.

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