A review by juanpablo_85
What Is to Be Done? by Vladimir Lenin

3.0

This seems to be written, as a polemic I guess, against social democrats who would overvalue their place in bureaucracy & criticize movements attempting to organize in such a way as to make their positions less important. Any organization or apparatus must be in service of the people &, when necessary, must help lay the groundwork for every day tasks, not to rule over but, to take an analogy Lenin himself used, to function as a scaffolding to help the overall structure. Waiting on spontaneous uprisings & discontent without footwork to connect workers so they are ready to keep it going when this happens is not the way. The decisions & actions should be calculated, not unintelligible & spontaneous or really on their from bureaucrats.

While it is clearly a product of its time & events shows as much through the text as it directed at contemporaries, the overall message is clear: Constant agitation & work is necessary for a bottom up movement in order to possibly have bottom up rule.