What Can We Learn from "What Is to be Done?"

Three Key Points from My Latest Reading of Lenin's Work on the Social Democrat Movement in Russia during the Early 1900s

“What is to be Done?” by Vladimir Illych Lenin

Introduction

Recently, due to the U.S. election of Donald Trump and the rising alt-right movements in the U.K. and Europe, I began a reread of Lenin’s pamphlet, “What is to be Done?”

What looks to be a ‘sudden’ shift from many of the Western oligarchs towards the far-right has happened after a decade or so of pretending to care for anyone but themselves, and many people have become radicalized at the moment; many others have further been radicalized into taking actions outside the voting process that the bourgeois liberal democracies provide. The alt-right has gained ground, and the liberal organizations and parties not only have nothing to give, but actively blame those who are the most targeted by the bourgeois alt-right’s agenda. To be blunt, faith in these institutions has fallen to an all-time low.

I, like many others, saw the writing on the wall well before any of the electoral circuses began; we watched genocides happen to Palestinians, Congolese, and Sudanese live on social media — genocides furiously supported by a majority of liberal politicians who found it more important to arm a settler-colonial state and terrorists than to feed their own. Like many others after the elections, I decided to become more plugged into our communities — specifically the groups that had a keen interest in trying to mitigate the damage these systems and groups will cause.

So, I attended a local organization’s meeting about what the future looks like and what we can learn from the past. There was a Q&A section at the end, which turned into more of a space for those in the room to vent their frustrations, fears, and anger at the current predicament. One person’s story stood out the most; it was a factory worker who said that even talk of unionizing was considered a taboo in the field they worked in. That moment was stuck in my head for weeks after; how can we be in the year 2025 and still be afraid of unions, something that was a popular class movement a hundred years ago? How can we fall so far back?

It was at the moment that these questions began to formulate in my mind that I recall reading a book of Lenin’s that discussed trade unions and their role in a revolutionary movement. That book was “What is to be Done?” and I began to reread it; this time with the purpose of understanding what makes a revolutionary movement, who makes up a revolutionary movement, and how we make a revolutionary movement. I found three key points from Lenin to analyze that I believe to be beneficial for the modern western socialist/left movements.

Not everything is a one-to-one, as should be obvious, and I do not claim to have exact answers to some of these questions. However, I am confident that Lenin, at the time of writing this pamphlet, was dealing with many things we are dealing with in our movements. Many tools that he describes as necessities in his time are tools we need to consider now. Because of that, we will analyze Lenin’s critique of the reformist social democrats’ movement (point 1), what the goal of a revolutionary movement is (point 2), and Lenin’s understanding of the target demographic of a revolutionary movement (point 3). All of these points, I believe, have something to say to the movements of today; what our goal is, who we should agitate for, and what kind of movement we should be.

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Point 1: Opportunism & Reformism - Creating Spontaneous Bourgeois Idealists or Professional Revolutionaries?

A major conflict within the Russian Social-Democratic movement of the 1910s was the issue of “freedom of criticism,” specifically the ‘freedom’ to criticize core principles of Marxism, specifically the role of organizations and the ‘spontaneity’ of workers movements. Lenin writes that this “freedom of criticism” has been seen well before the European Social-Democratic movement began to take hold of this ideal — it was specifically seen within Bourgeois academia. He observes that these ideals, which he states are a form of bourgeois idealism due to their connection to Bourgeois academia’s goal of transforming revolutionary organizations into reformist parties — the highest form of opportunism.

“… the new “critical” tendency in Socialism is nothing more nor less than a new species of opportunism. And if we judge people not by the brilliant uniforms they deck themselves in, not by the imposing appellations they give themselves, but by their actions, and by what they actually advocate, it will be clear that “freedom of criticism” means freedom for an opportunistic tendency in Social-Democracy, the freedom to convert Social-Democracy into a democratic reformist party, the freedom to introduce bourgeois ideas and bourgeios elements into Socialism.”

Lenin points out that this form of reformism/opportunism pulls not only individuals towards bourgeois ideals, but can pull entire revolutionary organizations towards denouncing the very theories and practices that make it revolutionary in the first place. It takes potential revolutionaries, both individuals and organizations, and dismantles that potential by funneling them into bourgeois ideals of reforming capitalism. In the case of Lenin and the Russian Social-Democrats, this contention about “freedom of criticism” was taking the revolutionary Marxism within the parties and choosing to throw it out in favor of the legal Marxist movement — the idea that capitalist bourgeois democracy could be reformed for better working conditions. These reformist ideals come about due to the organizations relationship with the spontaneous movements.

But why does spontaneous movement, which in of itself is not a bad thing for developing the class consciousness of workers, lead to bourgios idealism within the organizations and workers? It is quite simple, says Lenin; bourgios idealogy is older than Social-Democratic (For us, socialist) idealogy. “Because it is more developed and because it possesses imeasurably more opportunities for becoming widespread.” It simply has more resources, more people, more opportunities, and more history to spread its ideals like a tendril across every potential revolutionary individual and organization.

“It is often said: The working class spontaneously gravitates towards Socialism. This is perfectly true in the sense that Socialist theory defines the causes of the poverty of the working class more profoundly and more correctly than any other theory, and for that reason the workers are able to appreciate it so easily, provided, however, that this theory does not step aside for spontaneity and provided it subordinates spontainety to itself.”

This is how bourgeois idealism entered the Marxist-Social-Democrats of Russia — through gradual ‘criticisms’ and subordination to spontainety within the labor union movements.

This idealist reformism, according to the trade unionist and the reformers (the Bernsteiners as Lenin calls them), naturally led the Social-Democrats to being enslaved to what Lenin calls “spontaneity,” the supposed ‘revolutionaries’ did little to nothing until singular moments came about — those moments are when labor began to see their worsening conditions and began to take action, usually through strikes and destruction of machinery — and they tailed the workers only for better working conditions. These moments happen spontaneously, which showed the awakening of class consciousness amongst the workers, but were not actively agitated upon by the reformers to create revolutionaries.

The spontaneous rebellions on their own are not a negative, Lenin admits that every revolution has this sort of spontaneous stage where the workers begin to “sense the necessity of collective resistance.” However, this is simply the embryonic stage of a revolution, where the revolution has not yet transformed out of its simplistic rebellious state. These spontaneous moments do not make the worker class-conscious, nor does it create revolutionaries within the working class — the reformers make the critical mistake of assuming that arguing for economic reforms was the revolutionary task. Lenin writes that all of class history shows us that these moments only can produce trade unionism, where workers band together to demand greater wages, better working conditions, time off, etc.; however, it does not naturally lead to revolutionaries being formed.

Lenin points out that the workers within Russia needed revolutionary theory to enter the working class from without, from the revolutionary intelligentsia that was forming within academia’s youth. This is not to act as if the intelligentsia is descending from its throne to save the stupid worker, rather it is connecting the revolutionary theories of people like Marx and Engels (both from bourgeois intelligentsia) to the budding class struggle of the workers.

“Hence, simultaneously we had both the spontaneous awakening of the masses of the workers — the awakening to conscious life and struggle, and the striving of the revolutionary youth, armed with Social-Democratic theories, to reach the workers.”

The problem of the reformers in Russia was that they were a part of this intelligentsia, but they refused to educate the masses of workers about revolutionary theory, sticking to a motto of only focusing on the economic struggles of said workers but never connecting it with the political. Arguing for economic reforms is all fine and great, but it only goes so far when you do not deal with the autocrats at the top creating these economic problems (in the US and Europe’s case, the gerontocracy). The economic struggle of the workers must be connected to the political struggle of the entire society, and the knowledgeable revolutionaries must teach the workers of this quintessential truth. And it is this tying together the economic and the political, the mass of workers with the revolutionary youth/intelligentsia, that also ties together theory and practice — the workers become educated in the ultimate goal of upending the system that keeps them oppressed while the intelligentsia becomes educated in actual revolutionary practice with the workers.

“Revolutionary experience and organisational skill are things that can be acquired provided the desire is there to acquire these qualities, provided the shortcomings are recognized — which in revolutionary activity is more than half-way towards removing them!”

The reformers ignored the latter half of these points, thinking they simply could tail other parties, such as the liberals, and also tail the workers for reforms that may or may not be implemented. “This was tantamount to the bourgeois democrat’s denial of Socialism’s right to independence, and consequently, of its right to existence; in practice it meant a striving to convert the nascent labor movement into a tail of the liberals.”

This is how reformism and opportunism entered the labor movements, according to Lenin.

Point 2: What is Our Goal? Simply Economic Reform or the Upheaval of the Entire System?

Such ideals restricted the Russian Social-Democrat movement, and the larger labor movement in general, into a narrow trade-unionism that argued for “practical” gradual reforms. This denial was such a grave mistake, according to Lenin, because it removes the very core aspects of any Socialist labor movement — the striving towards a revolutionary rupture of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie that leads to a dictatorship of the proletariat.

“Without a revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement… the role of the vanguard [party] can be fulfilled by a party that is guided by an advanced theory.”

Lenin argues that, for any revolutionary organization to survive, they must fight on three seperate fronts — two within the party and one within the masses of workers:

1. Fight against the opportunists and tailists within the organization that push for reformism. To combat this, Lenin states that the Russian Social-Democrats must contiue the theoretical work of those before the reformists began espousing their plans for solely economic reform. For us, this means not only sticking to the revolutionary theory of Marxism, but to consistently use the tools of Marxism to break the hold of the reformists within our organizations.

2. Fight against Bourgois Idealism. For Lenin this was fighting against the “legal” criticism that had taken hold of the legal Marxists within the Russian Social-Democrats, who used this ‘criticism’ as a way to distance itself from building a revolutionary movement that wished to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat and begin building towards communism. For us, this looks like fighting bourgios ideals within our organizations. Different organizations have different struggles with different bourgios ideals — some struggle with right wing deviations like opportunism/reformism, others struggle with ultra-left wing deviations such as adventurism. Intense study and self-criticism¹ must be taken to find what the bourgois ideal(s) our organizations are struggling with and rectify them.

3. The last fight is against backwards thinking and confusion amongst the masses of the workers caused by reformists within the organization. This problem comes from confusion on the practical work necessary for the organization. As Lenin pointed out, the refomrists of the Russian Social-Democrats and their tactics cause mass confusion for those working within the organization, which in turn causes confusion to the workers. “Every conscious or unconscious attempt to degrade our programme and tactics,” says Lenin, should be actively countered. For today, this means actively combatting reformists publicly, even those within our party,² so that there can be no confusion as to how their tactics and schemes are seen within the organization itself. It also means going out and correcting the line given to the masses by providing the correct revolutionary program using the correct revolutionary tactic. In short, do not surrender the revolutionary tactic and program to the reformists, actively fight against it.

How does an organization commit to fighting on these fronts; both within the party and without in the masses of workers? It is first recognition that spontaneous rebellions, strikes, boycotts, and workers unionizing is not signs of devoloping class consciousness (This recognition is more than half-way to removing them, according to Lenin). The lengths that these momements of spontaineity can lead to are petty reforms that, while improving the conditions of workers — if they are implemented at all — do not deal with the core problem — the oppressive system that placed the worker (amongst others) in the oppressive factory, farm, or store in the first place.

“Social-Democrats lead the struggle of the working class not only for better terms for the sale of labour power, but also for the abolition of the social system which compels the propertyless class to sell itself to the rich. Social-Democracy represents the working class, not in its relation to a given group of employers, but in its relation to all classes in modern society, to the state as an organised political force.”

In quite possibly the most important point Lenin makes on this topic, he states that socialist organizations must take up the task of educating the working class politically on the source of their ailments — in Lenin and our cases, that would be late stage capitalism.

“We must actively take up the political education of the working class, and the development of its political consciousness.”

The question becomes: What does this “development of [the working class’s] political consciousness” look like? For Lenin, it is quite clear that one of the core tenants of any revolutionary organization must be revolutionary education. This education comes in the form of not only forming book clubs or theory clubs around revolutionary theory, but in practice comes in the form of explaining to the workers that they are politically and economically oppressed and agitating by developing criticisms of specific examples of that oppression. In this case, we are educating the masses as to the cause of their oppression all the while providing concrete examples of how that oppression is directly affecting them — we are making the larger systems visible through connecting said oppresive systems to its individual acts of oppressing the masses, therefore exposing the lies for what they are and explaining the true way of dismantling such oppression.

Therefore, a revolutionary organization must educate the masses on the oppressive systems, agitate by providing real examples of those systems that are affecting the masses, and using these agitation examples and education to further propogandize the masses towards a socialist idealogy; which runs contrary to the reformists who see the end goal as reforms of capitalism, a bourgios ideology.

Much of this seems as if to say that the temporary and spontaneous struggles for small reforms means nothing and, consequently, that a ‘true’ revolutionary only argues for the wider struggle of dismantling the dictatorship of the bourgiosie in favor of a dictatorship of the proletariat. This can’t be further to the truth, says Lenin, as he states at length;

“Revolutionary Social-Democracy always included, and now includes, the fight for reforms in its activities. But it utilises “economic” agitation for the purpose of presenting to the government, not only demands for all sorts of measures, but also (and primarily) the demand that it cease to be an autocratic government. Moreover, it considers it to be the duty to present this demand to the government, not on the basis of the economic struggle alone, but on the basis of all manifestations of public and political life. In a word, it subordinates the struggle for reforms to the revolutionary struggle for liberty and for Socialism…”

It is not a matter of whether or not petty reforms should be pushed for, nor is the main issue whether we should focus on the economic or political; instead, it is an issue of where our main goal and focus lies. What is our main goal? Is it to only institute reforms that will bring a better life for workers? If this is the case, then we are no better than the tailists, the opportunists, or the reformists from over a hundred years ago. We will continue being stuck behind the working class, funneling all our efforts into trade unions for crumbs from the ruling class.

Is our main goal the overthrowing of an entire oppressive system, a system ruled by an elite focused solely on capital? Then there comes a moment in every revolutionary organization where they must understand the entirety of what they are attempting to dismantle. Just as Lenin states that focusing on the economic problems (or “making the economic political”) will inevtiably lead to tailism, a revolutionary organization must focus on both the economic and political — they must make clear the connections between the two and how they are inherently inseparable. This inseperability is clear to anyone with eyes to see. For example, whenever workers, immigrants, or others begin to protest for this or that reform, for this or that change in the system, who comes out of the wood works to fully defend the bourgios state? It is the police. An economic struggle will always be political in character as long as the bourgios have control over the state and uses its dog-like enforcers to bully the masses into subjugagtion.

The exposure of the systems’ realities must be all-encompassing. In other words, As Lenin says, “one of the fundamental conditions for the necessary expansion of political agitation is the organisation of all-sided political exposure. In no other way can the masses be trained in political consciousness and revolutionary activity except by means of such exposures.”

The whole of it all, the entirety of capitalism — its ebbs and flows, its contradictions, its mechanisms — must be thoroughly exposed on all sides, on all fronts, in all cases. Without this agitation, or simply focusing on the economic as if it is wholly seperate from the political, the masses will never develop a true revolutionary consciousness, let alone begin to develop revolutionary activity.

Point 3: Who Should We Go To? The Target(s) of our Agitation, Propoganda, and Education

The question then becomes; if we have fully exposed the entirety of capitalism, worked to properly agitate the masses upon the politico-economic line, and chosen not to tail the proletariat for petty reforms or opportunities, then how will the revolutionary movement grow? Is it simply a matter of making everyone politically conscious? Should the revolutionary organization be made up of hundreds of thousands of workers who, while not fully engaging with organizational activities, are at the very least a part of such organization? Should we even care for the other classes of people, or should we solely focus on the workers?

Every question here is dealt with thoroughly by Lenin in this lengthy pamphlet, but one quote encompasses Lenin’s beliefs on who should the revolutionary organization focus on:

“Working-class consciousness can not be genuinely political consciousness unless the workers are trained to respond to all cases of tyranny, oppression, violence and abuse, no matter what class is affected… Those who concentrate the attention, observation and the consciousness of the working class exclusively … are not Social-Democrats; because, for its self-realisation the working class must not not only have a theoretical … Not so much [a] theoretical as a practical understanding acquired through experience of political life of the relationships between all classes of modern society.”

For Lenin, “all classes of modern society” meant the landlord, the priest, the state official, the peasant, the student, the homeless, and the worker — a revolutionary organization is made up of people who, through materialist analysis, understand concretely the roles, functions, revolutionary potential, intelligence, ethicallity, and political life of the seperate classes of society.

While Lenin would argue understanding the political role of priests in Tsarist Russia, In the 21st century United States and Europe, the classes we must analyze materially are the workers (and their different relationships with production), the homeless, Immigrants, non-Christian religious adherents, and different (usually colonized) ethnicities and races, to name a few. But it also means we must study the political life of the military and police, the full-time politician, the businessperson. We must understand these classes strengths, weakness — we must understand the true nature of each and every class, why they exist and whether or not agitation would work on one or the other.

“The working [person] can not obtain this “clear picture” from books. He can obtain it only from living examples and from exposures… These universal political exposures are an essential and fundamental condition for training the masses in revolutionary activities.”

Being subservient to spontainety, as the reformists, tailists, and opportunists of the past were inclined to do, prevents this gaining of knowledge of the entirety of the system and the various classes that make it run like the well-oiled machine that it is. It stagnates any revolutionary movement, just as said before, into petty reformism. As Lenin says;

“Be less subservient to spontaineity, and think more about increasing your own activity, gentlemen!”

We now understand that, in order for a revolutionary organization to maintain itself, it must agitate over every political struggle and to every class that exists within society. We must make every situation, every policy, every problem, every wrongdoing, so obvious and so clear to every single kind of person. We must fully understand materially what every classes raison d'etre is, what its functions are and how they are a part of the wider politcal life.

But who should make up the revolutionary organization? In the case of Lenin, during a time and place where majority of the Russian population were peasants or paupers, he states that it is the working class that should make up the inner workings of the revolutionary organization. It is through our agitation on every front that the best of the best of the working class will come to our revolutionary organizations in order to agitate, propogandize, and educate the masses further.

“Have we sufficient forces to be able to direct our propoganda and agitation among all classes of the population? Of course we have… The ideal audience for these political exposures is the working class, which is first and foremost in need of universal and live political knowledge, which it is most capable of converting this knowledge into active struggle…”

The next few quotes by Lenin below prove this point further:

“To bring political knowledge to the workers the Social-Democrats must go among all classes of the population, must dispach units of their army in all directions.”

“… every trade union secretary conducts and helps to conduct “the economic struggle against the employers and the government.” It can not be too strongly insisted that this is not enough to constitute Social-Democracy. The Social-Democrat’s ideal should not be a trade-union secretary, but a tribune of the people, able to react to every manifestation of tyranny and oppression, no matter where it takes place, no matter what stratum or class of the people it affects; he must be able to group all these manifestations into a single picture of police violence and capitalist exploitation; he must be able to take advantage of every petty event in order to explain his Socialistic convinctions and his Social-Democratic demand to all, in order to explain to all and every one the world historical significance of the struggle for the emancipation of the proletariat.”

“We must “go among all classes of the people” as theoreticians, as propogandists, as agitators, and as organisers.”

It is this “going among all classes of the people” that will give the working class professional revolutionaries and their organizations they belong to the practical skills required to make their theory into reality. It is not simply sitting around waiting for the working class to come to the professional revolutionaries, whom are just armchair intellectuals masquerading as revolutionaries; neither should they simply tail the working class for solely economic reforms. Instead, it is having a correct theory, a revolutionary theory, a socialist theory, and marrying it with revolutionary (i.e., socialist) action amongst the working class.

It is through this political action grounded in socialist theory, this growing of the professional revolutionary’s mind and body (both individualistically and organizationally) through action (along with the complete education and support by the revolutionary organization), that creates the professional revolutionary — it is not a matter of whether one is a worker or an intellectual — in our case, it does not matter what kind of worker one is — the distinct character of the professional revolutionary is that they are a professional revolutionary, someone who strives to understand and upend capitalism and agitates others to our cause.

“… the organisations of revolutionists must be comprised first and foremost of people whose profession is that of revolutionists… all distinctions as between workers and intellectuals, and certainly distinctions of trade and profession, must be dropped.”

“… we must have a committee of professional revolutionists and it does not matter whether a student or a worker is capable of qualifying himself as a professional revolutionist.”

“… our task is not to degrade the revolutionist to the level of an amateur, but to exault the amateur to the level of a revolutionist.”

It must be pointed out that, while a revolutionary organization should strive to appeal to the masses, the political body of the organization should not be a mass-worker organization. This is not to say that membership to the organization should be withheld; instead, it is to say that the role of professional revolutionary will be a small section of said organization. The professional revolutionary is someone who is both educated in the revolutionary socialist theory of the organization and is able to properly agitate, propogandize, and educate the masses on the entirety of all issues that plague said masses.

It is these professional revoluionists that will guranetee the stability of the wider movement; it will gurantee that the police state, with all of its appartuses for infilitration, will not be able to properly infiltrate the organs behind the wider movement.

“If we begin with the solid foundation of a strong organisation of revolutionists, we can gurantee the stability of the movement as whole, and carry out the aims of both Social-Democracy and of trade unionism. If, however, we begin with a wide workers’ organisation, supposed to be most “accessible” to the masses, when as a matter of fact it will be most accessible to the gendarmes, and will make the revolutionists most accessible to the police, we shall neither achieve the aims of Social-Democracy nor of trade unionism.”

Conclusion

Going back to the three key points from Lenin, they go as follows:

1. What are we, as revolutionary organizations, meant to create? Reformists who argue for reforms, or professional revolutionist who argue for revolution?

   1. The answer is quite simple; we are meant to create professional revolutionists out of the most experienced and willing to learn parts of the working class. It is this strata of the working class that can lead and protect the movements of our time from the reformists who want to protect the bourgiosie and the opportunists who want to turn our organizations into places of bourgios thinking. A revolutionary organization must protect itself from bourgios reformism and opportunism.

2. What is our ultimate goal, to reform the system or to upheave the whole of it?

   1. The answer, once again, is quite simple; it is to upheave the whole of it! Capitalism, with all of its complexities, with its deranged compulsion to atomize people, creates multiple classes beyond the worker and the capitalist. This atomization of the masses, along with every problem it creates, must be exposed using the light of revolutionary socialist theory married to true politico-economic action to agitate, propogandize, and educate the masses on the role of capitalism — how it affects the entirety of the people, how it is to the benefit of every single individual to dismantle capitalism from the outside-in.

3. Who, then, should we aim to lead us? Should we simply have a mass-worker organization?

   1. The answer, for the last time, is quite simple; it is the professional revolutionists, whom have revolutionary socialist theory as their shield to protect the mass movement and revolutionary politicial action as their sword to expand the mass movement, will lead the revolutionary organization. It is the combination of theory and action, both socialist in character, that will bring the masses further onto our side, therefore strengthening and widening the revolutionary movement simply because the professional revolutinists have dispached “units of [our] armies in all directions,” as Lenin said.

“Only a party that will organise real all-national exposures can become the vanguard of the revolutionary forces in our time… The overwhelming majority of the non-working class exposers (and in order to become the vanguard, we must attract other classes) are sober politicians and cool business men. They know perfectly well how dangerous it is to “complain” even against a minor official, let alone against the “omnipotent” Russian government. And they will come to us with their complaints only when they see that these complaints really have effect, and when they see that we represent a political force. In order to become a politicial force in the eyes of outsiders, much persistent and stubborn work is required to increase our own consciousness, initiative and energy.”

Once we have shown that our party, our organization, of professional revolutionaries has skin in the game, has the socialist theory and political action to back its existence, people of all walks of life will come to us since they see that we are affective and keep to our word and promises. If the people struggle to find food that is affordable, for example, the revolutionary socialist organizations must take up the call to provide ways to create food by and for the masses. The masses then will see that we not only ‘talk the talk,’ but are more than willing to ‘walk the walk.’

But in the west, in the United States and in Europe, the revolutionary organizations are small in number, with most organizations acting as a place for armchair socialists to discuss theory solely or places to tail the workers (or liberals) in favor of economic reforms. Ultimately the issue of subservience to spontaneity, something Lenin writes about ad naseum in this book, is still an issue today. This issue stems from a fear, a fear that the masses are ‘too stupid’ to understand revolutinary rhetoric, let alone theory. It is a fear that ‘pushing for too much’ is a ‘fantasy’ and we need to be ‘practical’ and simply argue for reform. These fears, while valid in some ways, ultimately stem from the fear that our organizations are invalid, unable to do anything, are unable to commit to something too illustrious as simply arguing for a better future. As Lenin states:

“Subservience to spontaneity seems to inspire a fear to take even one step away from what “can be understood” by the masses, a fear to rise too high above mere subservience to the immediate requirements of the masses. Have no fear, gentlemen! Remember that we stand so low on the plane of organisation, that the very idea that we could rise too high is absurd!”

Organizationally, we are at this point. What does Lenin say to the Social-Democrats here? A people that have been actively shot, imprisoned, bullied, made illegal, and yet he is saying that they should have no fear, that they can not possibly aim too high because organizationally they are at a low point because they are choosing to tail the movement or not to engage in it at all. In the 21st century, such a mistake can not continue.

Then what can organizations today do? If we are organizationally in a low point of tailism and opportunism, then what is there to be done?

It is as I told multiple friends after Trump’s election win, “There is much work to be done.” We must do the ‘boring’ everyday work of agitating over the problems that Capitalism has consistently created. We must do the ‘boring’ everyday work of propogandizing against Capitalism and its hound-dogs that brutalizes the masses to death. We must do the ‘boring everyday work of educating the masses on the entirety of Capitalism’s mechanisms. We must keep an eye out on any and all people who show interest in further understanding these things and wish to do the same, bringing them into the fold of professional revolutionaries.

A revolution is not made by armchair socialists lost in theory, nor is it made by trade unionism arguing for reforms. It is something more; when revolutionary socialist theory and political action collide to create something new: a revolutionary socialist organization for the oppressed masses under the boot heel of Capitalism. Such an organization will engage the masses, create and protect the revolutionary movement, and bring about the necessary change of building towards communism. And it all starts with the ‘boring’ everyday work of agitation, propogandizing, and educating. Such work should have been started yesterday; the second best time is now.

1. This self-criticism is not the same as the '“legal criticism” that Lenin speaks of. For more on this, I recommend Constructive Criticism: a Handbook Speaking & Listening More effectively in Personal Relations, Groups & Political Activities by Vicki Legion, found on Foreign Language Press’ website for free.

2. It is important to note that when I say that we should publically call out reformists within our organizations, this should only occur if the reformists do not change their way after being properly criticised within the party/organization. If they state an intent to change and do after being properly criticized, then this is unnecessary. If they say they will change and then refuse to do the work to change, or they refuse to change outright, then they should be called out publically and moved out of the organization to avoid confusing the masses.