What To Do ? Lenin’s Thoughts on Party Building and Its Contemporary Enlightenment for CPC
About the author: Yue Jinxia, Vice Dean and Associate Professor of the School of Marxism at China University of Petroleum, and Special Researcher of the Shandong Provincial Higher Education Network Ideological and Political Work Center Shandong
Source: Journal of Marxism, Issue 2, 2021
【Abstract】Lenin wrote What to Do? for three reasons: first, to expose the essence of opportunist “freedom of criticism” and the mistake of the Economists’ “worship of spontaneity”, second, to answer urgent questions in the workers’ movement, and third, to resolve the severe crisis within the Russian Social Democratic Party at that time. What Is to Be Done? is a classic document of Marxist party-building theory, which expounds the principles and ideas of proletarian party building from the aspects of ideological theory, working methods and organizational construction. What Is to Be Done? not only has important guiding significance for the construction of the Russian Social Democratic Party at that time, but also has very important enlightenment significance for the new great project of party building in the new era of China.
【Key words】 Lenin; What to do?; Party building; Proletarian party
About the author: Yue Jinxia, Vice Dean and Associate Professor of the School of Marxism at China University of Petroleum (East China), and Special Researcher of the Shandong Provincial Higher Education Network Ideological and Political Work Center in Shandong Province
In 1902, Lenin published an important work guiding the construction of a new type of proletarian party, What Is to Be Done? — Urgent Questions in Our Movement. The book not only had important guiding significance for the construction of the Russian Social Democratic Party at that time, but also had very important enlightenment significance for the new great project of party building in the new era of China.
In 2021, we will usher in the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China.
This article will review the book What Is to Be Done? from a new historical perspective, re-sort out and historically reflect on the important viewpoints on party building in the book, and explore theoretical basis and practical guidelines for the new “What Is to Be Done?” faced by party building in the new era of China.
1. Reasons for writing What Is to Be Done?
At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, Russia’s capitalism transitioned to imperialism and became the concentrated outbreak of all contradictions in imperialist countries. What is to be done? is actually a theoretical reflection of the internal contradictions in Russia’s economic and social development. At that time, Russian social contradictions manifested themselves in many aspects. Economically, on the one hand, there was the contradiction between the remnants of serfdom and the development of capitalism, and on the other hand, there was the sharp contradiction between the rapid development of social productivity and capitalist production relations.
Politically, there were complex contradictions between the masses and the tsarist system, between peasants and landlords, between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, and between Great Russian chauvinism and oppressed nations in Russia. In terms of ideology, Marxism was introduced to Russia in the late 19th century, first among intellectuals and scholars, and then gradually among anarchists, left-wing terrorists, populists and other left-wing forces opposed to the rule of the Russian tsar.
The contradictions between revolutionaries and economists, the debates between Iskraists and Workers’ Cause and Workers’ Thought, and the struggles between Marxism and reformism, opportunism, and terrorism all occurred one after another.
In order to promote the healthy development of the Russian Social Democratic Party and completely put an end to its ideological vacillation and organizational chaos, Lenin wrote and completed What is to be Done? between the autumn of 1901 and February 1902. There were many reasons for this.
Part 1. The ideological reasons for writing What Is to Be Done?
The ideological reason for writing What is to be Done? was to expose the essence of the “freedom of criticism” advocated by opportunism in the European workers’ movement and the mistake of the Economists in worshipping the spontaneity of the workers’ movement.
Regarding the essence of “freedom of criticism”, Lenin clearly pointed out that “freedom of criticism” is the freedom of opportunists within the Social Democratic Party, the freedom to transform the Social Democratic Party into a democratic party advocating reform, and the freedom to instill bourgeois ideas and bourgeois elements into the socialist movement. Those who advocated this slogan included the Fabian faction in Britain, the cabinet faction in France, the Bernstein faction in Germany, and the new “critical” faction in the Russian socialist movement. They used the excuse of “freedom of criticism” and the banner of criticizing “old and dogmatic” in order to attack Marxist revolutionary theory and belittle the guiding significance of Marxist theory to the workers’ movement and the construction of the working class party. In Lenin’s words, the essence of “freedom of criticism” is the freedom of various open and disguised bourgeois thinkers to criticize Marxism.
The characteristics of “freedom of criticism” are, first, compromise and lack of principle. As Lenin pointed out, “The famous freedom of criticism does not mean replacing one theory with another, but freely abandoning any complete and thorough theory. It is compromise and lack of principle.” Second, it contains inherent hypocrisy. Lenin quoted the fable “Two Buckets” by Russian writer I.A. Krylov, and used the “empty bucket” in the story to describe the Russian economists who shouted “Long live freedom of criticism”.
He believed that the “freedom of criticism” they advocated not only had no criticism, but also had no independent views at all. This trend of thought, in terms of its content, “is directly transferred from bourgeois books and periodicals to socialist books and periodicals.” “Freedom of criticism” itself contains inherent hypocrisy, because those who support “freedom of criticism” themselves are afraid of criticism and publicity. They oppose and even hate “all theoretical disputes, factional differences, broad political issues, plans to organize revolutionaries, etc.” “This is not freedom of criticism, but slave-like imitation.” In response to the harm and influence of “freedom of criticism”, Lenin proposed that, first, we should try to restore theoretical work and use theory to provide scientific guidance for the movement; second, we must actively fight against legal “criticism” that seriously corrodes people’s consciousness; third, we should actively oppose confusion and vacillation in the actual movement, and expose and refute all actions that consciously or unconsciously lower our program and our strategy.
Regarding the mistake of the Economists in worshipping the spontaneity of the workers’ movement, Lenin pointed out that, first, it led to the workers’ movement being dominated by bourgeois ideology. Because there is no “third” ideology between bourgeois ideology and socialist ideology, those who oppose the inculcation of socialist consciousness in the working masses and think that the pure workers’ movement itself can create an independent ideology are greatly mistaken. Since the origin of bourgeois ideology is much older than that of socialist ideology, it has more means of dissemination and is supported by the capitalist economic base and political superstructure. Therefore, spontaneous movements along the path of least resistance are prone to be controlled by bourgeois ideology. And “any worship of the spontaneity of the workers’ movement, any contempt for the role of the ‘conscious factor’, that is, the role of the Social Democratic Party, regardless of whether the contemptors themselves are willing or not, will strengthen the influence of bourgeois ideology on workers.”
Second, it led the workers’ movement to the bourgeois trade union line. Because the working class can only produce trade union consciousness by its own strength, the result is nothing more than that the working class learns how to bargain with capitalists for a more favorable sale of the “commodity” of labor, thereby fighting against buyers on the basis of pure commercial contracts. The Economists despised political struggle and advocated that workers should “struggle to improve economic conditions” or even fight only for immediate economic interests, rather than for the future. They regarded economic struggle as the only “universally applicable means” of proletarian class struggle, thereby reducing the politics of the proletariat to the politics of trade unionism. “The worship of spontaneity makes people afraid to not even take a step away from the “things that the masses are capable of doing”, and afraid to raise it too high simply to adapt to the immediate demands of the masses at the moment.” Lenin pointed out that fighting the government for economic purposes is bourgeois politics. Under the conditions of worshipping spontaneity, it will inevitably lead to “pure trade union” struggles and non-social democratic workers’ movements, which is equivalent to completely abandoning socialism. Therefore, Lenin clearly put forward: “The task of the Social Democratic Party is to oppose spontaneity, that is, to separate the workers’ movement from this spontaneous tendency of trade unionism that has thrown itself under the wings of the bourgeoisie, and to attract it under the wings of revolutionary Social Democratic Party.”
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