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The September 2010 issue of Historical Materialism includes a symposium on Lars Lih’s “Lenin Reconsidered”, a mammoth book that includes his own new translation of “What is to be Done” (Chto Delat in Russian)—the object of his research. Put simply, Lih argues that this seminal text is not a harbinger of a party of a “new type” but rather Lenin’s call for building a party in Czarist Russia that is modeled on the German Social Democracy. Not only did I come to this conclusion long before reading anything Lih has written (I confess to having read only partial selections of “Lenin Reconsidered”), I have quoted this selection from WITBD frequently to support this claim:
Why is there not a single political event in Germany that does not add to the authority and prestige of Social-Democracy? Because Social-Democracy is always found to be in advance of all others in furnishing the most revolutionary appraisal of every given event and in championing every protest against tyranny. It does not lull itself with arguments that the economic struggle brings the workers to realise that they have no political rights and that the concrete conditions unavoidably impel the working-class movement on to the path of revolution. It intervenes in every sphere and in every question of social and political life; in the matter of Wilhelm’s refusal to endorse a bourgeois progressist as city mayor (our Economists have not yet managed to educate. the Germans to the understanding that such an act is, in fact, a compromise with liberalism!); in the matter of the law against “obscene” publications and pictures; in the matter of governmental influence on the election of professors, etc., etc. Everywhere the Social-Democrats are found in the forefront, rousing political discontent among all classes, rousing the sluggards, stimulating the laggards, and providing a wealth of material for the development of the political consciousness and the political activity of the proletariat.
I especially love the business about “obscene” publications and government interference in the election of professors. That’s a Lenin who would appreciate what we are up against today, with neo-Czarists like Glenn Beck and Daniel Pipes on the scene.
full: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2011/03/04/historical-materialism-symposium-on-lars-lihs-lenin-reconsidered/
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