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The wisdom of Lenin’s What is to be Done?
With dissatisfaction and anger growing, with confrontation intensifying, and with more and more institutions and authority discredited, the need for effective responses grows, says ZOLTAN ZIGEDY

“They take from Marxism all that is acceptable to the liberal bourgeoisie… cast aside only the living soul of Marxism, ‘only’ its revolutionary content.” – VI Lenin, The Collapse of the Second International

STANDING with me on a cold corner with a sign urging bank disinvestment, a venerated comrade reminded me of the lasting value of Vladimir Lenin’s What Is To Be Done? 

Food for thought: while we read this classic in our political youth, does it retain its relevance as we gain experience and mature?

What Is To Be Done? began as a promissory note to expand a polemical sketch written in May of 1901 entitled Where to Begin. The question lingered in Lenin’s mind for nearly a year before the lengthy pamphlet emerged.

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