In 1902 Vladimir Ilyich Lenin publishes What Is to Be Done? from Stuttgart: socialist consciousness must be brought to the workers from outside by a party of professional revolutionaries, disciplined and centralized. The pamphlet, written for the Russian party's factions, becomes Leninism's charter and the most contested organizational text in the tradition.
Tagged: Marxism
The Event
- Date
- 1902 (exact)
- Era
- The Internationals and Lenin; Standard periodization of Marxist history
- Location
- Stuttgart; today Stuttgart, Germany
- Traditions
- Marxism
- Streams
- Marxism
- Key figures
- Vladimir Lenin
- Key texts
- What Is to Be Done?
Connections
Primary Sources
- Lenin, V. I. What Is to Be Done? Stuttgart, 1902.
Secondary Sources
- Anderson, Perry. Considerations on Western Marxism. London: New Left Books, 1976.
- Kolakowski, Leszek. Main Currents of Marxism. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978.
- McLellan, David. Karl Marx: A Biography. London: Palgrave Macmillan, fourth edition, 2006.
Provenance: HIST-1456; confidence 0.95; accessed 2026-10-30.
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World View
Marxism
Marxism explains history as the struggle of classes over material production, and aims at a classless society in which exploitation and alienation are ended.