Abstract

Critical discussion of Lenin’s What Is to Be Done? is hindered by a series of historical myths. Issues such as the following need to be studied more empirically and more critically: Did the attitudes of early readers of WITBD? reflect Lenin’s alleged ‘worry about workers’? Did the events of 1905 cause Lenin to renounce his earlier views about the workers and about party-organisation, giving rise to disputes with Bolshevik activists? Did either Lenin or Trotsky ever rethink and reject the ideological positions that Karl Kautsky defended before World-War I? These and related issues are addressed with close attention to source-material.