Essential Works of Lenin: "What Is to Be Done?" and ... (ISBN 0486253333)

You can't always get what you want!:
And way back in the bad old days before the Bolshevik Revolution, you couldn't even get what you needed. Or more to the point: if you weren't the Czar or Czarina, or any of his or her umpteen-bazillion inbred buck-toothed relatives, and weren't hooked up with royal favorites (did someone say Rasputin?)---well, just put to bed any thoughts of getting shoelaces for your galoshes. Or for that matter, galoshes. Or anything, really. I mean, let's think of it this way: around 1916, there were *bread* shortages in Moscow. Think about that for a minute: bread shortages. People were rioting for a loaf of crummy, dimply, worm-eaten Russian bread. There were long lines for everything; total tyranny and oppression; you couldn't say anything against the Czar, or you would get exiled to Siberia. So along came Lenin, who broke a few eggs and made an omelette, and---voila!---Russia went all revolutionary. End result: 1) There were long lines, and shortages. No shoelaces, no galoshes. 2) Total friggin' tyranny, *again*. You couldn't say anything against the Secretary General of the Glorious Politburo, or you would get exiled to Russia. 3) At least somebody had the decency to do away with Rasputin. Any way you stack it, though, Comrade Vladimir was onto something big: at the very least, he was way ahead of his time with the shaved head and goatee thing, you gotta admit it. If Lenin were alive today, he would give Moby a run for his money. And then, at the least, he would take the money and re-distribute it to the People. The real genius of Lenin is that he was the ultimate in niche marketing. Go figure: around about the 19th century, a bunch of smelly, constantly drunk, terminally unemployed guys, headed up by Hegel, Marx, and Engels, wrote reams---huge filing cabinets full of stuff---on how nasty and horrible society was. How unfair, how inhumane, how increasingly terrible and blood-hungry the Cavern-Mawed Beast of the Industrial Revolution had become. And back then, they really did have a point: 'strikes' broken up by firebombs and gunfire, a 'living wage' paid out in company scrip, which you could spend in the company store for a book of matches, and of course, no dimply, lumpy, worm-eaten bread. Oh, and children getting snatched into the grinding gears of stinking, dirty, smoke-belching factories. Problem was, nobody cared what these guys thought. They were smelly, and hairy, and had bad teeth, and were probably crazy. And that might have been the end of that, had it not been for the spike-helmeted Prussian militarists to the west in Germany. Germany was, at the time, in really deep sh*t: enmired in a two-front war of sheer, bloody attrition, the Kaiser needed something that would take the Czar out of the war. So the German invented Lenin! And because every shiny new product needs a major rollout, they booked him on a train and sent him East! So drink deeply of our buddy Vladimir Ilyitch, and see what he had that you don't---and frankly, what Karl Marx, with his bushy ugly beard and nasty temper, did not: he was a marketer, baby! He was in SALES! Lenin's chief accomplishment is not his writing (Lenin's writing make cereal box contents read like Hemingway) it was the way he hooked it all up, got the message to the masses, spread the virus! Let's face it: without "What is to be Done", a night-train to Moscow set up by German agents, and cuddly-bald Lenin, the Czar and his fat, pampered descendants would still be kicking it large in St. Petersburg and yachting off Yalta. Lenin proved that you don't have to have David Hasselhoff hair to rock the world! And best of all the story of Lenin---never mind "What is to be Done", which talks a good game about the Labor Theory of Value and a Classless Society in which everybody goes in at 10, leaves at 12 for 'noonsies', and takes the rest of the week off---is pure crapola---best of all, Lenin was a custom-designed Capitalist roll-out, a total marketing triumph! Hundreds of millions of Soviet Comrades can't be wrong! Workers of the World, unite! And grow a goatee, too: you never know, you might get to run a glorious Peoples' Republic too, someday---and get some bread, shoelaces, and galoshes. JSG

Lenin at his best:
This book, along with "The Revolution Betrayed" by Trotsky is the best repudiation yet of the Big Lie of the 20th Century that Stalinism equals Socialism. Stalin was one of socialism's great ENEMIES of the 20th century and proved it time and time again (first with the liquidation of 90% of all the original Bolshevik revolutionaries -- Imagine someone claming to uphold the ideas of the American Revolution and killing off Jefferson, Madison, Washington, Adams, etc. Then with opposing the revolution in country after country, Spain, China, Indonesia, Italy, Greece, etc. Orwell's Homage to Catalonia is another good testament to this) Anyway back to Lenin: His writings helped transformed Marxism into a truly international philosophy, one that urged the liberation of ALL people all over the world, not just the ones in the 'advanced' capitalist nation. Lenin brought political involvement into the mix as being MANDATORY for any revolutionary; previously many socialists had been content with simply 'waiting' for the right moment to make a revolution. Lenin made it clear that this was unacceptable and direct, constant political involvement and education was essential for any legitimate social revolution. As to the last reviewer: I am sorry, but your attempt at "humor" (or more precisely, lack thereof) did not impress me. It was moronic to say the least and if I wanted a bunch of lame "one-liners" by a wannabe cyber-comedian I merely have to type in the words: "conservative intelligence. In any event, it is very telling that pitiful attempts at humor are the only "response" the reactionaries can give to this giant of a revolutionary figure. Lenin is well worth your time.

This is not casual armchair reading.:
Beware! This is not a Lenin quote book, which is what I was hoping to get. Nor is it a comprehensive selection of selected and essential passages, which would have been better. It is, however, a small book containing four of Lenin's key essays. So although you get the complete essays, the overall selection is too small. His views on life, duty, religion being a drug addiction, the vanguard, and so forth are not here. Lenin, who was prodigiously prolific on the level of Voltaire, deserves better. Consequently, this small sample does not do him justice. The four essays are "Development of Capitalism in Russia" "What is to be done?" "The State and Revolution," and "Imperialism, the highest stage of Capitalism." I found this last one fascinating, considering the critique by Thomas Sowell in "The Quest for Cosmic Justice," page 121ff. The essays are both technical and polemic, and therefore boring. So if you are neither economist nor historian, much less a wannabe Che Guevara, then you may want to pass on this book. This is not casual armchair reading.

Dense, but a Good Introduction:
The Essential Works of Lenin does provide a remarkably concise introduction to Lenin's thought. It will not be easy for the novice reader, so a perusal of The Communist Manifesto, or other introductory writings will be important to get a firm grasp on Lenin's Marxist views. The final 90 page chapter "The State and Revolution" may be the most accessible and intelligible of Lenin's views; much of the earlier portions of this 364 page book deal with Lenin's critique of other socialists who have deviated from true Marxism (this is the most difficult part to read, because it assumes a knowledge of his historical context). The book then, is a good one, but introductory exposure to Marxist thought will help. It does provide a valuable, concise biography of Lenin in the introduction. That aside, let us turn to a critique of Lenin's thought. Lenin was a very intelligent critic of capitalism, with many penetrating insights into the function and abuses of a capitalist economy. It is not that Marxism was based on a complete illusion, but that it was based on a partially-true, compelling illusion that perhaps makes it so seductive, and so dangerous. I dissent, for example, in thinking that only the "dictatorship of the proletariat" can supplant the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, and that somehow a freer, fuller democracy will result from a worker-managed society in which the state will subsequently "wither away." History demonstrated that instead of withering away, the Communists party only solidified its tyranny over the masses, and substituted one dictatorship for another. That Lenin or Marx possessed a real historical "science" of political-economy I think has been disproved. While claiming not to be a utopian, it is difficult to see how some of Lenin's claims are anything but - in terms of the transformation of human beings by the abolition of class antagonisms. People remain people, inherently biased, often selfish, not concurring, and striving to realize two very difficult things: a society with the greatest possible freedom and equality for all. Do not be mistaken, however. Just because Lenin (as Marx) made serious errors in their theory, does not excuse the student of ethics, politics, or religion from treating these writings of Lenin with the serious academic study they deserve. Lenin may have been wrong about much, but right about a great deal too. Understanding his thought will be important for any student of history and politics. That said, this book does very little to comment on religion. Famous for their antipathy towards religion, choose another book if you are interested in their ideas about religion. This book does do very well on Lenin's political-economic theory. Lenin also draws quite considerably on Engels, considering him and Marx to be the only true interpreters (beside himself) of the doctrine. A final note - the book also does not mention Adam Smith - it is just assumed that capitalist theory is wrong, and Lenin spends much of its time battling the "false" or "opportunist" Marxists (Bernstein, Kautsky, the anarchists). See Marx or perhaps another volume on Lenin for a more direct confrontation of Smith and classical economists.

Best Collection of Lenin's Writings & Thoughts,Both Logical and Illogical:
This is probably the best book on the personal writings and political blueprints of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.The main problem that Leninism ran into, was that an oligarchy of the communists can became as insenitive and remote from the laboring masses, as a czarist monarchy had been before. Lenin felt the peasants did not have the savvy intellectual prowess to keep the socialist-labour movement going forward.And also that the peasants would be prone towards nostalgia for the czar and his church beliefs.Regicide did little to stop the peasants human need for a spiritual superman figure and Joesf Stalin fit the bill.Many remaining WW2 Soviet veterans carry a picture of 'Uncle Joe' with them.The world war and later the cold war,gave stalwart leaders a reason to justify a 'closed-market system'. Yet this lead to another problem with Leninism.The idea of laboring for the sake of labor,regardless of real economic-market/social value.In America,Richard Nixon tried 'fixed-prices and price-caps' on some large domestic products,which only lead to a worsening of the economy with even higher inflation rates. Ronald Reagan also had the strange idea of 'Supply-side economics',which was correctly lampooned by George Bush Sr. as 'VooDoo Economics'.The faulty idea that a large supply produced would induce a large demand for the product.For example, if the government produced a hefty supply of 'reusable solar-powered flashlights(with modest capacitance)',would there then be a hefty demand for them in the dark fall-winter months and also in the light spring-summer months?If disposable batteries became scarce,because of strict local/state/federal environmental laws imposed,then demand for 'solar-powered flashlights'would increase to meet market-demand. The need and value of the product is driven by market-demand.-Lenin ,who was an admirer and distorter of the scientific ideas of Charles Darwin,did not understand that people are fickle humans .Whose tastes and values are subject to ready change.Regardless,of what laws and penalities the bureaucrats impose upon them.-Interesting book concerning socialist economic theory.