Preview

Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

What Is to Be Done?

By: Vladimir Lenin
Narrated by: Adam Douglas
Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $20.99

Buy for $20.99

Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.

Publisher's summary

What Is to Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement (1902) is a political pamphlet written by the Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin. Lenin contends that the working class will not become politically aware simply by struggling with employers over wages, hours and working conditions. He maintains that Marxists should form a political party of committed revolutionaries to spread Marxist political ideas among the workers.

The pamphlet was partly responsible for the split of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party into Lenin's Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. Claiming that socialist theory was the product of the "revolutionary socialist intellectuals", Lenin states that the working class was able to develop only a “trade-union consciousness". He points out that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the founders of modern scientific socialism, belonged to this bourgeois intelligentsia.

Public Domain (P)2020 Museum Audiobooks
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

What listeners say about What Is to Be Done?

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    43
  • 4 Stars
    9
  • 3 Stars
    3
  • 2 Stars
    2
  • 1 Stars
    1
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    39
  • 4 Stars
    8
  • 3 Stars
    3
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    35
  • 4 Stars
    7
  • 3 Stars
    5
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    3

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Revolutions 101

Concise and articulate information that gives great guidance on the pitfalls of radical movements. The way Lenin makes the case for a movement based on political and economic pains shows how ahead of his time Lenin was. He died too soon.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

4/5 meow meow beans

This book was more superficial than i wanted it to be. 3rd part is where the listening really gets good, but shoot! i did not retain this argument well.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

a blueprint for a revolution

written 7 years before the Russian revolution in 1917. an amazing outline of, like he says, what is to be done.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

incredibly salient, even today

An analytical work on what to do if you're at odds with the state. Great book.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Great To Read the Unfiltered Works of the World’s Monsters

The narration was great! I love reading the unfiltered works of the word’s monsters to try to get insight in how to prevent similar movements from successfully emerging again. In What Is To Be Done, Lenin argues for need of the professional revolutionary because the masses are not competent to lead a revolution. This results in the “successful” revolution being dominated by professional revolutionaries. When they succeed, as in the USSR and China, these professional revolutionaries go on to run their countries’ with their prime motivation being retain power at all costs. They denominate, terrorize, and even kill the masses to keep them under control. The professional revolutionaries, including Lenin, are not heroes. The Europeans who brought social democracy through the parliamentary process, which Lenin in later works claimed would fail, were much more successful in improving their societies for the masses than were the revolutionary mobsters such as Lenin, Stalin, and Mao.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!