V.I. Lenin
 
What is to be Done? is a core text that every student of Marxism and revolution. An equally important and crucial contribution by Lenin was his theory of organisation. Organisation, for Lenin, was not a technical question or a tactical issue. Organisation was integral to revolutionary theory. What is to be Done? (written in 1901 and published in 1902) elaborates on how an appropriate organisation alone can translate revolutionary theory into a revolutionary movement.
Prakash Karat’s Introduction explains the main arguments of Lenin’s thick pamphlet — his critique of an over-reliance on spontaneity in the working class struggles, which marks out the terrain of Economism; his elaboration of the idea of democratic centralism in party organisation; his idea of the vanguard, a party consisting of an advanced detachment of the working class.

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