this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2026
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It's no surprise that a meaningful amount of the response to this post is "tailism is cool, actually". I really don't know how to reach such people.
eternal november
Consequences of no one actually reading what is to be done
Also specifically Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder, because it gets abused and quote-mined to turn any opposition to entryism into being an "ultra" (as you can see in the comments of this very post).
yuppp
What is to be done is a bad read and needs a rewrite
https://redsails.org/witbd-rs-abridged/
Edit: I also want to criticize the sentiment of "it’s a bad read." Studying revolutionary theory is work, its analysis, its learning about the context of the work. It’s not a fun school textbook that gives you all the answers in the back.
I say it's a bad read because I have been told over and over again on many sites that WITBD is this revelatory text that will explain, well, what is to be done, refute any other left tendency and is THE ML text.
What I got was super dry history that I couldn't follow because none of the people in the text have been revelant for 200 years. I was confronted with terms that were outdated and needed footnotes to even understand what Lenin meant with a lot of his labels. Then the big crux of the text: start an independent vanguard party. OK, neat. Big "this could have been one-page" vibes.
I was expecting a scathing takedown of everything Capitalism stands for, railing against the oligarchs and telling me exactly what should happen to the people who literally allow shit in the lettuce to cut costs! I wanted a catharsis, not another lecture!
That attitude that reading theory is supposed to be this huge task and will somehow cause a huge breakthrough for whoever reads it sounds more like religious proselytizing than a serious political movement.
this is of course dogmatic and incorrect stance
again, i think this is incorrect. i dont subscribe to this opinion. reading theory allows us to better understand the struggle for socialism, experiences of the past, recognise patterns / changes / constants. this is what the science of dialectical materialism is about.
if you approach every text like its supposed to be a revelation, of course you will be frustrated. but then isnt the issue your own attitude? without revolutionary theory you will never build a revolutionary movement
it is not a one-pager because that is not the only point of the text. Lenin also argues against Economism / right-opportunism within the left. Recognising right-opportunism is an essential skill for a party.