I myself do not really view “What is to be Done?” as a great beginner work for Marxists, since it mentions a lot of obscure philosophers or groups that a modern audience (with their cursory knowledge of Russian history being from the lips of liberals, or worse, conservatives) would hardly know the context of, and I am reading a version that has notes on these people!

That is not to say that it is not an influential or essential work of Lenin (I think it might be up there with “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism” and “The State and Revolution” in terms of either factor), but one has to be willing to trudge through Russian names that you will likely never hear again.

  • Ronin_5@lemmygrad.ml
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    2 months ago

    Bourgeois class reproduction wouldn’t happen if the children actually saw their parents schedule their lives around going to work and earning money.

    Kids understand that people exchange labour for money because they see what their parents do. Hence, they gain an understanding of class. How do you perpetuate an alternative narrative? You separate them from an environment where people are shown to be working. You show them that money is not gained through labour, but rather it just appears when you are able to adhere to an ideal.

    The dialectic between the base and the superstructure works on a personal level as well as a societal level.