Essential Works of Lenin: What Is to Be Done? and Other Writings

This is a great intro to Lenin, in his own words, so you don't have to care about anyone else's bias and you see for yourself what the man is all about. Further reading that would complement this would be 'Lenin's Struggle For A Revolutionary International'.

This is a fine introduction to the thinking of one of the few people in the world who really influenced the tide of history. Along with Leon Trotsky and the Bolshevik Party, Lenin helped establish the first state that was ruled by and for the working class. What went wrong with the revolution is best dealt with by reading Trotsky.

This book really captures the essence of Lenin's thoughts and philosophy. His most famous piece : "What Is To Be Done?" captures the turmoil that was swirling around socialism during that time and esp in Russia. His theory on the development of the class conscious and importance of professional revolutionaries were amazing and showed the vision that this genius held. It's really sad that someone such as Stalin had to destroy something as pure and just as the work of Lenin, Marx, and true socialism!!

I made an earlier jokingly one-liner that does not justice to the book- or to Lenin. What I think should looked for in this book is exactly the following: that Lenin was the first marxist ever not to consider the development of class consciousness a kind of spontaneous outgrowth of the concrete existence of a working class. Therefore the necessity for politics - specially party politics - to take precedence in marxist analysis over pure economic analysis. This jump in esentials was made by Lenin very early in life, as his _Development of Capitalism in Russia_, written in his late twenties, is still a prime piece of economicistic marxism; _What is to be done?_ is already a prime owrk of a new, politics-first, approach. One may think whatever one wants of the solutions found by Lenin - abaove all the party of professional revolutionists, disciplined and centralized, but one may not deny him the fact that it was him who first made a new kind of marxist approach to issues that is still very much with us.

This is the book to start with if you with to understand the great man who was Vladimir Ilych Lenin. This book contains 3 of Lenin's greatest works, those being What Is To Be Done?, Imperialism : The Highest Stage of Capitalism, and The State and Revolution. It also includes The Development of Capitalism in Russia, which explains what the title states. My only dissappointment with this book is that it did not contain Left-wing Communism : An Infantile Disorder. Read this book and get to know the real Vladimir Ilych Lenin.