What Is to Be Done? A New Economic Model

Max Horkheimer (front L), Theodor Adorno (front R), and Jürgen Habermas (back R)—some of the main German Marxist scholars from the Frankfurt School in the development of critical theory—are seen at the Max Weber-Soziologentag in Heidelberg, Germany, in April 1964. Jeremy J. Shapiro/Wikimedia Commons

Commentary

What is to be done? Lenin’s 1902 question, posed as he was effecting his takeover of the Bolsheviks with an eye to absolute power in Russia, continues to echo down the decades. Lenin understood that first, the struggle for supremacy had to be won at the intellectual and theoretical level and then, when the moment was right, by direct action—i.e., violence.