Charles, this is a distortion. My position is simply that works like "What is to be Done" are irrelevant to building the socialist movement today. They should be of interest to scholars, but we should be writing our own version of such articles today.
Lenin made the same point himself in 1907, not four years after the famous "split" conference:
"Concerning the essential content of this pamphlet it is necessary to draw the attention of the modern (!) reader to the following. The basic mistake made by those who now criticize 'What is to be Done' is to treat the pamphlet apart from its connection with the concrete historical situation of a definite, and now long past, period in the development of our Party."
If Lenin described the 1907 period as "now long past", what does that say about left-wing groups and individuals who treat this pamphlet as some kind of organizational handbook in 1998?
Not only do I feel this way about "What is to be Done," I think that dogmatism and scholasticism in general are the bane of the left. When you asked me to come up with a reply to your argument that "One Step Forward, Two Steps Upside Down" was a rebuttal to my arguments, I wasn't even interested in an answer to you at that point. If I attempted to answer you, it would accept the legitimacy of such a challenge. I have never read "One Step Backwards, Two Steps Downstairs" and have no plans to.
The Russian revolutionary movement had ferocious debates about organizational questions and I find most of them utterly forgettable. Lenin called Trotsky an opportunist because of his differences over democratic centralism. Luxemberg called Lenin an aspiring bureaucrat because of his party-building concepts. I find most of the discussion highly arcane and pointless to our purposes today. The Stalinists always used Lenin's stinging replies to Trotsky on these questions as proof that he was a counter-revolutionary. Meanwhile, when Lenin called for a revolution in April 1917, Trotsky backed him and all the people who had "correct" positions on the organization question supported Kerensky.
All my research into this period has been conducted in order to prove that there is NO continuity with the tasks we face today. My position is similar to the one expressed by Alan Wald in a series of articles in Against the Current, where he urged a break with the "Leninist" model. The whole purpose of the Marxism list I have started is to make a clean break with dogma and scholasticism along these lines.
I am not interested in debating Maoists or Trotskyites who are interested in dividing people along factional lines as to which side they supported in the Spanish Civil War, or how they view the Transitional Program, etc. I am trying to promote a vision of Marxism that is rooted in the class struggle of 1998, as my writings should make clear. When I write about the class contradictions facing gypsies, there is no need for me to quote Marx. I have read all the Marx I need to read to explain the problems facing gypsies. Discussion of how to interpret Marx or Lenin or Trotsky or Mao is for people with a scholastic bent, not me.
You are welcome to try to get other people interested in having debates with you along those lines, just count me out.
Louis Proyect
(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)