'What is to be done?' was written by Lenin principally in response to a growing opportunist trend within contemporary Russian Social-Democracy: Economism. Lenin, representing the revolutionary wing of Russian Social-Democracy, in 'What is to be done?' ruthlessly destroys this dangerous tendency, which believed that the working-class should carry on the economic ie trade-union struggle while a group of intellectuals carried on the political struggle. Lenin clearly expounds all the reactionary implications of this position.