Chaz cites the _manifesto_ further:
" The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other had, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletariat movement. "
and reads it as:
>This is a direct statement of their conception of the Party which is
similar to Lenin's, contra yours, on this thread. The party is
"theoretically" or intellectually the leadership of the class as a
whole.<
"most advanced and resolute" and "clearly understanding" is indeed a reference to 'consciousness', but they do not say, as Lenin said in _wtbd_, that the party is a group of "ten wise men" who are petty bourgeois intellectuals. this would be to render null and void, as lenin did, the insistence that only the working class can emancipate themselves. and, nor do they say that the communists are the leadership of the class as a whole, they say they are a "section which pushes forward all others", and the difference in the practical implications of the two can be, and has been, immense.
you accused me of slandering vlad when i wrote of his theory of the party. here's the citation again: "The history of all countries shows that the working class, *exclusively by its own effort* is able to develop *only* trade-union consciousness... The Theory of Socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical, and economic theories elaborated by *educated representatives of the propertied classes, by intellectuals*... in Russia, the theoretical doctrine of Social Democracy arose *altogether independently* of the spontaneous growth of the working class movement; it arose as a *natural and inevitable outcome of the development of thought* amongst the revolutionary socialist intelligentsia" (my emphases).
Angela _________