Manifesto of the Communist Party

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>     Lew writes:
>
>     > Except that neither Marx nor Engels wrote about the Party leading
>     > the working class. This would have contradicted their often repeated
>     > claim that the working class must emancipate itself. Of course this
>     > does not rule out the need for some kind of party organisation, but
>     > it does specifically rule out a Leninist type of organisation
>     > because that sets up "sectarian principles of their own, by which to
>     > shape and mould the proletarian movement."
>
>     I agree, and just to add my $0.02US (what is that in the IMF's funny
>     money, I wonder), the (translated) text cited says that the
>     "communists are the most advanced and resolute sectors of *THE WORKING
>     CLASS PARTIES*", meaning that the working class parties constitute
>     the communists, not vice versa, as in Leninist vanguardism.
>     --
>     Curtiss

The question of what a proper relation between intellectuals and the
working class may be would emerge with or without a Leninist party, it
seems, if that's what people are concerned about.  Marx & Engels weren't
working-class guys, were they?  Neither was Rosa Luxemburg a factory girl.
Another question, which is not the same as the above, is one between
leaders and the rank & file (a huge problem in _any_ organization of more
than a handful of members).  Further, it doesn't appear that sectarianism
exists because of a particular type of organization.  It can and does exist
in non-Leninist social movements as well, as far as I can see.  I think it
is wishful-thinking to imagine that a technological solution -- conceiving
a proper organizational mode in abstraction from social & political
conditions -- would solve the fundamental question of balancing
organizational efficiency/effectiveness and democratic participation just
like that.  And the question is democracy, isn't it?

Yoshie