I agree with you that Gramsci didn't think of the question of intellectuals in the same manner as Marx or Lenin had; his thoughts are reflections of his historical times and different national conditions. That said, it may not be tenable to argue that Gramsci's conceptions of the Party, the intellectuals, the masses, etc. differed so much from Lenin's as to constitute a significant break. If anything, for Gramsci, the Party was more of a _total_ ("totalitarie," meaning "unified and all-absorbing") institution with many-faceted educative functions than it had been for Lenin (probably in keeping with an increasing complexity of the "civil society"). And Gramsci's formulation of the relationship between theory and practice seems, on occasions, more problematic and less democratic than Lenin's, owing to the influence of the idea of the Sorelian myth on Gramsci.
Gramsci wrote in "The Study of Philosophy" in _Prison Notebooks_:
***** One should stress the importance and significance which, in the modern world, political parties have in the elaboration and diffusion of conceptions of the world, because essentially what they do is to work out the ethics and the politics corresponding to these conceptions and act out as it were as their historical "laboratory." The parties recruit individuals out of the working mass, and the selection is made on practical and theoretical criteria at the same time. The relation between theory and practice becomes even closer the more the conception is vitally and radically innovatory and opposed to old ways of thinking. For this reason one can say that the parties are the elaborators of new integral and totalitarian intelligentsias [intellettualita totalitarie] and the crucibles where the unification of theory and practice, understood as a real historical process, takes place. It is clear from this that the parties should be formed by individual memberships and not on the pattern of the British Labor Party, because, if it is a question of providing an organic leadership for the entire economically active mass, this leadership should not follow old schemas but should innovate. But innovation cannot come from the mass, at least at the beginning, except through the mediation of an _elite_ for whom the conception implicit in human activity has already become to a certain degree a coherent and systematic ever-present awareness and a precise and decisive will. (335) *****
Also, since Gramsci has been taken up and remodelled as a kind of patron saint by some post-Marxist/anti-Leninist 'radical democrats,' it may be worth pointing out on this list that his thoughts were never very far from the question of the Party ("the Modern Prince") and democratic centralism:
***** "Organicity" can only be found in democratic centralism, which is so to speak a "centralism" in movement [in contrast to "bureaucratic centralism"] -- i.e. a continual adaptation of the organization to the real movement, a matching of thrusts from below with orders from above, a continuous insertion of elements thrown up from depths of the rank and file into the solid framework of the leadership apparatus which ensures continuity and the regular accumulation of experience. Democratic centralism is "organic" because on the one hand it takes account of movement, which is the organic mode in which historical reality reveals itself, and does not solidify mechanically into bureaucracy; and because at the same time it takes account of that which is relatively stable and permanent, or which at least moves in an easily predictable direction, etc....In parties which represent socially subaltern classes, the element of stability is necessary to ensure that hegemony will be exercised not by privileged groups but by the progressive elements -- organically progressive in relation to other forces which, though related and allied, are heterogenous and wavering.
In any case, it needs to be stressed that the unhealthy manifestations of bureaucratic centralism occurred because of a lack of initiative and responsibility at the bottom, in other words because of the political immaturity of the peripheral forces....
Democratic centralism offers an elastic formula, which can be embodied in many diverse forms; it comes alive in so far as it is interpreted and continually adopted to necessity....(188-9) *****
Yoshie