the distinction is not one which allows us to talk in the terms that karl mannheim does, but is there because of a certain moment in capitalist production (formal subsumption, in which the so-called middle strata of managers, scientists, state personnel, knowledge-workers emerge), in which case, attention needs to be given to subsequent changes in the capitalist mode of production (real subsumption, in which those activities no longer entail a certain distance from the immediate processes of production, but become a branch of production). so, no longer is it plausible to say that intellectuals aren't workers any more than workers aren't intellectuals, even at the level of the labour process. see Marx's essay, "Results of the Immediate Process of Production" and _Capital v1_
this suggest quite emphatically that the distinction b/n intellectuals and workers is a very precise one, and not at all one which sees no changes _within_ capitalism that would impact upon any theory of the party as it brings such distinctions to bear, largely as theoretical (epistemological) or banal (it's just the way it is) justifications. that these changes also took place in an strong sense in so-called developed countries between WW1 and after WW2, suggests a strong connection between the version of socialist planning advanced by leninists and the version of the party as the conscious petty-bourgeoisie. leo panitch puts it quite explicitly (and echoing the passage from _poverty of philosophy_ i cited earlier) when he says of british socdems: "Social democratic leaders discerned the emergence [after the experience of the Depression, WW2, the defeat of fascism and a booming economy) of an efficiency-oriented managerial class which had come to appreciate the limits of an unregulated capitalism and the virtues of macroeconomic planning, welfare reforms and stable industrial relations."
moreover, so there were and are arguments between factions within the working class movement as engels insists? who ever claimed revolutionary (or even working class) consciousness amounts to homogeneity? not me, but lenin, who seems to think that THE party holds a monopoly on revolutionary consciousness. indeed, if, as engels says, the solidarity of the proletariat is accomplised by the conflicts between "different party groupings" of the proletarian movement, then this suggests clearly that the homogeneity of revolutionary consciousness attributed to one party constitutes the cessation of that development by virtue of an ontological fiat.
sectarianism pervades most politics, but unlike anarchism and marxism, leninism elevates sectarianism to a virtue, opening up _wtbd_ with a quote from lassalle (of all people!) which goes: "party struggles lend a party strength and vitality; the greatest proof of a party's weakness is its diffuseness and the blurring of clear demarcations; a party becomes stronger by purging itself." _wtbd_ is no empirical study, but the preface to and theoretical justification of a purge, specifically of the Self-Emancipation faction.
further, making a distinction between head and heart (as in the early writings of marx), and indeed saying that the each cannot be transcended without the other is definitely not a claim that revolutionary consciousness is the gift of petty-bourgeois intellectuals to the working class. what's decisive, and increasingly so in marx's writings, is not philosophy but working class struggle (which always includes both 'economic' and political' consciousness) -- what becomes an even more pronounced recognition that philosophy only becomes revolutionary by virtue of a revolutionary m/ment in _poverty of philosophy_, in distinct
contrast to what jim writes. lenin does not claim in _wtbd_ that the party is the highest level of *proletarian* consciousness. he does though mean, as jim implies here, that capitalist ideology is transcended not by workers but by petty-bourgeois intellectuals. the 'self-criticism' of "proletarian revolutions" (which engels writes of) is not the autonomy of p-b intellectuals (a la lenin in _wtbd_).
'dictatorship of the proletariat' is not the 'dictatorship over the proletariat' by a class outside it who, by virtue of the claim that they are 'beyond ideology', 'by force of rational will', rule by epistemological right as jim would have it. (is this where all that fetishism of the forces of production comes in?) the principle of self-emancipation is not nor has ever been a claim regarding the absence of violence, but in claiming a monopoly of true revolutionary consciousness for the p-b intellectuals, lenin accords them with the monopoly of violence as well.
NB: i'll say it for the last time. this has not been an argument against parties. not once. nor is the lenin of _wtbd_, who declares that parties (or rather, THE party) are run by petty-bourgeois intellectuals as the key to any 'gap' (chaz's word), commensurate with a temporal and compositional characterisation of the development of revolutionary consciousness and forms WITHIN the working class . engels makes this precise point in the passage cited by jim, when he writes of the proletarian movement 'passing through stages', luxemburg makes the same point in criticising lenin's _wtbd_. finally, jim is trying to push polemical buttons which even he knows are misplaced. never once did i say marx was an anarchist. the arguments put here througout, quoted chapter and verse, have been from marx and luxemburg. jim offers a few more from marx and engels, none of which support what he wants to strains to make them say.
Angela _________