Page:Michael Velli - Manual For Revolutionary Leaders - 2nd Ed.djvu/208

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indisputable for every Bolshevik that proletarian revolutionary power or Bolshevik power—is now one and the same thing. —The self government of the producers, the dictatorship of the proletariat, or the dictatorship of educated representatives of the propertied classes, intellectuals—is now one and the same thing. The proletariat, the organization, or the leader—is now one and the same thing. When the State is accepted as the equivalent of the community, the leader as the equivalent of the people, a single individual can speak and decide for the entire community. Although the self-powers of individuals cannot be concentrated in one individual, the estranged powers can be. This follows from the theory of class consciousness. The class and the Party, the people and the leader, are one and the same thing because the Party is the consciousness of the class, the leader is the consciousness of the people. The leader is the mind and spirit, the head—eyes, ears and voice—of the population. The leader's consciousness is the people's consciousness. What the leader decides, the proletariat decides. The seizure of the State apparatus gives the leader the power to make all decisions independently and creatively, the power to make history. This decision-making power in the hands of the leader is the historical form in which the working people engage in independent creative activity as makers of history. Since the leader and the Party are the consciousness, the head, the essence of the working class, since the Party and the class is now one and the same thing, the advancement of the Party is the same as the advancement of the class.

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