advantage of the people. Most important, he builds a cadre of men who share those beliefs and principles and who are the new helmsmen. —Therefore, it is very necessary that out of pure instinct of self-preservation the movement—as soon as it is crowned by success—immediately limits the admission of members , and further carries out the enlarging of its organization only with the utmost caution and after the most thorough examination. Only by this will it be able to preserve the nucleus of the movement unspoilt, fresh and sound. —The Party is part of the working class, namely, its most advanced, class-conscious, and therefore most revolutionary part. —It has to see to it that solely this nucleus continues to lead the movement, that means directs the propaganda which is to lead to its general recognition and which, as the incorporator of power, carries out those actions which are necessary for the practical realization of its ideas. —The Party is formed of the best, most intelligent, self-sacrificing and far-seeing workers. The Party is the organized political lever by means of which the more advanced part of the working class leads all the proletarian and semi-proletarian mass in the right direction. By internalizing the power of the party, by conferring on it the legitimacy of authority, human beings simultaneously internalize their own powerlessness. Every act which lies within the sphere of influence of the party is out of bounds for an individual. Individuals not only view the wielding of their own powers over the environment as illegitimate; they come to feel themselves unable to wield these powers: the party is able to do everything, the individual is unable to do anything. —Only a cadre form of organization can maintain the discipline necessary for political work under present conditions while simultaneously developing creative new approaches to struggle. —Out of the basic stock of the old movement, the party has to fill not only all the most important positions of the conquered structure, but also to form the entire leadership. And this has to be continued until the previous principles and doctrines of the party have become the foundation and the content of the new State. —Exactly that is what Lenin called for in What is to be done? (a centralized party of professional revolutionaries and anti-autocratic agitation among all classes). —Now it is manifest that the concept of dictatorship is the direct antithesis of the concept democracy. —The dictatorship of the proletariat, whose theoretical foundations were laid by Marx and Lenin, rapidly becomes a dictatorship of the top group of the Party leadership. —Leadership depends upon what we may term the PSYCHOLOGY OF ORGANIZATION ITSELF, that is to say, upon the tactical and technical necessities which result from the consolidation of every disciplined political aggregate. —A revolutionary (read negation of the negation) understands not only the pattern of social oppression, and recognizes the evil, but also has defined more carefully the way to overcome it.
95
