Marx and Engels and the Concept of the Party

Abstract

The concept of a proletarian party occupies a central position in the political thought and activity of Marx and Engels. "Against the collective power of the propertied classes", they argued, "the working class cannot act as a class except by constituting itself into a political party distinct from, and opposed to, all old parties formed from the propertied classes." This was "indispensable in order to ensure the triumph of the social revolution, and its ultimate end, the abolition of classes." Yet nowhere do the authors of the Manifesto of the Communist Party set out in systematic form a theory of the proletarian party, its nature and its characteristics any more than they do for social class or for the state, to both of which it is closely related. Moreover, within the broad general framework of their theory of class struggle and of revolution, they evolved their ideas on the forms and functions of proletarian parties as they went along, and related them to their analyses of often very different historical situations. They did not work out in advance any "plan" for the creation of a revolutionary proletarian party to which their subsequent theoretical work was geared: and at no time did they themselves establish a political party. Having already by the beginning of 1844 come theoretically to see the proletariat as the leading force for social emancipation; they were to base themselves on existing organizations created by advanced sections of that class and to condemn as sectarianism any attempt to impose pre-conceived organizational forms on the working class movement from outside. In the sphere of party building, Marx could have said as Moliere did of the plots of his plays: "Je prends mon bien o je letrouve."