Relationship Among Masses, Classes, the Party and Leadership

A major question of the proletarian party building.

Lenin pointed out in “Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder that the masses are split into classes. In most cases, at least in modern civilized countries, a class is usually led by a political party. Plus, “political parties are usually directed led by a more or less stable groups composed of the most authoritative, influential, experienced members who are elected to the most responsible positions and are called leaders. All this is elementary. This is Lenin’s scientific account of the interrelationship between the masses, classes, the party, and the leaders of the party, based on the Marxist theory of party building and the Russian experience: (1) In a class society, the masses, classes, and parties are inseparable. The masses are divided into different classes due to their different economic status, and the development of class struggle to a certain stage inevitably produces political parties of different classes. Political parties are the centralized representatives of the interests of the class and constitute the leading force in the class struggle. Then, political parties in the modern bourgeois society are invariably class-based, invariably class-interest oriented, has class character and thus fundamentally different from the political estates, cliques or factions which existed in the pre-capitalist societies. Therefore, non-class, supra-class political parties, as well as non-class, supra-class masses, and does not exist in reality. (2) The relationships among the political parties, classes, leaders, and masses are not antagonistic. The political parties of the class, the organizers, and leaders of any class, have their own political programs and leaderships, which lead the class and the masses to fight for state power and strive to become the ruling party in order to defend and realize their fundamental interests and goals of struggle. For example, the opposition in the Communist Party of Germany raised the questions: Who is to exercise this dictatorship: the Communist Party or the proletarian class? Should we strive for a dictatorship of the Communist Party (the party of the leaders), or for a dictatorship of the proletarian class (the party of the masses)? Lenin answered: “Such a formulation proves that this Party’s ideology was hopelessly confused and can artificially lead to a confrontation and division”. (3) The selection and role of the leaders collective. Leaders are democratically elected from among people who are considered the most credible, influential, and experienced by the practical test of the masses, rather than appointed, self-appointed and natural. They form a more stable group and exercise collective leadership to pool their wisdom, work together and gain experience, rather than individual dictatorship or rotating in shifts with one master and one gang. They assume the most responsible positions, and their role is to direct the party, that is, to assume major tasks for mastering or handling, not to be dominant, much less to be master, which is fundamentally different from “dictatorship of leaders”.

The masses, the class, the political party, and the leadership are a kind of development process of progressive layers that gradually forms the core and plays a leading role. Accordingly, the leaders group both represents and as well as subordinate to the whole political party, the political party represents and obeys the class, and the class represents and obeys the broader masses, that is, representing the vast majority of people, relying on the vast majority of people, and serves the vast majority of people. The four are interrelated and interact with each other. Here the proletarian party will deserve to be the vanguard and be the leading core only if it can learn to link the leadership and the class, the leaders and the masses into a whole, into an inseparable system.