1. The Myth of the Vanguard Party, or the Party as God

The Russian Revolution, which began with the nostalgic October, stands before us as the greatest grotesque tragedy in history. The subject of the world revolution has now transformed into the subject of its suppression, confronting us in this altered form. What else could this be but a mockery of human reason?

This process of degeneration, needless to say, was a bloody and fierce struggle within the party, both inside and outside Russia. Many party members, intuitively sensing the crisis of the revolution, bravely resisted this degeneration with their lives on the line, only to fall in the end. Yet, due to the illusions they held about the party organization, how constrained their resistance was! Not only that—because of their worship of the party organization, how many party members, despite feeling contradictions, failed to rise in resistance! They were bound, as if by a spell, by the incantation of the party statutes.

Moreover, the myth of the vanguard party, or the party as a god, is by no means a thing of the past. Even for communists who emerged as a new vanguard while criticizing Stalinism, the inevitability of Stalinism’s emergence remains largely shrouded in a veil of mystery. And how often do the organizations they themselves create, almost imperceptibly, come to resemble Stalinist party organizations!

Thus, we who live in the great transitional world of today must say, in a sense different from what Marx stated: “A specter is haunting the world—the specter of the party as a god.” This specter continues to devour the hearts of communists relentlessly.

The vanguard party was supposed to be an organization of communists consciously and self-consciously undertaking the world-historical task of the working class to abolish the despotism and exploitation of capital and liberate all humanity, leading all classes toward its realization. As such, it was meant to embody freedom based on the scientific recognition of necessity. Yet, ironically, party members became possessed by the myth of the vanguard party, kneeling before the party as a god. Communists became dominated and manipulated by the very vanguard party organization they created, losing their freedom and remaining incapable of achieving it. And how can those who cannot objectively recognize themselves—those who are not free with respect to themselves—possibly accomplish the liberation of all humanity?

A mountain of criticism has already been leveled against the Leninist-Stalinist party organization theory.

Until now, the tragedy of the Bolshevik Party has often been seen as the inevitable consequence of “substitutionism.” While acknowledging the organizational principle of Leninist-Stalinist democratic centralism, critics have tended to advocate for the restoration of intra-party democracy, which was trampled underfoot by Stalin. However, as this critique deepens, it inevitably leads to the rejection of party dictatorship and the restoration of proletarian democracy—or even to the denial of proletarian dictatorship itself as a concrete form of class domination. Indeed, this is already happening. And insofar as this is the case, the critique of “substitutionism” reveals its own limits. For, in the end, it converges with democratic socialism—that is, the worst form of opportunism, which amounts to doing nothing at all.

Recently, however, a noteworthy new critique has emerged: one that questions and seeks to reject the very organizational principle of Leninist-Stalinist democratic centralism itself. This tendency, too, currently exists in several variants, some of which even give rise to the rejection of party organization altogether.

Moreover, it must be said that the weight of new revolutionary practices lies behind this new critique.

First, the Cuban Revolution and the Latin American guerrilla struggles it inspired sharply exposed how established vanguard party organizations had become shackles on guerrilla warfare. “First, there is the movement” became the watchword of guerrilla fighters, and their image of the party, while varied, is markedly negative.

Second, the Chinese Cultural Revolution revived the dynamism of the Chinese Revolution by smashing the established party—by disregarding formal procedures in intra-party struggles, or rather, through mass struggles. Here, the slogan “To rebel is justified” was loudly proclaimed, and the party itself—nay, the party above all—became the target of rebellion.

Third, in France and Italy, it was not established vanguard organizations but “action committees” and “grassroots committees” that created revolutionary fervor. Their organizational principles were fundamentally different from those of established vanguard organizations. Moreover, the most dynamically revolutionary segments among them strongly resisted and rejected the image of “a party outside the movement, leading it.”

Fourth, in Japan, too, the “All-Campus Joint Struggle Committees” (Zenkyōtō) movement became the main force in the escalation of the 1970 Anti-Security Treaty class struggle. Its organizational principles were akin to those of the “action committees” and “grassroots committees,” fundamentally different from those of established vanguard party organizations—including those of the New Left.

Through these revolutionary practices, the specter of the party as a god received its first fatal blow. However, in none of these cases has the party organization been fully and universally clarified. At present, only fragments or intuitions are being articulated, and at best, they take the negative form of rejecting established party organizations. As long as this is the case, the specter of the party as a god has not truly been laid to rest.

What this essay aims to undertake is nothing less than exorcising this specter—putting an end to the specter of the party as a god. However, this cannot be achieved through mere ideological critique of organizational dogma. Recent noteworthy revolutionary practices demand that we reexamine the fundamental question of what a revolutionary organization is. Only by consciously addressing this question can the true form of the vanguard party organization necessary for the proletarian revolution be revealed, and thus, the specter of the deified party organization be vanquished. Therefore, exorcising the specter must simultaneously involve the positive development of a party organization.

2. The Infallibility of the Vanguard Party

So, what is the true nature of this spectre of the party as a god?

Above all, it is, first, the definition of the organization’s fundamental character as “the party is the vanguard of the working class and represents the interests of the entire class,” particularly its present tense, which asserts an eternal, unchanging truth.

Second, it is the organizational principle of “democratic centralism” and the inseparable written statutes that embody it.

The first point that must be confirmed is that the definition “the party is the vanguard of the working class and represents the interests of the entire class,” particularly its present tense asserting eternal truth, is the very foundation for the establishment of the myth of infallibility, which saps the vitality of the revolution.

“The party is the vanguard of the working class and represents the interests of the entire class.” What, then, does it mean for someone outside the party to oppose its leadership? Regardless of their subjective intentions, objectively, they are a counterrevolutionary who undermines the interests of the class. And what about someone within the party who persistently opposes the party leadership? Objectively, they are nothing less than a malicious counterrevolutionary seeking to destroy the party from within. By repeatedly chanting such incantations, the Kremlin eventually became, for the Comintern parties, an infallible Vatican-like entity closest to God, and the leaderships of the various Comintern parties became a system of infallible archbishops and parish priests subcontracting for it. Along with this, Marxism-Leninism, as a living scientific theory of communism, withered into a dry dogma, with the Kremlin monopolizing the right to interpret its scriptures. Social scientific disputes were arbitrated by Stalin, and social scientific analysis was reduced to a tool for rationalizing and explaining party directives. However, proclaiming “infallibility” does not mean the Kremlin or the various party leaderships could always be infallible in reality. Thus, the Kremlin repeatedly offered scapegoats on the altar of God to atone for its errors and mobilized court scholars to rewrite inconvenient history.

The establishment of this myth of infallibility killed the revolutionary spontaneity and agency of the masses outside the party, fostering a lifeless dependence on a mystified party. Within the party, it similarly stifled the revolutionary spontaneity and agency of some party members, creating a lifeless dependence on higher-ranking party members. Many among the masses, both inside and outside the party, held legitimate doubts—doubts that were the very driving force for correcting and advancing the party’s understanding and actions—yet these doubts withered before the revolutionary authority of the party and its leadership or were suppressed by fear of the inquisition. Thus, a distinctive type of communist emerged: one who, cloaked in the party’s authority, was arrogant toward the masses outside the party but timid and servile toward higher-ranking party members—a hypocritical pastor-like figure that became widespread.

The horrific tragedy that the myth of infallibility brought to the party and the revolution is now well-known. But what went wrong? What is necessary to liberate ourselves from the myth of infallibility? The definition that “the party is the vanguard of the working class and represents the interests of the entire class” has been inherited without question in the programs of revolutionary parties since the Communist Manifesto. However, shortly after the first proletarian revolution in world history succeeded, and a party basking in the glory of that revolution emerged, this definition of the revolutionary party became the foundation for the myth of infallibility. This cannot help but cast doubt on the inadequacy of the definition itself.

In fact, “being the vanguard and representing the interests of the entire class” is merely a definition of the positive aspect of the revolutionary party—the revolutionary quality required of the party and the quality it constantly strives to realize. At the same time, the revolutionary party inevitably possesses a negative aspect—a bourgeois quality that differs from the required quality and hinders its realization. The real revolutionary party is a contradiction composed of these two mutually constraining aspects, a process of their conflict.

The fact that the real revolutionary party is such a contradiction, a process of conflict between these two aspects, becomes immediately clear when we reexamine what communism is and what communists are.

What is communism? It is a utopian thought of human liberation, but one pursued with the aim of realizing this utopia on earth. However, it is by no means a sudden idea or invention that flashed into the mind of a great philosopher, scientist, or revolutionary leader, nor is it something “externally injected” into the working class. It is nothing other than the theorization and systematization of the reality and practice of the working class in capitalist society (Communist Manifesto), assisting in the organization and unification of the working class’s understanding and guiding its struggle toward ultimate victory.

First, the struggle of the working class is rooted in the contradiction of the capital-wage labor relationship inherent to capitalism, bearing an essentially antagonistic and anti-systemic character against capitalism itself.

As is well-known, capital establishes itself as an independent social entity on the premise of the commodification of labor power. However, the labor power commodification contract establishes humans, previously submerged in spontaneous communal relations without agency, as independent, free commodity sellers and private individuals for the first time, while simultaneously denying their independence and agency in the labor production process through this very form. Consequently, labor in the factory becomes alienated labor, a daily negation of the agency of workers established as subjects. Resistance struggles by the working class against capital, which dominates and exploits as a subject in this context, were inevitable. Because of this resistance, labor power as a commodity, despite being a prerequisite for capital’s value augmentation, cannot be freely utilized by capital even after purchase—it appears as an essential constraint. However, capital, to crush this resistance, contain it within permissible limits, and establish its domination, exploitation, and self-valorizing subjectivity, introduced the mechanical system and the masses. The mechanical system, as an application of natural science to objectify human labor’s productive capacity, dismantled individual skills, decisively separating humans from their recognition of nature as labor-producing subjects. On this basis, it further established humans as independent, collaborative subjects in relation to other humans. However, the mechanical capitalist form, by utilizing the objectification of human labor’s productive capacity, advances the separation of mental and physical labor, turning humans into slaves of machines—“talking machines”—and stably realizing capital’s domination and exploitation in the labor production process. The mechanization of production methods through improvements and rationalization further deprives workers of the skills remaining in their hands, deepening their alienation with every step. Thus, the struggle of the working class in capitalist society is essentially a non-reconcilable, anti-systemic struggle for the self-liberation of the universal and collective labor-production subject, dominated and exploited.

However, second, this struggle of the working class does not directly manifest its essential character. This is because capital’s domination and exploitation in the labor production process are mediated by labor power commodification and thus veiled by commodity exchange relations. On the surface of civil society, the antagonistic class relationship between capitalists and workers dissolves into commodity exchange relations, where both relate merely as free and equal citizens and commodity traders. Consequently, their class struggle naturally appears as a transactional struggle over private, specific interests—wages, working hours, labor intensity, or democratic rights—and nothing more. It goes without saying that such struggles, by their form, become reformist and intra-systemic, presupposing capitalism and its “law and order.”

Therefore, third, the spontaneous struggles of the working class cannot remain confined within the framework of civil transactional struggles and their reformist, intra-systemic nature.

The working class, separated from their places of residence through labor power commodification, is concentrated in large-scale production processes—factories—and organized by capitalists into an industrial army. Consequently, their struggle inevitably becomes one based on the production process—the factory. Even though the working class, deluded by commodity exchange relations, perceives its struggle as reformist and intra-systemic, presupposing capitalism and its “law and order,” their primary methods of struggle—sabotage and strikes—already constitute resistance and rebellion against the capitalist’s domination and control within the production process, what Marx called a “hidden civil war.” When crises such as wars or currency system collapses inevitably strike, and capitalists and their state power refuse to accommodate workers’ demands or impose intolerable disadvantages, the working class, though still reformist and intra-systemic in the form of its consciousness and demands, is driven into confrontation with the system itself in content. At this stage, their struggle shifts from strengthened pickets to factory occupations, making rebellion against capitalism and its “law and order” their primary method of struggle. Upon reaching this stage, the working class’s struggle, confronting capitalists and their state power attempting to crush it, transforms into armed struggle—armed struggle directly based on the production process, where the production organization itself becomes an armed organization. It confronts the centralized state power of the capitalist class, organized as an armed entity separate from individual economic exploitation processes, as a labor-production subject and self-power. Thus, the working class’s struggle ultimately reveals its fully antagonistic and anti-systemic character, presenting a stark choice: its own death or the death of capitalism itself.

In the course of this development of the working class’s struggle, the working masses, initially deluded by commodity relations and possessing a civil consciousness, have their civil consciousness fundamentally shaken by the practical reality of their struggle. No matter how reformist in form, their struggle, by exceeding the bounds permitted by “law and order,” provokes ruthless suppression by the capitalist class and state power, inevitably exposing the class nature and true face of “law and order” and the state power that maintains it. Through such experiences, the working masses gradually develop revolutionary sentiments, representations, and intuitions that contradict their prior civil consciousness, spontaneously giving rise to revolutionary methods and organizations of struggle.

Communism is precisely the purposeful organization and theorization of the revolutionary sentiments, representations, and intuitions cultivated by the working masses in their struggles, as well as the methods and organizations of struggle born from them. In other words, it elevates the sensual consciousness of the revolutionary working masses—still largely unconscious and fragmented—to rational recognition. As such, communism provides clear purpose and consciousness to the working masses’ struggle, promotes its revolutionary development, prevents it from repeating the same errors, and guides it toward final victory.

Thus, due to the duality of its position in capitalist society, the working class inevitably differentiates into two distinct parts in consciousness and action: a civil, intra-systemic part and a revolutionary part (though, as becomes clear later, there is a significant discrepancy between the two). These two parts are mutually antagonistic, and thus, the real working class is a contradiction composed of these two aspects, a process of their conflict.

Communists are those who possess a clear communist consciousness and stand at the forefront of the revolutionary working masses to fight for the realization of communism, and the revolutionary party is nothing other than the organization of these communists.

However, communists and the revolutionary party cannot escape the contradictions and conflicts of the working class itself.

This is because, to reaffirm, the foundation of communism lies in the infinitely rich revolutionary practice of the working masses, and communism is merely the theorization of that practice. As such, communism inevitably bears the character of Minerva’s owl, which takes flight at dusk. That is, in its universal theoretical nature, it can only pursue absolute truth as a relative truth, and in its individual concreteness, it cannot fully grasp the infinite particulars. Thus, while it can foresee the future of communism and revolution in principle and strategy, it must constantly chase the rich reality of practice. Consequently, real communists are constrained by their communist understanding. As long as they are constrained, communists are, to varying degrees, blind, and being blind, they inevitably retain, to varying degrees, a civil consciousness within themselves, living as they do in civil society.

Moreover, communists cannot avoid the powerful infiltration of civil consciousness from the civil daily life in which they are immersed. The repetition of external human relationships in civil daily life generates civil sentiments, representations, and intuitions with terrifying force, further constructing them into a systematic civil ideology.

Thus, real communists and the revolutionary party also possess both revolutionary communist and civil intra-systemic qualities, constituting a contradiction of these two aspects, a process of their conflict.

Therefore, a scientific party organization that overcomes the vanguard myth must be developed not as an idealistic notion of godlike communists but as a contradiction as it exists in reality—a process of conflict between revolutionary and bourgeois qualities.

3. “Democratic Centralism” as the Organizational Principle of the “Rule of Law State”

Next, we turn to “democratic centralism,” the organizational principle commonly adopted by revolutionaries worldwide since Marx in the First International and Lenin. In reality, this is none other than the universal organizational principle of modern bourgeois society as a “rule of law state.” The revolutionary party’s unreflective adoption of itself as a “rule of law state” and “democratic centralism” as its organizational principle was the primary subjective cause of its facile degeneration into a bourgeois form.

“Democratic centralism” is not a novel organizational principle for those of us living in modern imperialist society. Is not the organizational principle of the modern state apparatus itself democratic centralism? Is not the organizational principle of the corporation, as an institution of finance capital, also democratic centralism? Furthermore, is not the organizational principle of powerful labor unions democratic centralism as well? And finally, is not even the organizational principle of modern Marxist universities democratic centralism?

Let us first examine the state apparatus.

The immensely vast modern state apparatus is constituted by citizens—formally autonomous legal subjects and inviolable private property owners—residing in a given territory, as its constitutive subjects. It consists of the executive and legislative powers created through their contract, namely the administrative bureaucratic apparatus (including its ornamental appendage, the judiciary) and the parliament.

The administrative bureaucratic apparatus, with the police and military as its backbone of coercive force, is nothing other than the mechanism for politically dominating and governing the sovereign citizens (nation). However, this governance is not exercised through naked violence but takes the form of maintaining and enforcing abstract, universal law.

This administrative bureaucratic apparatus adopts centralism as its organizational principle. That is, it is organized based on the law that structures the state apparatus itself, through the appointment of citizens as public officials, and its internal structure exhibits the following characteristics:

(1) Necessary regular activities for the organization are distributed as specific duties.

(2) The organization of these duty-performing institutions follows the principle of authoritarian hierarchy, or in other words, the principle of command and obedience from top to bottom, forming a pyramid structure such as cabinet–ministry–bureau–department–section.

(3) Its activities, as the maintenance and enforcement of the law, are conducted under a permanent system of abstract rules composed of the law itself and administrative orders derived from it, taking the form of applying these rules to individual cases.

(4) The determination of officials’ duties is also by appointment, protected from arbitrary dismissal, and accompanied by an objective system of promotion based on seniority or merit.

(5) The performance of individual duties for law enforcement relies on external discipline—such as work regulations—based on the authority of higher institutions.

(6) The authority of higher institutions depends on their evaluation of duties and sanctions imposed on lower institutions.

(7) Ultimately, the authority of higher institutions and their evaluation and sanctions on lower institutions are supported by the coercive apparatus for maintaining the legal order.

In contrast, the parliament is the legislative institution, tasked with establishing the law as the universal will of the sovereign citizens (nation), and it adopts democracy as its organizational principle. That is, the parliament is elected through the formally equal one-person-one-vote majority rule, organized by representatives entrusted with the citizens’ will for a certain period. Furthermore, within the parliament, the head of the executive power—the cabinet—is selected, and laws are enacted through the same formally equal one-person-one-vote majority rule. The laws enacted, apart from those structuring the state apparatus itself, can be broadly divided into civil and criminal laws, which serve as universal conditions for citizens’ pursuit of private interests, and economic, social, and labor laws, which regulate the conflicting private interests of citizens’ contractual collectives (pressure groups) and endow them with the form of universal interest (“national interest” or “public welfare”).

In this way, through such democratic law-making, the sovereign citizens, as the constitutive subjects of the state, imbue state governance with the character of self-governance.

As is evident from the above, the modern bourgeois state and its democratic centralism are fundamentally defined by the citizens who form its foundation and constitutive subjects.

To confirm once more, citizens are nothing other than formally autonomous private individuals, bearers of inviolable private property rights. As such, citizens act to pursue private interests and relate to one another externally only as means. Therefore, while citizens may possess the social or organizational principles necessary for their private interest-oriented activities, they lack the means to directly realize these principles through their actions.

Thus, first, citizens’ self-governance must take the mediated form of domination by abstract, universal law, externalized from themselves, and they must entrust the judgment and enforcement of this law to a public third party. In other words, the fundamental characteristic of citizens’ self-governance is the form of a “rule of law state.”

Second, since citizens engage directly only in private activities, the organization of the state itself must rely, on the one hand, on the principle of command and obedience—centralism—for the administrative bureaucratic apparatus that maintains and enforces the law, and on the other hand, on the principle of majority rule based on formally equal one-person-one-vote—democracy—for the parliament that establishes the law. Citizens are externally compelled to maintain and enforce the law through commands, and through majority rule, they externally establish the law as a formally universal will—Rousseau’s “general will”—despite the lack of internal consensus among them.

Third, as a result, in the modern bourgeois state, decision-making and execution are separated. This separation of decision-making and execution first means that the sovereign citizens (nation) as the constitutive subjects are excluded from directly being the agents of execution. They are the governed, and the governed have only obedience. They participate in decision-making and exercise their sovereignty only through elections every few years or through the pressure activities of interest groups. Moreover, this separation of decision-making and execution is not merely formal. In reality, the largest and most powerful interest group is none other than the political ruling class merged with the economic ruling class—monopoly corporate executives merged with senior military officers and bureaucrats—who form the power elite that effectively controls the decision-making and execution of this formally universal state apparatus. Modern legislation is largely delegated legislation, entrusting details to the administrative apparatus, significantly expanding the discretionary power of the power elite. The universal formation of the parliament serves as a means to endow this power elite with the universality of the “general will” of the nation, thereby ideologically absorbing, integrating, and manipulating the populace.

Next, the corporation.

The corporation, as the institution of finance capital, the dominant capital of modern imperialism, follows the same principles as the state apparatus described above.

The corporation is also a kind of “rule of law state,” with citizens as shareholders as its constitutive subjects, consisting of the law enforcement and legislative institutions created through their contract—namely, the management and production apparatus and the shareholders’ general meeting. The former adopts centralism, and the latter adopts democracy as its organizational principle. The exclusion of workers at the production site from shareholders and the fact that voting is based on one-share-one-vote rather than one-person-one-vote may indicate an incomplete democracy, but this does not fundamentally alter the institution’s character. Moreover, in recent years, alongside the democratization and popularization of shareholding, employee stock ownership plans have become widespread.

However, democracy here, too, serves to endow the dominant group of major shareholders—the corporate elite—with the form of the collective will of shareholders, thereby absorbing, integrating, and manipulating small shareholders—and, if possible, even employees. Observe the farce of the shareholders’ general meeting!

What about labor unions?

At first glance, this organization of the working class may seem distinct, but it, too, is a kind of “rule of law state,” with workers as citizens—owners of the meager private property of their labor power—as its constitutive subjects. It consists of the executive and legislative institutions created through their contract—namely, the executive committee (or standing committee) with a secretariat and the delegate conference. The former adopts centralism, and the latter adopts democracy as its organizational principle. While the development of the former as a bureaucratic apparatus is relatively small, and thus the formalization of the latter is also relatively minor, this does not change the essence of the matter. Moreover, as unions grow larger, secretariats and other structures are established, and bureaucratization progresses. Do we not increasingly hear the loud voice of the union executive demanding, “Follow the decision”? Do we not notice the increasingly frequent bureaucratic sanctions, such as disciplinary actions? Even if such sanctions are approved at a delegate conference, the form of the delegate conference is, in reality, a means to endow the decisions of the union bureaucracy—the union elite—with the universal form of the collective will of union members, thereby absorbing, integrating, and manipulating them.

Ultimately, in the democratic centralism of labor unions, we find the same characteristics as those of the modern state.

In labor unions, workers, as citizens—that is, as owners of labor power commodities differing by trade or seniority—relate to one another externally only as such. They hold conflicting private interests regarding the conditions of commodity sales by trade or seniority, seeking to outmaneuver one another. Therefore, they require a public third party to bear the “public law” of the union, separating decision-making and execution. On the one hand, they take the form of actions directed by the executive, and on the other, they regulate conflicting private interests through majority rule based on one-person-one-vote, endowing the regulated private interests with the universal form of the collective will of union members. This separation of decision-making and execution ultimately establishes the domination of the union bureaucracy—the union elite.

Is there any doubt about this? Slogans such as “union democratization” or “making the union belong to everyone” themselves vividly illustrate the union’s transformation. Moreover, this transformation does not arise from the tyranny of union bureaucrats but from the very nature of the union as a systemic organization, a nature shared with the state, corporations, and so forth. We cannot overlook this.

However, it must not be overlooked that labor unions, as organizations of workers in the production process, often exhibit—particularly in fierce struggles during crises—another character as revolutionary organizations resisting capital’s domination and exploitation and the “law and order” that guarantees it, beyond their character as civil society organizations. This finds organizational expression in expanded mediation committees, strike executive committees, and youth action teams. However, these are fundamentally different from the organizational character of civil society organizations. Consequently, when these elements come to the forefront, labor unions inevitably face division. Their existence is tolerated within unions only in their embryonic stage, as temporary supplements to regular institutions.

Finally, the university.

This organization of research and higher education, cloaked in the remnants of medieval ideology, was until recently a beautiful community of teacher-student camaraderie—or at least pretended to be. However, with student rebellions—dare I say—the university, having already lost its substance, has sold itself off in the course of its modernization. Now, as a mammoth institution, it has begun to recognize itself as an organization established by the contract of its constitutive subjects, teachers and students. The relationships between teachers, between teachers and students, and among students have become nothing more than cold, transactional give-and-take relationships.

Thus, the university is no longer a dominion of truth but a dominion of “the rule of law.” Here, there is an executive institution headed by a board of trustees and a decision-making institution headed by a faculty council, which are the administrative bureaucratic apparatus and parliament of the university. The former adopts centralism, and the latter adopts democracy as its organizational principle. Even if the executive institution is dualized into education and administration, or if students, staff, and assistants are excluded from the decision-making institution, these are mere variants. Has not “participation” recently become a trend in universities?

Let us reaffirm: “Democratic centralism” is the universal organizational principle of the institutions and mechanisms of modern bourgeois society, characterized as a “rule of law state,” from the state to corporations, labor unions, and universities—precisely the organizational principle that the revolution seeks to abolish. In every case, it is fundamentally defined by its constitutive subjects and foundation: formally autonomous private individuals, bearers of inviolable private property rights. That is, citizens pursuing private interests cannot directly govern themselves within the organization. Therefore, their self-governance must externalize an abstract, universal law, taking the indirect form of “rule of law,” and they must entrust the judgment and enforcement of this law to a public third party. Moreover, since citizens engage only in private activities, this public third party’s organization must adopt, on the one hand, the principle of command and obedience—centralism—for the enforcement institution, and on the other hand, the principle of majority rule based on voting—democracy—for the legislative institution. This separation of decision-making and execution, through its sleight of hand, ideologically absorbs, integrates, and manipulates the citizen masses, who are formally the subjects, into the decision-making and execution process of the true subjects—the power elite.

This immediately raises a question.

The revolutionary party is, by definition, a revolutionary party. It exists within civil society to abolish and revolutionize civil society itself. Should such a revolutionary party organize itself in the likeness of the enemy it seeks to abolish? Can a diminutive revolutionary party, like Issun-boshi (a Japanese folk tale character), possess the strength and organizational power to crush an enemy wielding the greatest coercive apparatus in history? Moreover, is there any guarantee that the revolutionary party itself will not, imperceptibly, degenerate into a systemic party dominated by bureaucrats—a party elite—engaging in essentially conservative, status-quo-preserving activities, becoming just another organization of bourgeois society?

The experience of the Russian Revolution provides a clear answer: no, to both questions.

The secret of the Bolsheviks’ strength in leading the October Revolution to victory did not lie in their professed organizational principle—democratic centralism. If we dismantle the fabrications concocted by Stalinist historians, it becomes clear that the true driving force from mass rebellion to insurrection was the revolutionary masses themselves, unleashing and surging with their own energy. The Bolshevik party leadership was consistently overtaken by these masses and, under Lenin’s guidance, barely managed to avoid being swept away, securing hegemony only at the decisive moment. Party congresses were entirely useless in this process, and while the Central Committee did make the decision for the insurrection, its execution—disregarding Lenin’s organizational principles—relied on the direct interventions and intimidation by young party activists in the districts, bypassing the Central Committee. Furthermore, it is an undeniable historical fact that democratic centralism did not prevent the bourgeois degeneration of the Bolshevik Party. On the contrary, it was a significant cause of this degeneration. This is because, fundamentally, the party’s basic operational methods—indirect one-person-one-vote elections and directives from higher organs—were not suitable for organizing the dynamic driving force of the revolution. As such, they left a significant gap for the infiltration of bourgeois, civil consciousness and practices and the establishment of elite bureaucratic domination over the masses, without any conscious safeguards against this danger.

Ultimately, for Russia under Tsarist autocracy, democracy represented a new principle, and Lenin, without clarifying the bourgeois limitations of democracy itself, uncritically adopted the organizational principles of the already heavily systemic German Social Democratic Party and other Second International parties.

Surely, Lenin did not envision an organization of revolutionaries as citizens or communists as citizens. He must have intended an organization of revolutionaries as revolutionaries, of communists as communists. If so, he should have made this the cornerstone of his party organization theory. He needed to clearly identify the specific formal determinations of bourgeois society’s organizations and their organizational principle of democratic centralism, strip away these formal determinations, and establish a new revolutionary organization and its principles.

Examining Lenin’s theory and actions from this perspective, we find that, on the one hand, in State and Revolution, he began—albeit imperfectly—to define democracy as a form of bourgeois domination, paying attention to its formal determinations. On the other hand, he suggested, by stating that “revolutionariness is the best health of the party,” an organizational principle for the party distinct from democratic centralism. Additionally, the party statutes included so-called “exception clauses,” allowing the disregard of statutory provisions under certain circumstances. In practice, too, at several decisive moments when the revolution’s life or death was at stake, Lenin showed no hesitation in breaking his own organizational principles to implement the policies necessary for the revolution.

4. What Is a Revolutionary Organization?—Action Committees, Grassroots Committees, All-Campus Joint Struggle Committees, and the Party—

If “democratic centralism” is the universal organizational principle of modern bourgeois society’s institutions, characterized as a “rule of law state” through written constitutions or statutes, what organizational principle should the revolutionary party adopt? However, to answer this question, we must first fundamentally reexamine what a revolutionary organization is and what distinguishes it from the systemic organizations of bourgeois society.

As previously confirmed, the working class, due to the duality of its position in capitalist society, inevitably differentiates into two essentially distinct parts in consciousness and action: a civil, systemic part and a revolutionary, communist part. However, this does not fully apply to action (struggle). Civil, systemic action naturally organizes itself into labor unions or social democratic parties. But how does revolutionary, communist action organize itself into a distinct organization?

Historically, these have been the Soviets and Räte (workers’ councils); in recent experience, they are France’s “Action Committees,” Italy’s “Grassroots Committees,” Japan’s “All-Campus Joint Struggle Committees” (Zenkyōtō), and the revolutionary party.

Setting the revolutionary party aside for a moment, let us first focus on the “Action Committees,” “Grassroots Committees,” and “All-Campus Joint Struggle Committees” that emerged during the crisis of the postwar system in imperialist countries.

What were the “May 22 Action Committee” and the “Worker-Student Action Committee” that prepared and centrally carried out the revolutionary explosion of “May” in France? What were the “Grassroots Committees” at Fiat and elsewhere that drove the revolutionary fervor of Italy’s “Hot Autumn”? And what was the “All-Campus Joint Struggle Committees” that became the main force in creating the great escalation of the 1970 Anti-Security Treaty struggle in Japan?

Above all, these were not organizations of systemic, reformist action, even if they initially raised specific reformist demands. As acts of fact, they denied the system itself and confronted it irreconcilably, serving as the vanguard organizations of a minority of revolutionary masses in rebellion—revolutionary organizations in this sense. Moreover, while they initially centered on students and were not necessarily so, as the revolutionary fervor of the struggle grew, they commonly showed a tendency to shift their主体 (subject) to workers and to base themselves in the production process. Although Japan’s “All-Campus Joint Struggle Committees” hardly realized this development, it strongly shared the same orientation. In other words, they were, in common, organizations of the general rebellion of workers—the embryonic form of Soviets.

Second, as such, it cannot be said that “Action Committees,” “Grassroots Committees,” and “All-Campus Joint Struggle Committees” had private individuals as citizens as their constitutive subjects. This is because their struggle’s purpose was no longer, in fact, the fulfillment of petty private interests. Here, autonomous individuals—humans themselves—emerged as subjects, having stripped away the formal determinations of citizens. That is, workers, who, while formally granted free subjectivity through labor power commodification, had surrendered themselves to capital’s domination and alienation through the very contract exercising that subjectivity, rose not to improve the miserable conditions of selling their labor power but to deny labor power commodification itself and the subordination and alienation under capital’s shackles.

Third, these autonomous individuals—humans themselves—who rose for the universal interest of humanity could directly govern themselves. This was because their actions were directly for a universal purpose, enabling mutual collaboration. Autonomous collaboration was their new and sole organizational principle, and thus their organization was a combat community. There was no longer a need to externalize an abstract, universal law or to adopt the mediated form of civil self-governance through domination by law. They literally “decided and acted for themselves,” with no separation between decision-making and execution, and thus no alienation or external control. Comprising small groups engaged in daily collective combat actions, they achieved unity of will and action through constant deliberation and review. In reality, did any “Action Committee,” “Grassroots Committee,” or “All-Campus Joint Struggle Committees” spend precious time creating written statutes? Did they hold one-person-one-vote elections to select a commanding executive? There may have been exceptions, but such cases were extremely rare.

Fourth, by fully guaranteeing and relying on the free subjectivity of autonomous individuals—humans themselves—“Action Committees,” “Grassroots Committees,” and “All-Campus Joint Struggle Committees” were able to possess a revolutionary dynamism and robust organizational strength that systemic civil organizations could never achieve, even if they stood on their heads. Their organizational strength depended entirely on the free subjectivity of their members as autonomous individuals, and the spontaneity and dedication arising from it. While the bourgeois state’s police and military boasted strength in disciplined unit actions through unswerving obedience to top-down commands, “Action Committees,” “Grassroots Committees,” and “All-Campus Joint Struggle Committees” drew their opponents into street and factory-based mass guerrilla and mobile warfare, which demanded infinite creativity. By skillfully exploiting the weakness of their opponents’ organizations—built on suppressing individual subjectivity—they often paralyzed and defeated numerically superior forces.

How, then, were “Action Committees” linked with other “Action Committees,” “Grassroots Committees” with other “Grassroots Committees,” and “All-Campus Joint Struggle Committees” groups with each other? This is most vividly shown in France’s “May.” Countless “Action Coordination Committees” were organized for clandestine communication and coordination of action plans, with liberated buildings allocated for this purpose. The manner of linking “Action Committees” in these “Action Coordination Committees” was the same autonomous collaboration as that among activists within individual “Action Committees.” That is, the autonomy and subjectivity of each “Action Committee” were the foundation of their linkage, and this was not compromised by their combination. The various “Action Committees” collaborated for a universal, identical purpose. Thus, multiple “Action Committees” within each “Action Coordination Committee” formed, in effect, a single “General Action Committee.” This created organic unity based on spontaneity, rather than mechanical unity through action commands, among “Action Coordination Committees” with substantial differences in purposefulness and organizational strength. This was the essence of “Action Committees,” “Grassroots Committees,” and “All-Campus Joint Struggle Committees” as revolutionary mass organizations—their revolutionary essence that distinguished them from established civil, systemic organizations.

Reflecting historically, the Soviets of the Russian Revolution and the Räte of the German Revolution must be said to have had a markedly impure character as revolutionary mass organizations. This is because they formally included all working masses as constitutive subjects, allocated voting rights based on headcount through majority-rule democracy, and incorporated commanding executive bodies accordingly. This arose because the prior political systems in Russia and Germany were monarchic autocracies, fostering strong democratic illusions among the working masses. In the postwar crisis created by the imperialist world war, the military was partially dismantled, established trade unionist labor leaderships and parliamentary social democratic party leaderships were absent or paralyzed, and the working masses were armed, leading to a spontaneous explosion of revolutionary energy. As a result, even working masses with democratic illusions broadly participated in the Soviet (Räte) movement. While this gave the revolutionary struggle in the postwar crisis strong ripple effects, it undeniably defined organizational vulnerabilities.

In contrast, in the postwar systemic crisis caused by the collapse of the global monetary system—particularly the one we currently face—a higher degree of purposefulness is required of revolutionary masses, and thus revolutionary mass organizations have emerged in a purer form. In the postwar systemic crisis, the dismantling of the state apparatus, especially the military, and the arming of the working masses are not preconditions. Moreover, the working masses, neutralized by the defeat of postwar class struggles and absorbed and integrated into labor unions and social democratic parties under postwar democracy, must be created through fierce internal class struggles by a minority of revolutionary masses breaking away from the system, resisting the still relatively stable established trade unionist labor leaderships and parliamentary social democratic party leaderships, which operate under democratic centralism. This demands a high degree of purposefulness. Consequently, “Action Committees,” “Grassroots Committees,” and “All-Campus Joint Struggle Committees” have, from the outset, adopted organizational principles starkly contrasting with those of established labor unions or systemic left-wing parties. While this may severely limit the immediate ripple effects of the revolutionary struggle we face, it ultimately promises an organizational strength that will push permanent revolution to unprecedented heights.

It is worth noting that even in the first collapse of the global monetary system—the crisis of the postwar system precipitated by the so-called restored gold standard—similar phenomena appeared in the form of pseudo-revolutionary organizations. The Nazi “Stormtroopers” (SA) and “SS” are examples. These were not civil, systemic organizations, nor did they adopt democratic centralism as their organizational principle. The Nazis themselves confirmed their revolutionary organization by emphasizing the primacy of the “movement” and defining it as a “movement state,” much like modern Marighella.

However, even “Action Committees,” “Grassroots Committees,” and “All-Campus Joint Struggle Committees” were not pure as revolutionary mass organizations. Their purity compared to Soviets or Räte was, in fact, only relative.

They incorporated, to varying degrees, elements of established civil, systemic organizations—bourgeois qualities. This was primarily due to the discrepancy between the consciousness and actions of the revolutionary masses.

The revolutionary masses rallied in “Action Committees,” “Grassroots Committees,” and “All-Campus Joint Struggle Committees” did, in fact, rise to deny and reject the system itself. In their consciousness, they were, to varying degrees, shaken from established civil, systemic consciousness and began to develop communist sentiments and intuitions. However, they still tended to perceive their actions as being for the fulfillment of partial reformist demands. They were tormented by a sharp contradiction between revolutionary, communist actions and civil, systemic consciousness.

The free subjectivity of the revolutionary masses as autonomous individuals, unless grounded in a purposefulness based on insight into necessity, was not truly established and tended to remain merely subjective—formal civil free subjectivity. In fact, the majority of All-Campus Joint Struggle Committees activists considered their freedom merely as freedom from all constraints, the extreme of individualism. Consequently, features such as passivity, selfishness, irresponsibility, looseness, partiality, short-lived enthusiasm, and transience haunted these organizations as their negative aspects. Moreover, while not as explicit as in Soviets or Räte, tendencies of democratic centralism—such as the separation of decision-making and execution, relatively fixed executive bodies, and unity of will through majority rule based on one-person-one-vote—crept into both the internal operations of basic organizations and their linkages.

This was the negative aspect—the bourgeois quality—that constrained the revolutionary nature of “Action Committees,” “Grassroots Committees,” and “All-Campus Joint Struggle Committees.”

Thus, in reality, “Action Committees,” “Grassroots Committees,” and “All-Campus Joint Struggle Committees” were necessarily a contradiction of revolutionary and bourgeois qualities, a process of conflict between these two aspects. As such, their actual operations, contrary to their professed principles, inevitably became dictatorial. Due to differences in communist purposefulness and organizational strength among members within organizations and among organizations, achieving consensus through deliberation was difficult, and unity of action could only be achieved through the dictatorial hegemony of certain members or organizations from above.

Therefore, these “Action Committees,” “Grassroots Committees,” and “All-Campus Joint Struggle Committees” advanced the struggle with dazzling revolutionary dynamism only when the most revolutionary individuals and organizations within and among them constantly alternated, competing for revolutionary initiative and securing revolutionary dictatorship over the more civil parts. In such cases, revolutionary mass organizations became entities led by the vanguard within the vanguard. Conversely, when the revolutionary initiative of the most revolutionary individuals and organizations was paralyzed, and hegemony shifted to more civil, thus conservative and organization-preserving individuals and organizations, these organizations quickly lost their lifeblood—revolutionary dynamism—resulting in their own formalization. The fate of many “All-Campus Joint Struggle Committees” groups absorbed by New Left sects was precisely this.

For clarity, it should be added that the character of those who wielded revolutionary dictatorial hegemony in revolutionary mass organizations was not the same as that of the power elite (in corporations, unions, or universities) in civil, systemic organizations. They did not emerge or maintain their status through a permanent, stable system like a promotion hierarchy. They rose revolutionarily through their own revolutionary actions and lost their status with the emergence of others taking more revolutionary actions.

In any case, if we understand the character of revolutionary masses and their organizations in this way, we can finally provide a correct answer to what the revolutionary party is and what organizational principle it should adopt.

First, what is the revolutionary party, and why is it necessary?

The revolutionary party is the distinct organization of communists who serve as the revolutionary vanguard within the minority revolutionary mass organizations—“Action Committees,” “Grassroots Committees,” “All-Campus Joint Struggle Committees,” and future Soviets—making it a vanguard party in this sense. The revolutionary party is necessary to overcome the limitations of the spontaneity of revolutionary masses and their organizations. That is, revolutionary masses and their organizations, which retain, to varying degrees, the traps of the overall civil system and thus differ in purposefulness and organizational strength, must be led by the vanguard part that realizes the revolutionary actions demanded by the situation without delay, thereby revolutionarily leading the whole. However, this vanguard within the vanguard cannot achieve revolutionary leadership without its own deliberation and unity of action. In other words, the part that exists as a multilayered vanguard structure, as a process of leadership by the vanguard of the vanguard, through its superior purposefulness and organizational strength—specifically, the part that becomes the revolutionary vanguard of individual mass action committees or organizes distinct communist action committees to become the revolutionary vanguard of various action committees—is none other than the communists. The revolutionary party is nothing other than the distinct collective of such organizations. Thus, in no sense does the revolutionary party exist apart from revolutionary mass organizations.

If so, what is the organizational principle of the revolutionary party?

This should now be self-evident. As a revolutionary organization, and as the distinct organization of the most dynamically revolutionary part of revolutionary mass organizations, the revolutionary party must consciously adopt the organizational principle of revolutionary mass organizations as its own.

However, this simultaneously means that the revolutionary party must take the contradictions of revolutionary mass organizations as its own contradictions and their actual operational principles as its own. This is because, despite their superior purposefulness and organizational strength, communists, like revolutionary masses, are situated within civil society while seeking to abolish it and thus inevitably bear civil qualities. Thus, the point confirmed in section 2—that the revolutionary party is a contradictory existence reflecting the contradictions of the working class itself—can be concretely restated as follows: the revolutionary party is a contradictory existence, a concentrated reflection of the contradictions of revolutionary mass organizations, which, in turn, are clearly a reflection of the contradictions of the working class itself.

Finally, however, the relationship between the revolutionary party and revolutionary mass organizations cannot be a one-sided process of the vanguard leading the vanguard. The vanguard of the vanguard can be such only through its superior communist purposefulness and organizational strength. However, since communism, by its epistemological nature, bears the character of Minerva’s owl, chasing revolutionary actions after the fact, the superior purposefulness of communists must often yield to the spontaneous and rich revolutionary creativity of the revolutionary masses themselves. The revolutionary party is not guaranteed its status as the vanguard of the vanguard simply by claiming it. The real relationship between communists and revolutionary masses, and between the revolutionary party and revolutionary mass organizations, exists only as a dynamic dialectical process in which the former is overtaken by the latter, yet not fully overtaken.

5. The Revolutionary Party as an Autonomous Community of Communists

Having clarified the true nature of the vanguard organization and confirmed the distinct organizational principle of spontaneously emerging revolutionary mass organizations, as well as the necessity of the vanguard party, we now turn to the active development of the party organization.

As is evident from our initial observations, this development must take the form of a theory of contradiction. That is, it consists of: (1) the definition of the revolutionary party as an autonomous community of communists, which is the revolutionary quality demanded of the party and which it strives to realize continuously; (2) the bourgeois quality of the party organization, which is heterogeneous to this revolutionary quality and constrains its realization; and (3) the reality of the party as a process of conflict between these two aspects—ceaseless internal party revolution and the revolutionary mass line.

First, what is the revolutionary quality demanded of the revolutionary party, which it strives to realize continuously? In essence, it is an autonomous community for realizing the universal purpose of communists.

First, the revolutionary party takes autonomous communists as its constitutive subjects. Communists are free individuals and free subjects in the truest sense of the term, possessing the understanding of scientific communism and fighting purposefully through permanent revolution for human liberation and the realization of a universal communist community.

Communists are truly free individuals and free subjects. Unlike citizens—who, while formally autonomous subjects, are blind in their understanding and dominated in their activities by economic laws as external necessities, acting as private individuals and commodity sellers—communists possess an understanding of future communism and purposefully pursue the abolition of the domination of economic laws in their activities.

Moreover, while citizens, as formally autonomous subjects, engage in activities aimed at particular private interests and relate to one another only externally as means, differentiating universal law as inviolable private property rights and being dominated externally by that law, communists, acting for the direct realization of a universally human purpose, collaborate mutually without needing the mediation of law to govern themselves. As such, communists are individuals who have transcended the formal determinations of citizens.

Additionally, communists, as individuals who have transcended the formal determinations of citizens, share an essential character with the revolutionary masses gathered in “Action Committees,” “Grassroots Committees,” and “All-Campus Joint Struggle Committees.” However, communists distinguish themselves from the latter through their purposefulness.

While the latter are revolutionary in their actions, they do not necessarily possess the understanding of scientific communism in their consciousness and are thus, to varying degrees, bourgeois. Consequently, the limitations of their understanding constrain their revolutionary actions, making them, to varying degrees, non-spontaneous, incomplete, partial, and discontinuous. In contrast, communists possess the understanding of scientific communism, internalized as part of their being, making their actions spontaneous, dedicated, holistic, and continuous. Thus, the criterion for communists lies not only in their high purposefulness grounded in the internalized understanding of scientific communism but also in the high organizational strength of their actions—namely, spontaneity, dedication, holism, and continuity. Only as such can communists be the vanguard of the revolution.

Thus, above all, the revolutionary party presupposes the subjectivity of communists as free subjects.

For clarity, let it be confirmed that it is not the case that communists exist because of the communist party; the reverse is absolutely not true. Unlike blind and unfree citizens, communists, as truly free individuals, have no need to receive guidance from a legal sovereign.

Second, the organizational principle of the vanguard party, that is, the principle of uniting communists within the vanguard party, is autonomous collaboration.

The principle uniting communists, as truly free and equal subjects, can only be autonomous collaboration—described in anarchist terms as a “free association”—and the human and universal purpose of human liberation and the realization of a universal communist community makes this autonomous collaboration necessary.

This organizational principle of the vanguard party fundamentally differs from that of bourgeois society’s organizations, which take citizens as their constitutive subjects. While citizens are formally free and equal, their activities aim directly at pursuing conflicting particular private interests, resulting in only cold, external give-and-take relationships—using each other as means—and they lack the form to realize universal law. Consequently, the unity of citizens in bourgeois organizations, such as the state, must fundamentally be contractual, and citizens can only realize universal law through the creation of a public third party, while simultaneously being dominated by that public third party embodying the law. Thus, the organizational principle of bourgeois society’s organizations is democratic centralism based on contracts. In this case, the organization’s unity is guaranteed by laws, externally imposed as universal through democratic voting, and by the administrative bureaucracy that maintains and enforces them.

However, the relationship among truly free and equal subjects, even if based on agreement, is not one of domination and obedience. Since communists’ activities directly embody universal human purpose, there is no room for conflict among them, and thus no need to mediate their relationships through a third party. In this case, the organization’s unity is internally guaranteed by the universality of the revolutionary theory and scientific communist understanding shared by communists.

This organizational principle of the vanguard party is also essentially identical to that of revolutionary mass organizations such as “Action Committees,” “Grassroots Committees,” and “All-Campus Joint Struggle Committees.” However, the former distinguishes itself from the latter through its purposefulness. The unity of “Action Committees,” “Grassroots Committees,” and “All-Campus Joint Struggle Committees” is not necessarily self-conscious but spontaneous, and thus, based to some extent on the bourgeois consciousness retained by the revolutionary masses, it cannot fully escape being somewhat civil. Consequently, this prevents their unity from achieving true universality, remaining spatially and temporally constrained to particularities in both individual units and inter-organizational relations. That is, within individual units, their unity is relatively loose, limited to specific factories, campuses, or issues, and exists only transiently. Similarly, the unity between Action Committees or All-Campus Joint Struggle Committees is even looser, often failing to form, limited to specific regions, industries, or issues, and existing only transiently. In contrast, the unity of communists, grounded in their internalized communist purposefulness, is robust within individual units—cells—making them holistic and continuous, and equally robust between cells, possessing global universality, organic wholeness, and permanence. Thus, the vanguard party represents the universality, organic wholeness, and permanence of revolutionary struggle and its organization.

Delving into the internal structure of the vanguard party, it exhibits the following characteristics:

(1) The cell is the basic organization. As a community of autonomous communists as free subjects, it is not merely an organization performing partial tasks but one that takes subjective responsibility for the overall policy—the general line—representing the party itself as an autonomous subject.

(2) These autonomous subjects, as needed, unite to form a general cell as a group of cells, and these general cells, as needed, unite to form a grand general cell, and so forth. Each cell, general cell, and grand general cell is equally an autonomous subject. As such a singular, multilayered integrated entity, the vanguard party exists as a single organizational system and organic whole. However, there is no longer a bourgeois authoritarian hierarchy. Instead of a pyramid connected by vertical relationships and countless superior-subordinate relations, there is only the infinite unity of free and equal communities in a multilayered structure. It is truly a system of free subjects.

(3) The assignment of tasks to party members is not based on appointment or selection but on self-selection and mutual confirmation of tasks, determined through deliberation from the perspective of the necessities of the party’s revolution based on communist purposefulness. Thus, the assignment of tasks to party members is nothing other than the division of labor within the party.

(4) Decision-making is conducted through free deliberation among party members within cells and among cells, general cells, and so forth in higher structures. Consensus is not achieved through top-down commands or voting but is based on the universality of revolutionary theory.

The execution of decisions is carried out by the cells, general cells, and so forth that made the decisions. The guarantee of execution lies in the subjectivity and self-discipline of individual party members and cells as organizational discipline, maintained and enhanced through mutual review—criticism and self-criticism—by party members and cells in practice.

Thus, the vanguard party, both as a whole and in every part, truly “decides and acts for itself,” transcending the separation of deliberation and execution and superior-subordinate relationships.

In such a party organization, regional unity means that cells within a region autonomously collaborate to form a general cell. There are no longer independent regional committees as higher leadership bodies or independent regional party conferences as decision-making bodies over individual cells. Only a permanent contact body and a standing deliberation and mutual review body—a regional committee in the sense of a regional general cell committee—are necessary. Thus, this regional committee is formed through mutual confirmation by cells of members emerging from each cell based on the principle of self-selection and mutual confirmation of tasks. If each party member is an autonomous communist as a free subject, anyone should, in principle, be able to represent a cell in this regional deliberation at any time. Consensus in deliberation and mutual review is not guaranteed by top-down guidance or majority rule through voting but internally by the universality of the revolutionary theory and scientific communist understanding shared by cells. Moreover, by its nature, this regional committee does not necessarily have a fixed number or composition of members, which can expand or rotate as needed. For certain issues, an expanded regional committee may be held to conduct comprehensive exchange and deliberation, one form of which corresponds to the conventional regional party conference. Even in this case, the expanded committee is not a venue for individual members’ deliberation or consensus through voting but a venue for closer deliberation among cells and consensus based on the universality of revolutionary theory.

The same applies to the central committee and party congress. That is, central unity means that grand general cells from various countries autonomously collaborate to form a single grand general cell. There are no longer independent leadership or decision-making bodies like the Comintern’s executive committee or congress. Only a permanent contact body and a standing deliberation and mutual review body—a central committee in the sense of a world single grand general cell committee—are necessary. Thus, this central committee is formed through mutual confirmation by grand general cells of members emerging from each grand general cell based on the principle of self-selection and mutual confirmation of tasks. If each grand general cell is an autonomous communist as a free subject, anyone should, in principle, be able to represent a cell in this global deliberation at any time. Consensus in deliberation and mutual review is, again, not achieved through voting but internally guaranteed by the universality of the revolutionary theory and scientific communist understanding shared by grand general cells.

Furthermore, activities such as propaganda, organization, and finance are no longer carried out by administrative bureaucratic apparatuses directly under central or other committees, as was conventional. These activities are undertaken by autonomous cells such as editorial committees, organizational committees, and financial committees, which take on specific tasks through division of labor. These special cells maintain permanent contact with editors, organizers, and financiers designated through the principle of self-selection and mutual confirmation by each general cell or organization, while autonomously uniting with cells, general cells, and grand general cells in central and regional committees to form grand general cells, general cells, and cells. They are, so to speak, like nerve cells or blood cells in the human body. Deliberation and review of these activities are conducted within these grand general cells, general cells, and cells.

Thus, the vanguard party, as an autonomous community of communists, is an organic whole with global universality, not only free as a subject in its entirety but also with each part aspiring to organic wholeness as a free subject, a human-like existence with the resilience of an organic whole. This depends entirely on communists as free subjects, or in other words, on the subjectivity of communists.

The vanguard party is thus the embryo of a universal communist community. It is not merely a means to the communist revolution but a realization of the eternal purpose in the present, unifying purpose and means. Truly free individuals cannot instrumentalize themselves for a distant purpose beyond their direct engagement. They cannot die for an afterlife but can die for a fulfilling life in the present.

However, to reaffirm, the above describes the quality demanded of the vanguard party and the revolutionary quality it strives to realize continuously. Yet, even as it strives to realize this revolutionary quality, the vanguard party cannot immediately achieve it. The vanguard party bears constraints that hinder the realization of this revolutionary quality within the conditions of the existing class struggle, from which it can never escape.

6. The Contradictions of the Party Organization

What, then, are the constraints that hinder the realization of the revolutionary quality in the revolutionary party? They are the bourgeois qualities that communists and their organizations inevitably bear within civil society while aiming for communism.

In such a party organization, as previously confirmed, the existence of the revolutionary party as a system of free subjects ultimately depends on the subjectivity of communists, or more specifically, on their high organizational strength—spontaneity, dedication, holism, and continuity—supported by high purposefulness grounded in scientific communist understanding. However, real communists are not omniscient, omnipotent gods or their offspring. They are sinful humans constrained by their existence. Moreover, the unity of communists and cells, as a revolutionary organization, is constrained by its own existence and cannot be perfectly autonomous collaboration.

First, the conditions constraining individual communists:

First, there are limits to communists’ scientific communist understanding and, consequently, to their purposefulness. These limits are fundamentally rooted in the epistemological nature of scientific communism itself. As previously confirmed, scientific communism is not the invention or revelation of great philosophers, social scientists, or leaders. It is nothing other than the theorization and systematization of the working class’s struggle in capitalist society. Thus, it inevitably bears, to some extent, the character of the elephant of Hamilcar (a reference to limited, partial understanding). That is, in its universal theoretical nature, it remains confined to relative truth, approaching absolute truth relatively, and in its individual specificity, it cannot fully grasp the infinite particularities. Therefore, while it can strategically foresee the future, it is destined to perpetually chase the rich revolutionary practices of reality, taking flight only at night.

Thus, the scientific communist understanding of real communists is constrained. However much revolutionary intuition compensates for this limited scope—and its role is significant—communists remain, to varying degrees, blind and unfree. Being blind, communists within civil society inevitably retain, to varying degrees, bourgeois elements within themselves.

Second, communists are subject to the powerful infiltration of bourgeois ideology—bourgeois false consciousness—from the civil daily life in which they are situated. Communists, especially in pre-revolutionary capitalist society, cannot easily escape civil daily life, even if they strive to integrate the rhythm of struggle into their lives. There, communists, too, engage in external relationships with other citizens as private individuals, sustaining their lives through commodity exchange. They receive civil information and culture through mass communication media like television and newspapers, and their safety is guaranteed by law and its enforcement authority. From this, a civil consciousness that adapts to and rationalizes such civil life is constantly generated and reproduced—selfish individualism, systemic bureaucratism, patriotism, and so forth. Rooted in daily life, these are extremely tenacious, constantly striving to elevate themselves from a wealth of sensory intuitions and representations to rational understanding. Free subjectivity can easily be substituted with individualism, and despite the relative truth of its universal theoretical nature, this tendency is particularly dangerous for communists—intellectuals and others—who are not directly exploited in the production process and are, to varying degrees, removed from the class struggle’s frontline, thus not constantly subjected to revolutionary trials. Only fierce class struggle, severe revolutionary trials, and their integration into daily life can serve as an effective bulwark against the infiltration of bourgeois consciousness. The type of communist who knows communist theory but cannot act communistically emerges from this.

Thus, real communists are constantly subject to the infiltration of bourgeois consciousness and, to varying degrees, possess bourgeois consciousness. If there were a communist pretending to be a saint, they would be a hypocrite. Real communists are dual personalities, combining revolutionary communist consciousness with bourgeois false consciousness, a contradictory existence where these two conflict.

Third, due to the heterogeneity of communists’ mental and physical conditions, the division of labor within the party inevitably becomes, to some extent, fixed. Despite the demand for holism to undertake any necessary task, individual communists emerging from a civil society that separates mental and physical labor and further specializes the former cannot immediately achieve holism, even if they strive to transcend this deformed human type. Whether it likes it or not, the vanguard party must inherit this deformed human type from civil society as its legacy. As such, the division of labor within the party, based on the principle of self-selection and mutual confirmation of tasks, inevitably becomes, to some extent, fixed. This tendency is particularly pronounced for tasks requiring high intellectual capacity, such as deliberations between grand general cells or general cells (e.g., central committee or committee tasks) and special tasks like propaganda and organization, which can only be undertaken by a limited number of individuals. Moreover, as noted, for intellectuals and other communists who are, to varying degrees, removed from the frontline of class struggle due to this division of labor, the tendency toward bourgeois consciousness infiltration is particularly significant. Thus, the fixation of the division of labor further amplifies the danger of bourgeois tendencies in these areas.

Additionally, organizational conditions constrain the cellular unity as a system of free subjects.

These primarily arise from the stringent demands of class struggle, requiring the revolutionary party—especially within the capitalist world—to operate as a clandestine underground organization while achieving centralized information management and immediate unity in action policies.

First, information scarcity. For communists as free subjects to form cells as autonomous communities without compromising their wholeness, and for these cells to form general cells as autonomous communities without compromising their subjectivity, ultimately forming a cellular unity as a system of free subjects up to grand general cells, as repeatedly confirmed, relies on the unclouded universality of revolutionary theory and scientific communist understanding and the purposefulness grounded in it. However, for truly concrete and individual understanding, unifying universality and particularity as required for specific struggle policies, abundant information is essential. That is, for individual communists to be free subjects capable of formulating specific policies as needed, not only theoretical works and comprehensive documents by Marx, Engels, Lenin, and others but also abundant information about the current situation and its sharing are necessary. The emergence and proliferation of television and computers indicate that modern capitalist society already possesses the technical conditions for this.

However, in the vanguard party, the acquisition and sharing of information are inevitably constrained. Not only is the quality and quantity of obtainable information generally limited due to the inadequacy of the party’s information network, but certain types of information, particularly about the party organization itself, must be strictly confidential for security reasons, limiting their acquisition and sharing. Typically, such information is centralized and restricted to the minimum necessary scope, such as members of deliberations between cells or general cells.

Thus, information scarcity inevitably impairs, to varying degrees, the free subjectivity of the majority of party members and cells in policy decision-making. Autonomous decision-making becomes difficult for them, and they must, to some extent, rely on deliberation members of cells with superior information access. This tendency, even if party members strive to have sufficient theoretical consciousness and anyone can fluidly become a deliberation member, holds significant implications if their theoretical consciousness is limited, they are constantly subject to bourgeois consciousness infiltration, and their division of labor is fixed. The operation of the vanguard party inevitably tends toward bourgeois degeneration—namely, a parliamentary system based on bourgeois delegation in decision-making and bureaucratization in the execution of decisions.

Second, the difficulty of iterative deliberation. For individual communists to maintain free subjectivity within cellular unity, iterative deliberation is, in principle, necessary. Even if cell or general cell deliberations presuppose prior deliberations by individual cells or general cells, they can generally arrive at superior policies through deliberation. For individual cells or general cells to truly internalize these superior policies, they must re-experience the overall deliberation iteratively. However, in cases requiring information confidentiality, iterative deliberation in the vanguard party is inevitably constrained. This is because the intensity of class struggle often allows no time for such deliberation, demanding immediate policy decisions. Consequently, organizational deliberation often becomes policy determination as is. Particularly in combat actions, the instantaneous judgment of a commander receiving information may even become the indisputable policy. Thus, the difficulty of iterative deliberation also impairs, to varying degrees, the free subjectivity of the majority of party members and cells, leading to short-term alienation from decision-making and passive obedience to guidance and commands. This tendency, even if party members strive to have sufficient theoretical consciousness and sharp revolutionary intuition from accumulated practical experience to autonomously reach the same policy under emergency deliberations or limited information, and anyone can fluidly become a deliberation member or commander making emergency or individual decisions, holds significant implications if their theoretical consciousness is limited, they are constantly subject to bourgeois consciousness infiltration, and their division of labor is fixed. From this perspective, too, the operation of the vanguard party cannot avoid a tendency toward bourgeois degeneration.

Third, the difficulty of mutual review. For the cellular unity of autonomous communists to be robustly reproduced and expanded as an unbreakable bond, organizational discipline as self-discipline is necessary, ultimately guaranteed by the strict yet warm comradely mutual review of party members and cells in organizational practice. However, this mutual review is also constrained. The clandestine underground nature of the vanguard party and the necessity of information confidentiality, required by intense class struggle, create organizational activity fields where strict mutual review is difficult. This is particularly pronounced in committees serving as deliberation venues for grand general cells with differing regions and daily contact difficulties, such as central committees, and in special cells for propaganda, organization, and finance. In contrast, basic cells at the forefront of revolutionary struggle, constantly subjected to revolutionary trials and composed of small groups with daily collective action, face almost no such difficulties. These difficulties in mutual review mean that the vanguard party experiences a loosening or weakening of checks on the tendencies toward bourgeois degeneration in individual party members and cellular unity.

Due to these personal and organizational constraints, the bourgeois quality that the vanguard party inevitably bears takes organizational expression as factions when it grows, politically as the emergence of bourgeois opportunist factional groups, and organizationally as, on the one hand, individualistic factionalism and dissolutionism, and on the other, the separation of decision-making and execution, leading to the bourgeois bureaucratization of party institutions.

From the historical experience of revolutionary parties, it must be said that the separation of decision-making and execution and the subsequent bourgeois bureaucratization of party institutions are the most formidable dangers, ones that the vanguard party has, until now, been blindly unaware of.

The parties of the Second International, including the German Social Democratic Party, became thoroughly corrupted and degenerated through their long, peaceful existence within civil society. Especially after being recognized as legal entities at the end of the 19th century, the mainstream factions controlling party institutions became status-quo-preserving and organization-conserving through their parliamentarism and trade unionism, mobilized patriotically for the First World War. While the absence of a political general line—a revolutionary line—in their programs played a decisive role in this degeneration, the organizational flaw of allowing the growth of nominal party bureaucrats through parliamentarism and trade unionism solidified this degeneration.

Similarly, the Bolshevik Party, which carried the Russian Revolution, ultimately followed a tragic path of corruption and degeneration due to errors in the political general line during the transitional period and even more thorough bureaucratization. Immediately after the October Revolution, the lack of a revolutionary production management policy and organizational factionalism led to the rapid collapse of production management by factory committees, with factory cells as the vanguard. This collapse paved the way for administrative and command-based war communism. Instead of fully relying on the dynamism and creativity of revolutionary masses, Lenin and Trotsky adopted bourgeois specialists. At this point, decision-making in factory operations had already shifted from factory committees—and thus factory cells—to enterprise directors subordinate to central administrative bodies. When administrative and command-based war communism, not relying on the dynamism and creativity of revolutionary masses, stalled due to their bourgeois and passive resistance, the NEP (New Economic Policy) was adopted as a top-down bourgeois commodity economy concession policy by the same increasingly bureaucratized party and state apparatus. The NEP led to a massive influx of bourgeois elements into the party and further collusion between party and state institutions, causing an almost irreversible bourgeois bureaucratization of party institutions. Moreover, because Lenin, Trotsky, and others were largely unaware that this bourgeois bureaucratization was the greatest danger to the continuation of the revolution under those circumstances, this degeneration proceeded extremely smoothly without facing purposeful, robust resistance. Post-Lenin intra-party struggles amounted to little more than confirming established facts. Furthermore, when the NEP itself stalled due to the resurgence of bourgeois elements it promoted, plunging into a severe crisis, the bureaucratized party, to protect its organization, created the inviolable Stalin myth and embarked on further administrative and command-based collectivization and industrialization. This process was accompanied by the establishment of an official “socialist theoretical system” that distorted socialism into the nationalization of the means of production and distribution according to labor, ignoring the restoration of human subjectivity as labor-producing subjects through the abolition of labor commodification, and self-purposively. Thus, the Stalinist regime was established. It must be said that, due to blindness regarding the degeneration of transitional social theory and the bourgeois bureaucratization of party institutions, many communists were still drawn to this regime. The Bolshevik Party, which achieved the first proletarian revolutionary victory in human history, lost its revolutionary dynamism and its drive toward global communism within a mere decade.

In any case, due to the personal and organizational constraints outlined above, the revolutionary party inevitably bears bourgeois qualities within itself, which, when left to grow, tend to transform the party into a bourgeois institution—one that calls for world revolution but, in practice, aims to maintain the status quo and preserve the organization, with democratic centralism based on citizens as its organizational principle.

This tendency toward bourgeois degeneration is fundamentally rooted in the fact that the revolutionary party exists within civil society and in the circumstances required by the intense class struggle therein, and thus cannot be dispelled by mere incantations. Consequently, the real revolutionary party is nothing other than the process of ceaseless conflict between its revolutionary quality and the bourgeois contradiction constraining it.

The interior of the revolutionary party inevitably reproduces the same contradictions and conflicts that appeared within “Action Committees,” “Grassroots Committees,” and “All-Campus Joint Struggle Committees.” The revolutionary party cannot be a pure crystallization of revolutionary quality. These revolutionary qualities and the bourgeois contradictions constraining them appear within the revolutionary party as the vanguard of these revolutionary mass organizations, albeit in a more advanced form. This ultimately means that the revolutionary party is not free from the contradictions of the working class itself, and its contradictions are nothing other than a reflection of those of the working class. This is because the working class, essentially alienated as labor-producing subjects dominated and exploited in the production process, is simultaneously defined as a free and equal commodity purchaser in the circulation sphere—civil society—bearing both the revolutionary quality aiming to abolish capitalism and its ruins and the bourgeois quality pursuing private interests as commodity sellers, making it a contradictory existence.

The revolutionary party is also, as such, a microcosm of the transitional society toward communism. The transitional society, on the one hand, partially realizes the principles of the communist community by relying on the revolutionary character of the working class, but on the other, retains civil and commodity-economic relations due to the constraints of the working class’s bourgeois qualities. The revolutionary party in such a transitional society concretely expresses these contradictions within itself. Thus, the theory of party organization is essentially identical in character to the theory of the transitional society.

7. Ceaseless Internal Party Revolution and the Revolutionary Mass Line

If the real revolutionary party is nothing other than its contradictions, what is necessary for it to remain a revolutionary party?

The revolutionary party can only remain so through ceaseless struggle against its bourgeois aspects.

Until all party members are truly established as autonomous communists as free subjects, or in other words, until the realization of a universal communist community, the revolutionary party is constantly exposed to the danger of bourgeois degeneration. Therefore, it must continuously struggle and triumph over its bourgeois aspects until it transcends itself within that universal communist community.

What does ceaseless struggle against its bourgeois aspects mean?

It means ceaseless internal party revolutions, large and small. Ceaseless internal party revolutions—these are the conditions for the revolutionary party’s survival. Internal party revolution is not something extraordinary for a stable revolutionary party in normal times. It must be the normal state of the revolutionary party.

However, while internal party revolution regenerates revolutionary energy a hundredfold, ensuring the party’s revolutionary dynamism, its execution requires, even temporarily, absorbing significant revolutionary energy that should be directed outward, inevitably causing some paralysis and destruction of the party apparatus. Therefore, the operation of the revolutionary party must prioritize maintaining its revolutionary nature, ensuring that ceaseless internal party revolutions, large and small, can be carried out most effectively.

What, then, should the operation of the revolutionary party, which takes ceaseless internal party revolutions as its survival condition, be like?

First, the party member collective that takes revolutionary initiative is the real leadership of the revolutionary party.

If the real revolutionary party, due to the contradiction and conflict between its revolutionary and bourgeois qualities, forms a multilayered structure with disparities in purposefulness and organizational strength—spontaneity, dedication, holism, and continuity—as was the case with “Action Committee alliances,” “Grassroots Committee alliances,” and “All-Campus Joint Struggle Committees,” then the party members and collectives excelling in purposefulness and organizational strength must take revolutionary initiative in decision-making and execution, leading the entire party. In other words, the real revolutionary party becomes a process of leadership by the “vanguard of the vanguard,” which is none other than the real revolutionary leadership.

The revolutionary leadership is not fixedly composed of mere regional or central committee deliberation members, much less of those “guiding” from far behind the struggle. The revolutionary leadership is literally the “vanguard of the vanguard,” warriors and combat collectives that lead the entire party through their revolutionary actions.

Second, the real revolutionary leadership must establish revolutionary dictatorship, particularly within party institutions, to secure its leadership. Due to intra-party contradictions, where parts differ in purposefulness and organizational strength, comradely deliberation cannot always produce consensus under revolutionary policies through mere verbal persuasion. Unity of will requires revolutionary policies backed by the revolutionary vanguard actions of party members or collectives exercising revolutionary initiative. These party members or collectives must impose and enforce their revolutionary will on the entire party. Using a somewhat bourgeois expression, just as shareholders’ meetings guarantee speaking and voting rights based on share ownership, we must establish speaking and voting rights based on revolutionary action and initiative. For party members without revolutionary action or initiative, there is only silence.

Thus, revolutionary dictatorship is the only real operational principle.

Moreover, this revolutionary dictatorship is the sole and ultimate guarantee against the bourgeois degeneration of party institutions, which are prone to detachment from the frontline of class struggle and exposed to the gravest danger of bourgeois degeneration. Party members and collectives excelling in purposefulness and organizational strength—spontaneity, dedication, holism, and continuity—and exercising revolutionary initiative are best suited to withstand the role of deliberation members, which is prone to fixation and corruption, while simultaneously standing at the forefront of combat as the vanguard of the vanguard. This better prevents the separation of decision-making and execution.

The principle of revolutionary dictatorship was precisely the operational principle of revolutionary mass organizations like “Action Committee alliances,” “Grassroots Committee alliances,” and “All-Campus Joint Struggle Committees” The operational principle of the revolutionary party is not heterogeneous to that of revolutionary mass organizations.

This operational principle of the revolutionary party also aligns with that of the transitional period of communism. The transitional society, on the one hand, immediately introduces and realizes the principles of the communist community, not through the spontaneous consensus of all people but through the coercion of revolutionary workers declaring revolutionary dictatorship. Thus, from this perspective, too, the revolutionary party is a microcosm of the transitional society.

Third, a revolutionary party with revolutionary dictatorship as its operational principle lacks a peaceful method for leadership succession.

Party members and collectives exercising revolutionary initiative are not immutable. The harsh repression of enemy power and the daily assimilative force of bourgeois ideology inevitably exhaust even the most outstanding communists mentally and physically. Today’s revolutionary leadership may become tomorrow’s obstacle to the revolution. However, with revolutionary dictatorship as the sole operational principle, the revolutionary party has no peaceful method to replace a leadership that has become an obstacle or enemy to the revolution.

In bourgeois politics, so-called regime change is merely the transfer of policy-making power within civil interest groups, presupposing an administrative bureaucratic apparatus that maintains civil order and realizes “public welfare”—essentially conservative, status-quo-preserving activities. It does not mean the transfer of political power itself, and thus can occur peacefully through elections. However, leadership succession in the revolutionary party is a transfer from a collective representing bourgeois qualities to one representing revolutionary qualities—an internal party revolution or counter-revolution—and thus fundamentally cannot occur peacefully.

Therefore, when faced with a life-or-death issue, if all revolutionary party members and collectives judge that the established leadership is an obstacle to establishing revolutionary policies, or that its bourgeois opportunist degeneration is fatal, they must, without hesitation, overthrow this leadership and establish themselves as the new revolutionary leadership or separate from the party to organize an entirely new, true revolutionary party. This becomes the supreme task of communists. Party members and collectives that do not consciously undertake this task are the worst opportunists, abandoning and neglecting the revolution.

However, in internal party revolutions, while revolutionary violence may ultimately be necessary, the approach of “curing the disease to save the person” must be pursued to the maximum. The purpose is not to resort to violence but to establish the party’s revolutionary line and achieve the maximum unity of revolutionary will among party members and cells under it, as the universality of revolutionary theory inherently enables such unity. By relying on concrete universality rather than abstract universality—pressing for breakthroughs and binary choices not merely on principle issues but in the context of the specific struggles faced by individual party members and cells—“curing the disease to save the person” becomes possible. “Truth is always concrete.”

Moreover, when no single revolutionary initiative stands out completely and multiple imperfect revolutionary initiatives exist, if party members or collectives with imperfect, one-sided revolutionary initiatives hastily impose their policies through revolutionary dictatorship, they lack the persuasiveness and integrative power over others with imperfect revolutionary initiatives, leading to the party’s fragmentation. In such cases, to avoid low-level internal factional struggles and achieve a significant revolutionary leap for the party as a whole, party members and collectives with imperfect revolutionary initiatives need a sober, calm awareness of the imperfection and one-sidedness of their revolutionary theories, the capacity and effort to theoretically encompass and position other imperfect revolutionary initiatives, and concrete breakthroughs tailored to the struggles faced by individual party members and cells.

Finally, as outlined above, the organizations and tasks of a revolutionary party that takes ceaseless internal party revolutions as its survival condition lack bourgeois stability, formality, and permanence.

Even if a party cell undertakes specific tasks at a given moment, it is not a department or section fixedly performing specific duties under top-down commands like a bourgeois bureaucratic institution. It is a free subject that decides and undertakes activities necessary for the revolution, capable of undertaking any activity required for the revolution and adapting its organization through cell self-reproduction and division. It is entirely free from bureaucratic rigidity and conservatism.

In particular, the basic combat cells are the subject and driving force for carrying out ceaseless internal party revolutions, ensuring the party’s revolutionary dynamism. This is because these basic combat cells, forged at the forefront of revolutionary struggle and composed of small groups with daily collective action, enable continuous, rigorous mutual review across all aspects of life.

Thus, when the party leadership or nearby cells are paralyzed by bourgeois bias or repression, individual party cells must proactively undertake their tasks, promote revolutionary regeneration, or replace them. Moreover, in the real operation of the party, consideration must be given to maximizing the free revolutionary initiative of these basic combat cells.

However, the process of ceaseless internal party revolutions cannot be a closed, self-contained process within the revolutionary interior.

If we were to name the party organization a “system of distrust,” we should rather define it as a “system of distrust toward the party leadership” and consciously construct it as such.

The process of ceaseless internal party revolutions is nothing other than a part of the dynamic process of revolutionary power struggle, mediated by and mediating the dialectical process of the relationship between the party and revolutionary masses.

Once an economic-political crisis begins, the broad revolutionary masses that spontaneously rise to revolutionary power struggle unleash boundless revolutionary creativity. They will inevitably surpass the revolutionary party armed with revolutionary theory. Bound to varying degrees by imperfect established revolutionary theories, their revolutionary creativity is rich and infinite. In such situations, claiming that the vanguard party is the vanguard and the masses are the masses is nothing but a criminal formal logic. For the vanguard party to truly be the vanguard, it must quickly theorize and appropriate the revolutionary creativity of the masses surpassing it, pursuing it purposefully, spontaneously, dedicatedly, holistically, and continuously at the forefront, thereby leading the revolutionary masses back. The process of permanent revolution toward communism is not a fixed one where the revolutionary party always leads as the vanguard and the masses follow as the rearguard. It is a dialectical, dynamic process where revolutionary masses gathered in “Action Committees,” “Grassroots Committees,” and “All-Campus Joint Struggle Committees” surpass the revolutionary party, and the revolutionary party, in turn, surpasses these masses gathered in mass organizations, becoming the rearguard overtaken by the vanguard and then overtaking to become the vanguard again.

Thus, the organizational line of the revolutionary party is the revolutionary mass line.

That is, while presupposing organizational separation from the revolutionary masses gathered in “Action Committees,” “Grassroots Committees,” and “All-Campus Joint Struggle Committees,” the revolutionary party must purposefully practice “from the masses, to the masses.” It must unite with the revolutionary masses as communist action committees, grassroots committees, or struggle committees themselves or as their vanguard parts, humbly learning from their boundless revolutionary creativity, theorizing it, and bringing it back to the revolutionary masses.

Therefore, this revolutionary mass line is not merely the organizational line of the revolutionary party but also its epistemology.

This is because, as repeatedly noted, the theory of scientific communism is not the invention or whim of great minds but the summation and systematization of real class struggle practices, with the boundless revolutionary creativity of the masses as its source.

Thus, the revolutionary mass line is the ultimate guarantee of the party’s revolutionary nature.

The process of ceaseless internal party revolutions, large and small, to maintain the revolutionary party’s revolutionary dynamism fundamentally presupposes and relies on the revolutionary dynamism of the masses gathered in “Action Committees,” “Grassroots Committees,” and “All-Campus Joint Struggle Committees.” This is nothing other than the process of incorporating and institutionalizing this revolutionary dynamism within the party organization, while simultaneously preparing the revolutionary springboard for the party to overtake these revolutionary masses again.

Therefore, ceaseless internal party revolutions must not be conducted as a secret, closed internal process. Even if constrained by the need for organizational secrecy against enemy power in civil society, revolutionary party members and collectives must boldly accept the harsh criticism of the revolutionary masses toward the party from the outset, relying on their revolutionary initiative to advance the party’s revolution alongside them. The party must be continuously regenerated revolutionarily through the dynamism of the revolutionary masses.

Ultimately, ceaseless internal party revolutions and the revolutionary mass line are the essential conditions for the revolutionary party’s survival and continuation.

The Chinese Cultural Revolution demonstrated this practically for the first time. Through widespread rebellion involving revolutionary masses, it destroyed the party organization itself and overthrew the “bourgeois power elite” rooted in it, achieving the revolutionary regeneration of the party. Due to the limitations of Mao Zedong’s guiding theory, which allowed the growth of the “bourgeois power elite” for too long, and the weakness of its theoretical integrative power, it had to divide the party and masses into a civil war, weakening its revolutionary momentum by sidelining the left. However, it was undeniably the greatest and unprecedented practice of ceaseless internal party revolution and the revolutionary mass line in the revolutionary party of a transitional society toward global communism, providing countless lessons to communists worldwide about how the revolutionary party should be. Much of our party organization theory is nothing other than the theorization of these lessons.

The discussion of the party organization is now complete. What remains is to forge a party organization that can withstand and explosively proliferate within the crucible of revolutionary power struggle practice.