Theses on the Reconstitution of the Communist Party (Tesis de Reconstitución del Partido Comunista) https://www.reconstitucion.net/Documentos/Fundamentales/Tesis_Recons titucion_PC.html 1. The Proletariat, the Revolutionary Class (El proletariado, clase revolucionaria) [From almost the same time] as the appearance of classes in society—that division which implies that some people live upon the exploitation of others—there arose within social consciousness the necessity for emancipation, [the necessity] for the suppression of this exploitation, and the oppression which it [entailed.] Spartacus, within the epoch of slavery, or Münzer, within the feudal era, headed movements whose ends were [respectively] the liberation of the slaves and of the serfs. Both movements symbolised the emancipatory consciousness of the oppressed in times before capitalism; both knew how to penetrate the antagonistic nature of the social relations present at that time, and how to [maximise] their [irreconcilabilities]. Such were the confrontations between possessor and dispossessed, between rich and poor, regardless of the forms such confrontations showed in each historical epoch. But [while] the material conditions of the society [allowed the peoples’] consciousness to [be opened to] the ideas of emancipation, they also imposed a limit according to the insufficient development of the productive forces. This limit was underlined not only by the mystic- religious language which was used to express that programme of liberation (above all in the case of the majority of the antifeudal peasants’ revolts), but mainly in the programme itself, which did not give any other alternative to the slave [escape], and to the serf no other than becoming the individual and private owner of the land he tilled (which, therefore, promoted the perpetuation of classes). It is with capitalism, that mode of production which develops the productive forces at a speed never before seen, when production begins to acquire a social character that involves all components in the economy and begins to integrate them through interdependent economic ties. [It is with capitalism that] the proletariat, a new exploited class arrives, which is legally free, which creates all wealth but [which] possesses nothing. It is in this epoch when the objective conditions for the real emancipation of humanity are created, and when its programme of justice and freedom can be scientifically formulated. Neither the slave nor the serf are freed of their misery by their permanent, and at some times heroic, struggles against their owners and lords. In the first place, it is the very disintegration of the slave system along with the import of new social relations within the ancient world, and the coming into play of a social class which had been developing within the secondary spheres of society (the bourgeoisie, in the case of feudalism), which definitively solves the question of overcoming the old ways of [social] exploitation. [It is only the forms of social exploitation which the class struggle— between the producers, who bare [the burden of wealth creation], and those who appropriate it—resolves, rather than directly resolving the question of social exploitation itself.] Therefore, the history of humanity before the appearance of the proletariat is summarised [merely] by the change in the forms of exploitation, by the [mere] relief of some classes by others (both of exploiters and exploited), and of some modes of production by others on the stage of society [history.] And it is in these terms that, from a political point of view, the contradiction shared by all pre-capitalist socio-economic formations is expressed. [According to it, the suppression of the social relations of exploitation—of which the oppressed become increasingly aware—is owed neither to their class, nor simply to the struggle of their class, but rather the coming into play of other social forces outside those that constituted the central axis of those formations (such as the master-slave relation, or that between lord and serf).] However, this contradiction, this separation—made by social development—between the consciousness of the exploited and their program of emancipation, on the one hand, and on the other, [between] the mechanisms and means to eliminate that exploitation and fulfill the liberating program (basically the class struggle), [are] overcome when feudalism gives way to capitalism, when the lord becomes a bourgeois, and when the serf becomes a proletarian. Indeed, capitalism bit-by-bit [either] eliminates all the old forms of production or assimilates and subordinates them to its control, thereby transforming all producers into wage earners or subjecting them to the iron laws of the capitalist market. The general law of capitalist accumulation progressively transforms all social relations into capitalist relations and radically divides producers into owners who monopolize the means of production—who [grow] fewer and more powerful—and non- owners who possess only their labor power. Capital socializes production, fragmenting the steps necessary for the production of a commodity to the greatest extent possible and involving an increasing number of people in this process, while simultaneously displacing the direct, individual producer. The social division of labor deepens as the organiation of all social production becomes concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. The satisfaction of personal needs ceases to be an individual matter and becomes a social one. The contradiction between the progressive socialization of production and its private form of appropriation develops and intensifies, permeating all spheres of society. The problems of exploitation and oppression inherent in any class society acquire a new meaning and, at the same time, demand a new solution. Slave labour sustained a parasitic society of nobles and gentiles who did not recognise it as an integral part of their political life. The slave's liberation came through manumission (that is, becoming a parasite), through escape, or through death by exhaustion. For centuries, the serf fed the idleness and warlike raids of feudal armies, while the peasant struggled to rid himself of his servile condition and emancipate himself as a class (to become a free landowner). But this emancipation was that of a class that aspired to become an independent class. It did not signify the abolition of classes. From [the emancipation of the peasantry] arose capital, and capital [brought forth] the proletariat. The goal of this new class could only be oriented toward emancipation from its own class condition—and, with it, the liberation of all humanity from class division —the abolition of classes themselves, and the elimination of all the oppression and misery they entail. Capital proletarianizes all of humanity and, at the same time, expropriates its means of subsistence. The proletariat only needs to expropriate the expropriators so that all people can once again become masters of themselves and their destiny. For the first time in history, the special position of a class allows the appropriation of its means of subsistence to bring about the disappearance of private property and classes, and for society to be organized not upon the dictates of necessity, but according to the free association of its members, who cease to depend on the means and the product of their labor and become sovereign and fully in control of their lives. But this task raises new demands and new problems related to the instruments and means the proletariat must equip itself with [in order] to fulfill this historical mission. The first and foremost is the class struggle. The proletariat, unlike the rest of the exploited classes throughout history, can establish a positive correlation between the implementation of its class struggle and the program of self-emancipation and the emancipation of humanity from exploitation and oppression; it can establish a direct path between its struggle as a class and the destruction of classes. To do this, however, it needs to destroy the political power of capital (Proletarian Revolution) and establish its own in order to build a new society on different foundations (Communism). But for the proletariat to become a political force, it first needs to constitute itself as a political party. One of the historical peculiarities of the proletarian class is that its condition as a class is paralleled and simultaneous with its condition as a political party. Indeed, the proletariat appears in history as a class not when the bourgeoisie begins to produce in a capitalist manner and to expropriate and convert producers into wage laborers, nor even when the mass industrialization of the economy transforms the vast majority of producers into wage laborers; the working class emerges in history when these wage laborers, or their most advanced representatives, become aware that they constitute a separate class with their own interests, opposed to those of the other classes in society. Then, they organize themselves as a class: they strive to fight for the same demands, they try to unite these struggles, they try to create their own unified organizations to defend their interests, and so on. These struggles and this unified drive to defend their common interests are the driving force of the workers' movement. In this sense, the proletariat is a class because, in its movement, it acquires awareness of itself as such, of its social and economic distinctiveness; but it is not yet conscious of its historical role as a class. The proletariat, at this stage, sees what it is, but not yet what it has to be; it develops class consciousness, but has not yet acquired revolutionary class consciousness. Certainly, the very framework of bourgeois society can accommodate, without being subverted, the political organization of a part of its social body. In fact, the bourgeoisie neither denies nor can deny the existence of classes, of disparate social interests, nor of political organization for the defense of those interests. And, of course, as Marx said, the emergence of the proletariat as a class, from the centralization of its struggles into a national struggle and, therefore, into a class struggle, also signifies the birth of the proletariat as a political party (Sp.: “el nacimiento del proletariado como partido político”), since "every class struggle is a political struggle." But the character of this political struggle corresponds to [...] to the level of class consciousness and organization [which] is conscious "of itself" and not yet "for itself." For this reason, the political content of the programs and activities of workers' organizations, at this stage of development, is primarily economic and focused on demands, [that is to say,] reformist. This political content corresponds, from the perspective of society in general, to the [ascendant period] of capitalism, and from the perspective of the proletarian class in particular, to the period of quantitative accumulation—or "accumulation of forces"—preceding the qualitative leap, parallel to capitalism's entry into its imperialist stage or general crisis, which places the Proletarian Revolution on the agenda. In this period, spontaneous, economistic, or trade-unionist consciousness and organization, of the trade union type or the type of the old reformist (social-democratic) workers' party, are no longer adequate to meet the needs of the working class: in this period, a new type of political organization of the proletariat is essential. This new type of political organization is the Communist Party, which begins to emerge when the proletariat, primarily through its most advanced sector, acquires revolutionary consciousness. In fact, the Communist Party is a consequence of this historical step and, at the same time, once created, is also its cause. That is, the Communist Party arises because the class has begun to understand its revolutionary role, and it arises as an instrument that the class gives itself to assume and fully fulfill that role. 2. Vanguard and Class (Vanguardia y clase) Revolutionary consciousness is revolutionary ideology, the body of ideas which expresses the proletariat's superior self-consciousness as a class and sets forth its program of objectives to be achieved. The ideology of the proletariat is Communism, [this being] the synthesis of the experience of its class struggle with the most advanced progress of universal knowledge. Communism as a revolutionary ideology was founded by Marx and Engels and developed by Lenin and the subsequent experience of building Socialism. All this theoretical [knowledge] must be conveyed to the proletarian class so that its movement or class struggle is transformed into a revolutionary movement or struggle. The proletariat is the vanguard class of modern society because history has entrusted it with an emancipatory mission that until now no one has been able to carry out. [ The proletariat needs a vanguard ideology, and this is provided by Marxism-Leninism, because it is the only theory capable of revealing to the proletariat both the role it must play and assume and its scientific foundations. Marxism-Leninism, or Scientific Socialism, is therefore the ideology of the proletariat, Communism, and not any of those radical petty-bourgeois theories that compete with it (e.g. "libertarian communism" or the communism of political specimens like Anguita [General Secretary of the PCE] ), which divert the proletariat from its true revolutionary horizon.] For true revolutionary theory can only refer to one class, the only truly revolutionary class. Those who poison communism with false illusions, those who evade the understanding of social development and the duty to use its laws to drive its progress, replacing it with false utopias, those who deny the proletariat's leading role in that progress, substituting it with vague, spontaneist, or reformist recipes, are the primary enemies of Communism because they dissolve and eliminate what is essential to it: its class character. Communism, as the consciousness of the proletarian class, is elaborated outside the class, outside its movement. The vanguard ideology of the proletariat must be assimilated by the vanguard sector of the proletariat and then disseminated to the rest of the working masses. Only in this way, only when revolutionary consciousness is instilled in the proletarian movement, can it be transformed into a revolutionary movement. The Communist Party is, therefore, the unity of the proletarian vanguard with the mass workers' movement, when this movement reaches a new state of consciousness: that of revolutionary ideology, that of Communism. But the proletariat does not acquire communist consciousness through its spontaneous movement, through the kind of movement that transformed it into a class, that helped it become aware of its particular economic interests. This new state of consciousness can only come to it from outside the spontaneous struggle it wages as a class. This new consciousness can only be provided by its vanguard, that sector of the class that has been able to assimilate the most advanced worldview, [that] capable of encompassing all the achievements of human thought and knowledge. With its spontaneous movement, the working class cannot transcend the framework of bourgeois ideology; the qualitative leap toward communist ideology can only be [had] through its vanguard. But, for this to happen, the first step the vanguard must take is to become part of the class. Due to the intellectual characteristics of communist theory, which is based on profound scientific knowledge, the average worker, because of their disadvantaged material situation in capitalist society, is practically unable to acquire this knowledge on their own or even to fully grasp the general vision of communist ideology. This peculiarity explains why, in many cases, those who are in a position to acquire this knowledge and understand Communism are members of other classes. One of the great achievements of the working-class struggle was forcing the bourgeoisie to expand education for the children of the proletariat, reaching a significant level of secondary education. This allowed future proletarians to acquire broader and more general knowledge and, consequently, to be better equipped to understand Communism. Currently, however, the bourgeoisie, probably due to the retreat of the workers' movement mentioned above, is regaining ground in this area by reforming educational legislation to make teaching increasingly technical, specialized, and fragmented, removing from the curriculum comprehensive views of reality, and above all Marxism. In any case, [to be truly familiar with] communist ideology requires a more or less continuous intellectual activity, regardless of whether one comes from a working-class background [or not]. In a class- based society with a profound division of labor, this inevitably raises the question of the contradiction between manual and intellectual work. Given that the latter is practically the monopoly of the ruling class, the bourgeoisie, this contradiction objectively arises as a contradiction between two classes. For this reason, the revolutionary intellectual, whether a worker or not, must be part of the working class to become its vanguard. It is not enough to proclaim oneself a revolutionary, to express solidarity with the exploited and oppressed, and to present them with a program of emancipation; it is not enough to simply want to emancipate the proletariat. History has provided many examples, all of them failures, of this method of class liberation. [Of them, utopian] socialism is the most prominent of them all. The definitive difference between utopian and scientific socialism [i.e., Marxism], is that the latter understood that the emancipation of the working class cannot come from outside, but must be a work of self-emancipation by the proletariat itself. And this is only possible if those who provide the working class with the ideology that opens the prospects for its liberation are members of the class itself, regardless of their social origin. Only in this way can they be the proletarian vanguard—and, therefore, part of this class—only in this way can they act as true revolutionaries and not as well-intentioned reformers. [The vanguard is turned into a part of the class] (Sp. “se convierte en parte de la clase”) when it turns toward it and [is melted down] with it in the Communist Party. In this way, the antagonistic contradictions of a class nature between the vanguard and the class, first, and within the Party later, are overcome. The differentiations and divisions of labor within the Party, whether due to the necessary centralization of political leadership or to specialization in work, thus take on an exclusively functional character, not at all hierarchical or social. In short, the first challenges facing the most politically advanced elements of modern society, its revolutionary elements, are to study, formulate, and assimilate vanguard theory in all its developments, and to ensure that it becomes part of the proletarian class movement. These challenges can be summarized in a single task: the constitution of the Communist Party. 3. Party and class (Partido y clase) The integration of the vanguard into the class is expressed politically in the Communist Party, and historically as the movement of the class towards the political position of the vanguard, [that is,] towards the political position of Communism. The CP, then, does not arise from the masses or from the spontaneous movement of the proletarian masses, but it does necessarily arise from the proletarian class. It is necessary to conceptually distinguish the idea of masses from that of the class. The masses form part of the class, but do not encompass it in its entirety: the vanguard is another of its essential components. When the vanguard, baring the vanguard ideology, integrates itself into the class and joins its mass movement, the Communist Party emerges. That is why we say that this party is a product of the proletarian class, although not of its spontaneous mass movement. That is why we say that there is no Communist Party without this synthesis between vanguard and masses within the class, even though the vanguard may pre-exist—as it currently does, and this [is evidenced by] the numerous Marxist-Leninist circles that are organized today and are a product of the disintegration of revisionism—disconnected from the workers' movement and, therefore, not forming an organic part of the class. In fact, this situation is a necessary stage prior to the establishment of the Communist Party: it is the stage of Party Reconstitution, a stage characterized by the vanguard's struggle to become an integral part of the class, something that is only possible by constituting itself as a Communist Party. The proletariat is a unity between consciousness and movement. As already mentioned, in its initial phase, it was not yet a class. These were the times of the disintegration of feudalism, the rise of merchant capital, and incipient manufacture. Proletarians existed in a scattered fashion, a byproduct of the dissolution of feudal relations, and constantly tended to revert to the old forms of family or guild production. But when capitalism increasingly appropriated the productive spheres of the economy and began to dominate all social production, and especially when capital introduced machinery into production, the tendency toward the proletarianization of producers became dominant, and the more or less organized resistance of wage earners began. At first, this struggle was local or individual, but it gradually spread and became organized on a national scale. Proletarians became aware that they were a class with specific interests, confronting another class: the employers. The struggle increasingly takes on the connotations of a class conflict and increasingly acquires political dimensions. In this phase of the movement, the proletariat constitutes itself as a class and organizes itself politically as a class (trade unions, workers' parties). This stage of the movement's development corresponds to a specific type of organization and a specific type of political consciousness. The proletariat is [at this point, therefore,] a fully formed social class, and its actions reflect a particular independent political consciousness. It therefore acts as a political party. However, this consciousness and this political organization indicate that the proletarian movement is still within the bourgeois framework, still presupposing capitalist social relations as unquestionable conditions. The proletarian movement, based on the struggle of "class against class," is still limited to reproducing the conditions of that struggle, with no other option than to develop it endlessly. Therefore, the political struggle of the proletarian class focuses solely on acquiring advantages for this struggle, on reforms, and employs strikes or parliamentary legality to achieve or ratify them. [ The proletarian movement can only take a new qualitative leap and a new course in accordance with the possibilities of its political action and historical goals when revolutionary consciousness is introduced into its movement, presenting its new and true political objectives; when this crystallizes into a new type of political organization of the working class, which moves towards Communism; when the working class, acting as a bourgeois political party, transforms itself into a communist political organization, and then into a revolutionary movement, first in an incipient way (Communist Party), then in a way that encompasses the whole class (communist society).] In its class struggle against the bourgeoisie, the proletariat constantly strives to equip itself with this new type of organization, which accompanies the gradual awakening of its revolutionary role. In this struggle, the persistence of the reformist type of organization expresses that [on the one hand,] the process of the masses' conscious elevation to the position of the communist vanguard is necessarily gradual, that it does not occur suddenly, through a single political act for the entire class [(e.g., the formation of the Communist Party), but rather through several historical events, namely the formation of the Communist Party, the revolutionary conquest of power, the fulfillment of the tasks of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, etc. On the other hand,] the bourgeoisie, through its support of these old organizations, tries to contain and hinder the transformation and the transition of workers' consciousness and organization from their reformist stage to the revolutionary stage. [In this way], the old workers' organization objectively transforms into its opposite, ceasing to defend the strategic interests of the working class and instead defending those of the bourgeoisie. In doing so, and through its opportunist and revisionist leadership, it consummates the historical betrayal of the proletariat by social democracy. For this reason, and regardless of the tactical maneuvers required by any revolutionary process in concrete circumstances, social democracy and revisionism have become the principal enemy of the Revolution. This is true as much in its initial stage—the formation of the Communist Party—because they attempt to distort the vanguard ideology and hinder the separation of forces from bourgeois ideology—as in the stage of winning the masses over to the Revolution and seizing power—because they serve as a conduit for the bourgeoisie within the working class and attempt to neutralize the revolutionary transformation and organization of the masses. If the proletariat's transformation into a class and a workers' party occurs through the dialectic or struggle of "class against class," through its fight against the bourgeoisie for the defense of its immediate demands, then the proletariat's transformation into a revolutionary class and a Communist Party occurs through the dialectic between the vanguard and the masses within the class. For it is the vanguard that transforms, and is the only force capable of transforming, the general class struggle of the proletariat into revolutionary consciousness and organization. In other words, if the driving force of the proletarian movement in its formative stage as a class was direct confrontation with the other class (the bourgeoisie), a confrontation that allowed for the delimitation of the social and political fields between them and the unity of the proletariat as an economic subject, then in the stage of the workers' movement's transformation into a revolutionary movement (Proletarian Revolution), the driving force becomes the reciprocal action between the vanguard— now integrated into the class—and the masses of the proletariat: in short, the driving force of the class's rise to Communism becomes the Communist Party. The Communist Party is not something separate from the class, it is not something given to it from the outside or directed at it from the outside; the Communist Party is the relationship that exists between the vanguard and the masses of the class in the Revolution, a relationship that finds a unity and a different organic crystallization in each of the Revolution's stages. The concept of Class and the concept of Party should not be understood separately, from a relationship of exclusion, [or] in a metaphysical way, but as the two aspects of a dialectical unity, as the two aspects of a determined historical entity, [i.e.] the proletariat, whose revolutionary role unfolds with the movement of that dialectical unity[.] [It occurs first,] when, in the historical phase of preparation for the Revolution—until the end of the 19th century—the proletariat becomes a class. [This organic condition therefore] becomes the [primary] aspect, since [the proletariat concerns] its organization as a social unit, while the political aspect plays a secondary role, insofar as the workers' party is only a party that unites the class and defends its social and economic identity as such a class. [It occurs secondly], when in the era of the Revolution—up to Communism—the proletariat must become the Communist Party, so its elevation to this new political condition is the main thing, since it is about fulfilling its historical mission of eliminating class society, so that, once Communism is achieved, it overcomes its social and economic class condition and the Party-Class contradiction that defines the proletariat— or humanity historically determined as a wage-earning class—in class society disappears in a new synthesis. In the era of the Proletarian Revolution, the movement of the Class toward its Party is expressed in the contradiction between the vanguard of the class and the masses of the class. It is no longer a matter of quantitatively consolidating the proletariat as a particular class in history, nor of defending its moral identity as an independent political class—that is to say, of defining and separating itself politically and socially from the bourgeoisie—it is precisely a matter of transcending the conditions that determine it as a political class. This transformation of the tasks of the proletariat explains why its vanguard organization is not, and cannot be, a mass organization whose vocation is to encompass the entire class—which would mean that it would remain dormant at the economic or trade union level of its political development—like the trade union or the reformist party, but rather an organization whose vocation is to elevate it and lead it toward Communism. [It must be an organization that carries a qualitatively superior, vanguard ideology—Communism—that bears the responsibility of fulfilling this task of raising the proletariat to this new state of civilization, since it is a matter of the proletariat transcending its material circumtances as a class, of denying its current empirical condition as an exploited social class in order, with Communism, to transform and emancipate itself, and simultaneously also transforming and emancipating all of humanity and raising it to a new state of civilization. Those, like Anguita and his cronies, who] proclaim themselves "communists" and, at the same time, deny Leninism—[that is, denying the vanguard ideology that seeks to elevate the class above its current state of being an exploited class as in the last Congress of the fake PCE, [Spanish Communist Party]—arguing] that in current society, in capitalism, there is a "socio-cultural ceiling" that cannot be surpassed, [renounce] what essentially defines Communism as an ideology, are engaging in the most blatant electoral opportunism, and are demonstrating the most evident and recalcitrant anti-communism. For all these reasons, ideology is the defining characteristic of the new vanguard organization, because this ideology is what promotes the proletarian movement and projects its being toward a revolutionary horizon. It is what awakens its consciousness and frees it from the prostration of its economic determinism as a class that produces surplus value and wealth belonging to others. Therefore, the proletarian vanguard must approach the rest of its class through ideology: this is its first step and its premise as a vanguard, and this is the first step and the first premise of the proletarian class's movement toward its Party, of the revolutionary movement of the proletariat. The Party is the revolutionary movement of the class "for itself." The class that transforms itself from an exploited class into emancipated humanity is the Party as the expression of the class's movement in that transformation. This has different solutions depending on the stage the movement is at. When a sector of society initially acquires communist consciousness but invests most of its efforts in fully embracing it and organizing how to begin disseminating it to the working class, there is still no Party and, consequently, no revolutionary movement, since the ideological vanguard has yet to become part of the class. Let us say, in passing, that to become part of the modern revolutionary class, it is [not only required] and indispensable to share its material conditions, its position in the production process; one can also be part of the class by sharing its ideology—which is, in essence, revolutionary. This is the first step the (ideological) vanguard must take to become part of the class and, therefore, to fulfill its role as a (revolutionary) vanguard. As long as this task remains unfinished, there is no real, practical vanguard, no revolutionary orientation for the class, and therefore no movement toward Communism, nor a Communist Party. In a second stage, when the vanguard has embraced the ideology and made contact with the masses of the working class, thus creating an incipient movement toward that ideology, the conditions for the existence of the Communist Party as a specific political organization are met. Once the vanguard is integrated within the class, it can begin to transform its spontaneous movement into a conscious (revolutionary) movement toward the ideological and political position of the Party's ideology and program: Communism. At this point, and in this sense, the Communist Party is born as the organization of the vanguard plus the movement of the masses toward [the vanguard]. Subsequently, this movement must extend to all the masses of the working class. To achieve this, the vanguard must utilize each and every political instrument that the development of this process demands and allows: mass organizations to strengthen the revolutionary movement and the political position of the vanguard (to strengthen the Communist Party); the Dictatorship of the Proletariat to sweep away the obstacles that the old society places in the way of the movement's expansion; building new social relations, to accelerate the rise of the class towards Communism, etc. 4. Party and vanguardia (Partido y vanguardia) Up to this point, we have examined the historical premises for the organic constitution of the revolutionary party of the proletariat. First, the proletariat must pre-exist as an already formed class, whose activity is independent political activity—that is, one that acts as a party. Second, on this basis, revolutionary ideology must be applied by a vanguard that is [vanguard as such, because it carries the vanguard ideology, and because it strives to become an integral part of the class in order to constitute itself as its true vanguard.] Third, when the vanguard has finally integrated into the class, transforming itself into a Communist Party, the proletarian movement undergoes a qualitative leap: it becomes a revolutionary movement. This movement is defined by the class's pursuit of the communist program and ideology of its Party, thereby fulfilling its mission as a revolutionary class. However, these premises are historical insofar as they represent achievements already won by the international proletariat, achievements that it retains to a certain extent. In fact, the main significance of these gains is that the revolutionary movement of the proletariat is in full swing; not in the political sphere, since we are living through a period of stagnation and retreat, but in its historical sense. October inaugurated the revolutionary movement of the class, that is, its process of rising toward Communism. What is at stake now is defining the political premises for this movement to gain new momentum. From a historical perspective, we can define the Communist Party (CP) in its unity with the working class, once its revolutionary vanguard imprints a conscious character on its movement toward Communism; that is, as a dialectical unity in which the class, once configured as such, is transforming itself into the CP. But, from a political perspective, this is insufficient. Certainly, the historical perspective only tells us that the struggle between these two opposites, between the CP and the working class, is expressed as a revolutionary movement. Therefore, this definition of the CP is too loose and ambiguous, since it does not clarify what, at a given moment in that revolutionary process, is, in itself, the CP, and what it is not. In other words, it does not resolve the main political question of the Party with regard to its reconstitution, that is, the question of its organization. Then, if on the historical plane the dialectic between the Party and the Class manifests itself as a revolutionary movement of ascent toward Communism, on the concrete political plane, the revolutionary movement expresses itself through the dialectic between the vanguard and the masses of the class. As already pointed out, the Communist Party, understood as a specific political organization, is both an attribute and a subject of this movement: it is created by it and, once created, reproduces it on an ever-widening scale. Therefore, the Communist Party, as a political organization, must be conceived [of] as the relationship between the vanguard and the masses. The Communist Party, conceived in this way, is a social relationship, within the Class, between its masses and its vanguard, and this social relationship crystallizes into a political organization not in an absolute sense, but according to the moment in the development of this dialectical relationship. The Communist Party is not simply the vanguard, nor even the organized vanguard, although the criteria for this organization are guided by Marxism-Leninism. To conceive of the Party's organization in this way is to fall into dogmatism, since, from this perspective, only one aspect of that "social relationship" is considered: the vanguard, independent and separate from the other element inherent to the class, the masses. This leads to the idea of the Communist Party separate from the Class, and to the idea of the Class in its exclusively economic conception, without political content, not as a unity of movement and consciousness. Therefore, the idea of a class acting as a political party is denied; not only is the idea that the class can act "for itself" denied, but even that the class has consciousness "in itself" and, consequently, that the proletariat is a socially mature and politically independent class—that is, with its own program, with a specific revolutionary historical mission as a class. The concept of the Communist Party (CP) as the relationship between the vanguard and the masses is a much more concrete formulation than that which describes it as the revolutionary movement of the Class toward Communism, but it is still incomplete. Up to this point, it takes into account its dialectical elements, its two "opposites," and establishes a general link between them, a "social relationship"; but it still does not specify anything about the concrete character of that relationship, about this relationship as a "unity of opposites"; it still says nothing about the internal link necessary for that relationship to be verified as a dialectical unity. Up to this point, we have [on the one hand] the vanguard, which strives to integrate itself into the Class, which is still a vanguard only because it carries the vanguard ideology, but [not yet] a political vanguard because it does not form an organic whole with the Class, because it is not yet the CP; [and on the other hand,] the masses whose movement seeks to overcome the [limit imposed by their economic circumstances], the limit of their spontaneous consciousness, in order to achieve self-awareness of their historical mission, but which has not yet succeeded because the revolutionary ideology does not form an organic whole with their movement. These two elements