Communist Party is the revolutionary party of the proletariat. It unites and mobilises the working class and all exploited oppressed sections of society in the struggle for their immediate interests and for putting an end to all exploitation and injustice.
The Communist Manifesto defines “the proletariat, the modern working class” as “a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.” The proletariat is the most revolutionary class, because it constitutes the lowest stratum, the base, of the pyramid-like class structure of a capitalist society and therefore when it stands up to liberate itself, the whole class pyramid — “the whole superincumbent strata of official society” — crumbles down. The proletariat’s great revolutionary potential, its leading role in revolution, is thus inherent in its objective location within the modern class hierarchy: in the fact that to liberate itself it has to liberate all other toiling classes. Additionally, their collective, organised, disciplined life, their live contact with modern technology, and the fact that they “have nothing to loose but their chains” make the proletarians particularly capable and consistent as the organised vanguards of revolution.
Leadership in the destruction of the old oppressive social structure makes the working class the natural leader in the construction of a new society. In Europe, it was in its own class interest that the bourgeoisie led the demolition of feudalism and, on the strength of that, also the construction of the capitalist order. So in spite of the slogan “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”, it retained and perfected the system of class divisions and exploitation. But the proletariat has no subaltern classes to exploit, its interest rather lies in the abolition of private property, so it builds the new society in that image. After revolution, it thus rediscovers itself in a new role as the architect of a new society.
But the working class cannot grasp or realise this historic mission simply in course of its economic or trade union struggles. The Communist Party alone makes it conscious of, and organises it for, this role. To say the same thing in another way, the proletariat’s objective historic role gains conscious and concentrated expression in the Communist Party, in Marxism-Leninism.
