Pour une Intervention Communiste

An essay by Pour une Intervention Communiste on the origins and development of the concept of “the Party” in the Marxist tradition, with critical analyses of the contradictions of Marx’s and Engels’ vacillations on this issue, and their partial responsibility for the subsequent career of the Party concept in its permutations at the hands of Liebknecht, Bebel, Kautsky, Lenin, Trotsky and Bordiga (social democratic continuity, the dictatorship of the Party), and its radical yet insufficient reformulations by Luxemburg, the KAPD and others (“return to Marx”, “historic Party”, the “Marx Party”—or even the “Debord party”) as a revolutionary minority whose goal is to promote proletarian autonomy.