The irreplaceable role of the conscious leadership of a revolutionary party becomes even more important with the conquest of state power by the working class. A mass revolutionary workers' party must lead the workers and their allies in running a state and charting a course toward socialism. Until capitalism has been uprooted on a world scale this is a much more difficult task than overturning a capitalist state.
The problems of defence of the workers' state, internally and internationally against capitalist powers; of consolidating democratic organs of workers' power; of organising the economy on new foundations; of aiding the development in other countries of mass revolutionary workers' parties with self-confident and experienced leaderships; of combating reactionary ideas and prejudices, and inequalities inherited from the past — all these problems of the period of transition to socialism, cannot be solved without the leadership of a revolutionary party of worker cadres educated in the Marxist program and tested in struggle.
The leadership of the revolutionary party cannot be imposed on the workers by force and against their will; it must be won by demonstrating in action the correctness of its policies.
The social emancipation of the working class can be achieved only by the activity of the working class itself, not by a self-proclaimed benevolent and enlightened elite. It follows that the role of the revolutionary workers' party both during and after the conquest of power is to lead the working class politically; to develop the mobilisation and activity of the working class in defence of its interests; to help the workers engage in decision-making at wider and wider levels; and to struggle within the working class for majority support for the party's proposals through persuasion, not through administrative or repressive measures.
To ensure that it is able to preserve its character as an organisation made up of the most class-conscious and militant workers, voluntarily united on the basis of agreement with its aims and perspectives, and leading the working class through the methods of political persuasion, the revolutionary party must ensure that its apparatus (central leadership bodies and full-time staff) remains separate and distinct from the apparatus of the workers' state.
In the early Soviet republic under Lenin's leadership, all parties except the Bolsheviks ultimately arrayed themselves with the armed capitalist counter-revolution against the workers' state. As a result, within the early Soviet state there was only one political party represented in the democratic organs of workers' power, in the soviets. However, no theoretical document of Marx, Engels, Lenin, or the Marxist movement in Lenin's time, advances the view that a monopoly of political activity by one party is necessary to maintain working-class power. The Stalinist rationalisation, developed after Lenin's death, that each social class is represented by a single party, is historically false and served simply as an apology for the monopolisation of political life by the Stalinist bureaucracy, a monopoly based on its usurpation of the political power of the Soviet working-class.
A political party is a part of a class and since each class is heterogeneous — made up of backward and advanced layers — one and the same class may give rise to, or support, different parties. A social class can only resolve its common problems through an inner struggle of tendencies, groups, and parties. This was true for the capitalist class under feudalism and capitalism, and for the workers under capitalism. It will remain true for the working class during the transition period between capitalism and socialism.
The workers must be free to organise political groups and parties without a priori ideological restrictions. The give-and-take of free discussion and political debate within the working class is the most effective way to decide the innumerable problems of theory, strategy and tactics involved in the titanic task of building a classless society under the direction of the traditionally oppressed, exploited and downtrodden masses. Freedom for these masses to organise political groups and parties, subject only to any restrictions the working people themselves find necessary to protect their power against the old ruling class, is the only road to authentic workers' democracy.
Any attempt by a privileged stratum to dictate to the workers which political parties they may recognise and vote for is a blow not to the class enemy, but to the working class; it undermines the exercise of political power by the workers. The working people themselves, through their free vote, should determine which political parties are represented in the democratic organs of workers' power.
Similarly, to grant a single party a monopoly of access to printing presses, radio, television, other mass media, and assembly halls, etc., restricts rather than increases the democratic rights of the working people. This applies equally to mass organisations or professional associations (such as writers' unions) controlled exclusively by a single party. The right of working people, including those with dissenting views, to have access to the material means of exercising democratic rights (freedom of the press, of assembly, of public protest, the right to strike, etc.) is essential to the development and maintenance of workers' democracy, as is the independence of the trade unions from the state.
Political parties are a reflection of the class struggle in the sphere of politics, that is, in questions relating to government policy and the use of state power. As long as class conflict exists and state power is needed by the workers to defend their class interests, political parties will continue to exist. They can disappear only with progress toward a socialist society and the withering away of classes and class conflict and, therefore, of the state. As political parties, including the revolutionary workers' party, wither away with the disappearance of classes, other forms of organisation reflecting differences of opinion and debating differing views and proposals in various spheres of social life will come into being and flourish. As society advances toward socialism and classes wither away, the revolutionary workers' party will encompass within its ranks larger and larger sections of the population and, at the same time, increasingly dissolve into these new forms of organisation of discussion and debate.