Organizational Faultlines

Abstract

There have been both sympathetic and critical studies of the importance of political organization. For Lenin, the organizational apparatus played a fundamental role in organizing subordinate classes in order to effect social transformation. He envisioned communist parties consisting of enlightened individuals who helped elevate and radicalize the working class to become a political class.’ Building on Lenin, Gramsci (between 1930 and 1935) developed his notion of the importance of the communist party to be in synergistic relation to its base of support. Rather than bringing superior ideology and consciousness to the working class, the Modern Prince (as Gramsci called the Communist Party) articulated and refined the common sense ideology of subaltern classes (1992 [1971]: 125–33).