In the crisis that pervades Western Marxism, the question of the party and its relation to the masses occupies a central position. This article critically examines the Leninist conception of party, specifying those intrinsic limits which are linked to the theoretical and political context of the period in which it was elaborated. The authors raise the problem of the development of class consciousness and criticize the Leninist principle of the external character of class consciousness.

This theory in which the party is conceived as the master-thinker and theoretical guide of a proletariat dominated by its material conditions of existence rests on an epistemological justification: the theory of reflection. The authors retrace in Lenin's theory of knowledge the philosophical foundations of this conception which makes the party the mediator\bearer of the historical truth of the proletariat. In fact, for Lenin, the lack of consciousness of the working class is explained by its inability to pass beyond its class determination and to rise to a comprehension of contradiction. It is precisely by reason of this deep-seated narrowness of the working class that the party is indispensable in bringing knowledge of society in its totality to the proletariat.

A consequence of this theory of knowledge is to separate arbitrarily what is conceptualized and what exists, that is to say on one hand a knowledge produced and retained by intellectuals, and on the other a working class delivered over to a blind spontaneity, to ignorance. This position, taken to its extreme, can justify all forms of authoritarianism and elitism.