to define the path toward the seizure of power by the military general staff. The revolutionary working class, the proletariat, is the army. The virtues of the revolutionary proletariat are exclusively military virtues. Its virtues are not the characteristics which the theory of class structure attributed to emancipated labor but the characteristics of a proletariat that cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, precisely the characteristics of the proletariat under capitalism. In the theory of class consciousness, the sole virtue of the revolutionary proletariat is iron discipline while at work with unquestioning obedience to the will of a single person, the leader. These proletarians are independent and creative to the extent that soldiers are. They are also courageous: their courage is indispensable, since its purpose is to establish strict, iron discipline backed up by the state power of the armed workers over the whole of society. To the extent that workers refuse to join this army voluntarily and resist being recruited, they are guilty of petty-bourgeois spinelessness, disunity, individualism, and alternate moods of exaltation and dejection. They are deserters to the bourgeoisie, deserters to the enemy camp.
Just as the characteristics of the revolutionary army—discipline and obedience—are precisely the characteristics which workers already possess under capitalism, the characteristics of the leaders are precisely the characteristics of leaders in capitalist society. But the leaders of capitalism are the bourgeoisie, the enemy. This difficulty is resolved by means of a sado-masochistic reasoning which aspiring leaders must learn to apply adeptly if they are at all serious. The reasoning begins with the observable fact that, under capitalism, the sole characteristics of the proletariat are discipline and obedience, the characteristics of the soldiers of an army, whereas the bourgeoisie are the planners, coordinators, strategists, in short the decision-makers. Since the characteristics of the vanguard of the proletariat are the ability to plan, coordinate, strategize, in short to make decisions, this vanguard cannot consist of proletarians and must consist of representatives of the propertied classes, bourgeois intellectuals. This self-conception of the leaders is degrading, since they see themselves as bedfellows of the hated enemy, the bourgeoisie. But the pain which the leaders thus inflict on themselves is alleviated by the gratifying fact that, by assuming the enemy's attributes they also assume the enemy's powers, the power to order, decree, legislate, and decide, the power to manage and control the subordinates whose sole attribute is their desire to obey. We must consolidate what we ourselves have won, what we ourselves have decreed, made law, discussed, planned—consolidate all this in stable forms of everyday labor discipline. This is the most difficult, but the most gratifying task.
Although the reasoning itself is solidly grounded in capitalist reality, the empirical basis for its propositions is not actually very
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