The revolutionary consciousness is the revolutionary ideology, the body of ideas that expresses its superior auto-consciousness as a class and expounds its program of targets to meet. The ideology of the proletariat is the Communism, being this the synthesis of the experience of its struggle as a class, along with the most advanced progresses of the universal wisdom. The Communism, as revolutionary ideology, was created by Marx and Engels and developed by Lenin and the ulterior experience of the construction of Socialism. All this theoretical knowledge must be taken to the worker class in order to make its movement or class struggle a revolutionary movement or struggle. The proletariat is the vanguard class of the modern society because history has entrusted it with an emancipatory mission that nobody could undertake until this moment. The proletariat needs, hence, a vanguard ideology, and that is what the Marxism-leninism is, because it is the only theory that is able to reveal the proletariat both the role it must play and assume and its scientific basis. The marxism-leninism, or scientific socialism, is, therefore, the ideology of the proletariat, the Communism, and not any of those radical theories of the petty bourgeoisie that compete with it (for example, the “libertarian communism”) to deviate the proletariat from its revolutionary horizon. Because the real revolutionary theory can only refer to one class, to the only really revolutionary class. Those who poison the communism with false illusions, those who elude the knowledge of the social development and the duty to use these laws to impulse its progress and substitute it for false utopias, those who deny the main role of the proletariat in that progress, substituting it for vague spontaneist or reformist recipes, those are the first enemies of the communism, for they dissolve and eliminate what it is essential in it: its class nature.
The communism as consciousness of the proletarian class is elaborated outside the class, outside its movement. The ideology of vanguard of the proletariat must be assimilated by the vanguard sector of the proletariat and then taken to the rest of the worker masses. Only this way, when the revolutionary consciousness is taken to the proletarian movement, this consciousness will be able to turn that movement into a revolutionary one.
The CP is, therefore, the unity of the proletarian vanguard with the worker mass movement when this movement reaches a new state of consciousness, the one of the revolutionary ideology, the Communism. But the communist consciousness is not acquired by the proletariat with its spontaneous movement, the one that converted it in class, which helped it to acquire consciousness of its particular economic interests. This new state of consciousness can only be reached from outside of the spontaneous struggle that is undertaken as a class. This new consciousness can only be given by its vanguard, that sector of the class which has been able to assimilate the most advanced world conception, the world conception which is able to comprise all the achievements of the human thought and knowledge. With its spontaneous movement, the worker class can not surpass the frame of the bourgeois ideology; it can only achieve the qualitative leap towards the communist ideology through its vanguard.
But, in order to do so, the first step for the vanguard is to become part of the class. Because of the intellectual characteristics of the communist theory, which is based upon deep scientific knowledge, the medium worker, due to his disadvantaged material situation in the capitalist society, finds himself nearly disabled to acquire, by his own means, this knowledge, or even the chance to deeply understand the general vision of the communist ideology. This peculiarity makes obvious that, in most cases, those who are in conditions of acquiring this knowledge and understanding the communism belong to other classes. One of the greatest achievements of the struggle of the worker class was the one of forcing the bourgeoisie to allow the general education for the proletariat's children, which reaches an important formation level (middle education); this allowed the future proletarian to acquire wider, more general knowledge, and in turn, they could be in a better position to understand Communism. At the present, however, the bourgeoisie is gaining terrain in this field, through the reform of the educational legislation, which makes the education each time more technical, specialized and partial, and taking away from educational programs the integrated visions of the reality, above all Marxism.
Anyway, the knowledge of the communist ideology requires an intellectual activity somewhat permanent, whatever the origin of the person, which, in a classist society with a deep division of labour, makes inevitable that the question about the contradiction between manual and intellectual work may be posed. Taking into account that the intellectual job is practically monopolized by the dominant class, the bourgeoisie, this contradiction is posed, objectively, as a contradiction between two classes.
For this reason, the revolutionary intellectual, worker or not, must be part of the class in order to become its vanguard. Proclaiming oneself revolutionary, showing one's solidarity with the exploited and oppressed, and giving them a program of emancipation is not enough; the will to emancipate the proletarian class does not suffice. History has posed many examples, all of them failed, about this method of class liberation. The utopian socialism is the most remarkable of all of them. The definitive difference between the utopian and scientific socialism, i.e. Marxism, is that Marxism understood that class emancipation can not come from outside, but it must be the result of the auto-emancipation of the proletariat itself. And that can only be possible if those who give the worker class the ideology able to open the doors for its liberation are members of that class, whatever their social origin. Only this way will they be able to be the proletariat vanguard - and, therefore, part of this class-; only this way will they be able to act as real revolutionaries and not as well-intended reformers.
The vanguard turns into part of the class when it approaches to it and melts with it in the CP. This way, the antagonistic contradictions of classist nature are overcome: at first between the vanguard and the class, and afterwards inside the Party. The differentiations and divisions of labour inside the Party due to either the necessary centralization of the political leadership or the specialization of the work, adopt, this way, an exclusively functional character, in no way hierarchical or social.
In summary, the first challenges which are to be faced by the most politically advanced elements of the modern society, its revolutionary elements, are the ones of studying, formulating and assimilating the theory of vanguard in all its developments; they must manage to make this theory part of the proletarian class movement.
These challenges are summarized with one only task: the constitution of the CP.