Lenin's elitism

It must be noted however that Lenin's elitism was consistent with the outlook of the Second International. As Hal Draper has written: “The fact is that Lenin had just read this theory in the most prestigious theoretical organ of Marxism of the whole international socialist movement, the Neue Zeit. It had been put forward in an important article by the leading Marxist authority of the International, Karl Kautsky.” (The Myth of Lenin's Concept of The Party, www.marxists.org/archive/draper/works/1990/myth/index.htm). The difference between Kautsky and Lenin here was over who was to lead the workers beyond “trade-union consciousness”, though historically Lenin's interpretation that this should be a vanguard party of professional revolutionaries has been more influential. By contrast, when the Socialist Party of Great Britain was formed in 1904 it repudiated leadership as a political principle and insisted that the emancipation of the working class really had to be the work of the working class itself.