A
communist party is a
political party that advocates the application of the social and economic principles of
communism through state policy. The name originates from the 1848 tract
Manifesto of the Communist Party by
Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels. According to
Leninist theory, a Communist party is the
vanguard party of the
working class (Proletariat), whether ruling or non-ruling,
but when such a party is in power in a specific country, the party is said to be the highest authority of the
dictatorship of the proletariat.
Vladimir Lenin's theories on the role of a Communist party were developed as the early 20th-century
Russian social democracy divided into
Bolshevik (meaning "
of the majority") and
Menshevik (meaning "of the minority") factions. Lenin, leader of the Bolsheviks, argued that a revolutionary party should be a small vanguard party with a centralized political command and a strict
cadre policy; the Menshevik faction, however, argued that the party should be a broad-based mass movement. The Bolshevik party, which eventually became the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union, took power in Russia after the
October Revolution in 1917. With the creation of the
Communist International, the Leninist concept of party building was copied by emerging Communist parties worldwide.