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But to return to intellectuals, and their relation to revolution, another contradiction bound up with the role of intellectuals as, in Marx’s formulation, the political and literary representatives of a class, is that in every revolution that has taken place so far, the political and literary representatives of a class are different than that class itself. This has been true in the bourgeois revolution, and not just in the proletarian revolution. Here we get to another important point of Marx’s, about the shopkeeper and the democratic intellectual: Marx points out that, in terms of how they approach the world, in their daily lives, they may be as far apart as heaven and earth; but the democratic intellectuals, much as they may philosophize in lofty realms and talk about the rights of the people and so on, do not, in the world of ideas, get beyond the limits of bourgeois right, any more than the shopkeeper gets beyond this in the realm of practical everyday activity. This same basic principle applies when such intellectuals lead a bourgeois revolution: They are different than the actual class of capitalists that they objectively represent, even as they remain within the same realm, within the same limits of bourgeois relations and the rights that correspond to that.

But this contradiction—between intellectuals and the class they lead in making revolution—becomes much more acute when it comes to the proletarian revolution. In the bourgeois revolution, the masses fight and die, and an exploiting class comes to power, if that revolution is successful—an exploiting class led by its intellectuals, its political and literary representatives. In the proletarian revolution it has to be different—but it isn’t automatically different. So here’s a very sharp contradiction: This revolution, too, is led by people who are different than the masses of people they are leading, even if some of them came, originally, from among those masses. That was my point earlier—they are different. They have developed these intellectual capacities—here again is that other “pyramid point”: you can use those capacities you have developed for one class or another. You can go over to using them for the capitalist system, even if you didn’t start out intending to do that. That’s one of the things about intellectuals: As I pointed out in Ruminations and Wranglings, they can detach themselves, so to speak, from one class and attach themselves to another class, even though their position in society corresponds, more or less, to that of the petite bourgeoisie, the middle class. In other words, they can take up the cause of one class or another, and use the same intellectual skills, more or less—not the same science, but the same basic intellectual skills—on behalf of one class or another.

In the bourgeois revolution, it doesn’t matter that an exploiting class comes to power, and it doesn’t matter that the intellectuals who lead it are in the service, ultimately, of that exploiting class. I’m being deliberately provocative here. By saying “it doesn’t matter,” what I mean is this: that’s the nature of the bourgeois revolution. I don’t literally mean it doesn’t matter—actually it matters a great deal—but that’s the nature of the bourgeois revolution. The proletarian revolution, however, has a whole different character and aim. The proletarian revolution has to lead to the end of exploitation, as its ultimate goal, the end of all oppression. But it still, for a long time, requires a group, even if it’s a growing group, of intellectuals to lead it; and those intellectuals can detach themselves from the proletarian cause and go over to the cause of the bourgeoisie—not just as an act of willfulness—they consciously decide to betray the revolution—but mainly because the material contradictions in the world still provide the basis for the capitalist road to be taken, instead of the socialist road leading to communism. And this will be true for a long time, even in socialist society. So, as opposed to the bourgeois revolution, it matters a great deal whether this revolution, the proletarian revolution, ends up bringing to power (or  bringing back to power), a group of exploiters, or proceeds on the road of communism, with the goal of doing away with all systems and relations of exploitation and oppression.

These are some of the contradictions that have to be confronted, if you’re going to play a leading role, at various levels, in a revolution. It doesn’t matter where you start out: The more you develop and the more responsibility you have, the more these contradictions are going to be part of what you have to deal with, in your own role but beyond that in the larger world, because this is not just a matter of individuals, it’s a social phenomenon—it has to do with the conditions that still exist, and will exist for a long time, even after you’ve overthrown capitalism, even after you establish the dictatorship of the proletariat and embark on the socialist road. It’s going to be a constant struggle for the leadership to stay on the socialist road, and to bring forward more and more people to be leaders on that road, and not some other.