What role do the communists play in a modern industrial society and how do they interact with the proletariat?

Communism is a political and economical system for management which is based on the central premise that all means of production should be owned collectively by the public rather than a few individuals.

Proletariat refers to people in the working class who, as per communistic concepts, are differentiated from bourgeoisie, who are the people who own and manage the means of production.The aim of communism is to create a classless society - a society which ahas neither bourgeoisie nor proletariat.

As per original concepts of communism, developed by Karl Marx and Friedrick Engels, this classless society was to be created by proletariat taking over control of all means of production, and management the society to develop a class less society. However, V.I. Lenin modified the original concept of Karl Marx and suggested that the task of building up a classless society can only be accomplished, instead of proletariat, by a group of intellectuals committed to the communistic ideology and capable of managing the task. This group of intellectuals constitute the communist party as per scheme of Lenin.

From the above discussions a few things emerge as follows:

• Communist play a role in modern industrial societies only in countries having communist system of government.

• Theoretically there is no proletariat class when communist government is established. Everyone in the economy is supposed to be a common owner of means of production, and is supposed to share equally the benefits from their produce. This of course is a theoretical concept, In reality the members of the communist party become the elite group in the society.


• If we consider the common people in the communist countries, who are not the members of the elite group of communist party, as the proletariat, we can say that the communist party is the manager of their common property. This includes the management and supervision of the work of people, as well as taking decision on distribution of the outputs generated. Theoretically the communist party is supposed to work in the common interest of the people and the distribution of outputs of the means of production is supposed to be equal among all the people. However in practice this  may not really be so.