Through out my studies I've read everyone from people like , Paul Mattick to the recently reading several works by Bordiga. And as many people from in between as I can. I now find myself conflicted on what the role of the party should actually be. My original view(and what I would say is still the main stay of my view) is that the party should not take power and should not see itself above the masses. To do so would lead to the elitist practices that the Bolsheviks ended up practicing. It should be the organizational back bone of the masses. Educating the masses into class consciousness and bringing them to class will. The goal should be to integrate the masses(the majority) into the minority(the party). It should guide and direct but not police or dictate. It should be remain a part of the proletariat and the proletariat apart of it. If the party was to take some type of direct authoritative power I consider it simply taking power from one minority(the bourgeois) and giving to another(the party). I'm conflicted with this original view and some of the views of the party. I'm really beginning to question if it's possible, in this day and age, to really have this revolution from the bottom up. I'm really in a bit of tendency crisis, since joining revleft I've been exposed to theories to more and more things about tendency's like Trotskyism and Leninism that I hadn't encountered before and it's really making me question this view I had before hand.
Left Communists are against Party taking power, against Party dictatorship etc. they are for dictatorship of proletariat (not above proletariat) trough Soviets. This text could be interesting: http://libcom.org/library/bordiga-versus-pannekoek This is discussion between early (20's) Bordiga (before his ideas of Party dictatorship over the World) and late Pannekoek who become council communist. Besides that maybe it would be interesting for you to read ICC's and ICT's pmphlets on revolutionary organisation, but if you want that you'll have to wait for comrades from those two organisations...
That Bordiga Versus Pannekoek is a great article! I consider myself a left communist, yet I am not against the party taking power seeing it, as Bordiga did, as the organ that holds the proletarians that best represent the interests of their class. If you don't want they party taking power, then you essentially make the party useless (in my opinion, of course). This isn't to deny the revolutionary potential of the soviets, which are also great organs of proletariat class rule.
Here's an article which attempts to elaborate how those who argue against the party taking power see the role of the party: http://en.internationalism.org/node/3131
