Professional revolutionaries
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The concept of professional revolutionaries, alternatively called cadre, is in origin a Leninist concept used to describe a body of devoted communists who spend the great majority of their time organizing their party toward proletarian revolution. This core is usually very small, and as a consequence is sometimes cited for being the cause of the return to capitalism of the so-called 'Communist states'. Most Marxists argue that a cadre core is necessary in one form or another; Trotskyists in particular cite Stalinism, not professional revolutionaries, as the main reason for the eventual totalitarian nature of the Soviet Union, its satellite states, and the People's Republic of China. But other communists today argue against the professional revolutionaries concept entirely, and instead advocate for a "mass party" with a membership of millions of working class people, thereby maximizing, in their view, direct participation in the revolution and the subsequent revolutionary government.
