Bordiga’s followers treated party discipline as inapplicable to predestined leaders

Evidence

An idea of the attitude of his followers at this time (although Gramsci was to stress that Bordiga himself did not hold such views) can be gained from a conversation which took place between Humbert Droz and Grieco (at that time an unquestioning follower of Bordiga), and which Droz reported to Zinoviev on 15 February 1924. Grieco had said: “The International and the party have an anti-communist line and it is the duty of certain leaders, when they perceive a serious deviation, to refuse to follow discipline … Certain comrades are so to speak predestined to be leaders. Bordiga, like Lenin, is one of these. Discipline cannot be applied to such men as it can to other members of the party; their historical mission is to apply discipline to others, not to respect it.” — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 161

Categorization

• QUESTION: This ‘predestined leaders exempt from discipline’ stance is worth connecting to Gramsci’s later critique of vanguardist/Blanquist leadership — does he write against this specific claim elsewhere?
• XREF: Connects to the critique of vanguard elitism found in We (Zamyatin) about the single state, and to theories of charismatic authority that exempt the leader from rules.