Vanguardism, a core concept of
Leninism, is the idea that a revolutionary vanguard party, composed of the most conscious and disciplined workers, must lead the
proletariat in overthrowing capitalism and establishing
socialism, ultimately progressing to
communism
Communism () is a political sociology, sociopolitical, political philosophy, philosophical, and economic ideology, economic ideology within the history of socialism, socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a ...
.
The vanguard works to engage the working class in revolutionary politics and to strengthen
proletarian political power against the
bourgeoisie.
This theory generally serves as a rationale for the
leading role of the Communist party, often enshrined in the constitution if the party attains state power.
Foundations
Vladimir Lenin popularised political vanguardism as conceptualised by
Karl Kautsky, detailing his thoughts in one of his earlier works, ''
What is to be done?''.
Lenin argued that
Marxism's complexity and the hostility of the establishment (the
autocratic, semi-
feudal
Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was a combination of legal, economic, military, cultural, and political customs that flourished in Middle Ages, medieval Europe from the 9th to 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of struc ...
state of
Imperial Russia) required that a close-knit group of individuals pulled from the working class vanguard to safeguard the revolutionary ideology within the particular circumstances presented by the
Tsarist régime (
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...
) at the time. While Lenin wished for a revolutionary organisation akin to the contemporary
Social Democratic Party of Germany, which was open to the people and more democratic in organisation, the Russian autocracy prevented this.
Leninists argue that Lenin's ideal vanguard party would have open membership: "The members of the Party are they who accept the principles of the Party program and render the Party all possible support." This party could be completely transparent, at least internally: the "entire political arena is as open to the public view as is a theatre stage to the audience". A party that supposedly implemented democracy to such an extent that "the general control (in the literal sense of the term) exercised over every party man in the politics brings into existence an automatically operating mechanism which produces what in biology is called the "survival of the fittest"". The party would be completely open while educating the
proletariat to remove the
false consciousness that had been instilled in them.
In its first phase, the vanguard party would exist for two reasons. Firstly, it would protect Marxism from outside corruption from other ideas, as well as advance its plans. Secondly, it would educate the proletariat in Marxism in order to cleanse them of their "false individual consciousness" and instill the revolutionary "
class consciousness" in them.
If the party is successful in their goal, on the eve of revolution, a critical mass of the working class population would be prepared to usher forth the transformation of society. Furthermore, a great number of them, namely their most dedicated members, would belong to the party
cadres as
professional revolutionaries, and would be elected to leadership positions by the mass party membership. Thus the organisation would quickly include the entire working class.
Political party
A vanguard party is a
political party
A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular area's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific political ideology, ...
at the fore of a population-wide political movement and of a
revolution. In the praxis of revolutionary political science the vanguard party was composed of professional revolutionaries, first effected by the
Bolshevik Party in the
Russian Revolution of 1917. Lenin, the first leader of the Bolsheviks, coined the term ''vanguard party'', and argued that such a party was necessary in order to provide the practical and political leadership that would impel the proletariat to achieve a
communist revolution. Hence, as a political-science term, ''vanguard party'' most often is associated with
Leninism; however, similar ideas (under different names) also are present in other revolutionary
ideologies.
Friedrich Engels and
Karl Marx presented the concept of the vanguard party as solely qualified to politically lead the proletariat in revolution; in Chapter II: "Proletarians and Communists" of ''
The Communist Manifesto'' (1848), they said:
The Communists, therefore, are, on the one hand, practically the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the lines of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement. The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties: Formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.
According to Lenin, the purpose of the vanguard party is to establish a
dictatorship of the proletariat; a rule of the
working class. The change of ruling class, from the
bourgeoisie to the proletariat, makes possible the full development of
society. In early 20th-century Russia, Lenin argued that the vanguard party would lead the revolution to
depose the incumbent Tsarist government, and transfer government power to the working class. In the pamphlet ''
What is to be Done?'' (1902), Lenin said that a revolutionary vanguard party, mostly recruited from the working class, should lead the political campaign, because it was the only way that the proletariat could successfully achieve a revolution; unlike the economist campaign of trade union struggle advocated by other socialist political parties and later by the
anarcho-syndicalists. Like Karl Marx, Lenin distinguished between the two aspects of a revolution: the ''economic campaign'' (labour strikes for increased wages and work concessions), which featured diffused leadership; and the ''political campaign'' (socialist changes to society), which featured the decisive revolutionary leadership of the Bolshevik vanguard party.
Marxism–Leninism
As he surveyed the European milieu in the late 1890s, Lenin found several theoretic problems with the
Marxism of the late 19th century. Contrary to what Karl Marx had predicted,
capitalism had become stronger in the last third of the 19th century. In Western Europe, the
working class had become poorer; the workers and their
trade union
A trade union (British English) or labor union (American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers whose purpose is to maintain or improve the conditions of their employment, such as attaining better wages ...
s, although they had continued to militate for better
wages and working conditions, had failed to develop a revolutionary
class consciousness, as predicted by Marx. To explain that undeveloped political awareness, Lenin said that the
division of labour in a bourgeois capitalist society prevented the emergence of a
proletarian class consciousness, because of the ten-to-twelve-hour workdays that the workers laboured in factories, which left them no time to learn and apply the philosophic complexities of
Marxist theory. Finally, in trying to effect a revolution in Tsarist
Imperial Russia (1721–1917), Lenin knew the problem of an
autocratic régime that had outlawed almost all political activity. Although the Tsarist autocracy could not enforce a ban on political ideas, until 1905—when Tsar
Nicholas II (ruled 1894–1917) agreed to the formation of a national
duma—the
Okhrana, the Tsarist
secret police, suppressed every political group seeking social and political changes, including those with a democratic program. To counter such political conditions, Lenin said that a professional revolutionary organisation was necessary to organise and lead the most class-conscious workers into a politically cohesive movement. Concerning the Russian
class struggle, in the book ''What Is to Be Done?'' (1902), against the "economist" trend of the socialist parties (who proposed that the working class would develop a revolutionary consciousness from demanding solely economic improvements), Lenin said that the "history of all countries bears out that, through their own powers alone, the working class can develop only a
trade-union consciousness"; and that under reformist, trade-union leadership, the working class could only engage spontaneous local rebellions to improve their political position within the capitalist system, and that revolutionary consciousness developed unevenly. Nonetheless, optimistic about the working class's ability to develop a revolutionary
class consciousness, Lenin said that the missing element for escalating the class struggle to revolution was a political organisation that could relate to the
radicalism of political vanguard of the working class, who then would attract many workers from the middling ranks of the reformist leaders of the trade unions.
It is often believed that Lenin thought the bearers of class consciousness were the common
intellectuals who made it their vocation to conspire against the capitalist system, educate the public in revolutionary theory, and prepare the workers for the
proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat that would follow. Yet, unlike his
Menshevik rivals, Lenin distinguished himself by his hostility towards the
bourgeois intelligentsia, and was routinely criticised for placing too much trust in the
intellectual ability of the working class to transform society through its own political struggles.
Like other political organisations that sought to change Imperial Russian society, Lenin's Bolshevik Party resorted to conspiracy, and operated in the political underground. Against Tsarist repression, Lenin argued for the necessity of confining membership to people who were professionally trained to overthrow the Okhrana; however, at its core, the Bolshevik Party was an exceptionally flexible organisation who pragmatically adapted policy to changing political situations. After the
Revolution of 1905, Lenin proposed that the Bolshevik Party "open its gates" to the unhappiest of the working class, who were rapidly becoming political radicals, in order for the Party to become a mass political party with genuine roots in the working class movement.
The notion of a 'vanguard', as used by Lenin before 1917, did not necessarily imply single-party rule. Lenin considered the
Social-Democrats (Bolsheviks) the leading elements of a multi-class (and multi-party) democratic struggle against Tsarism. For a period after the
October Revolution, the Bolsheviks (now renamed the Communist Party) operated in the
soviets, trade unions, and other working-class
mass organisations with other revolutionary parties, such as Mensheviks,
Social-Revolutionaries and
anarcho-communists, and local soviets often elected non-Bolshevik majorities. Lenin did consider the Bolsheviks the vanguard insofar as they were the most consistent defenders of Soviet power (which he considered the dictatorship of the proletariat or 'Commune-state'). However, the situation changed drastically during the
Russian Civil War
The Russian Civil War () was a multi-party civil war in the former Russian Empire sparked by the 1917 overthrowing of the Russian Provisional Government in the October Revolution, as many factions vied to determine Russia's political future. I ...
and economic collapse, which decimated the working class and its independent institutions, and saw the development of
irreconcilable conflicts between the Bolsheviks and their rivals. At the
10th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in 1921, the Party made the de facto reality de jure by outlawing opposition parties and formalising single-Party rule.
In Lenin's view, Russia was massive but inert, with a patiently suffering peasant majority and a proletarian minority, who could be progressive only when led by "shrewd, calculating, ruthless, and highly-educated" upper-classes Russians; so those intellectuals should create a party to organize the proletariat to seize power in the proletariat's interest, thence "the right and the duty to wipe out all other parties".
From 1936 onward, Communist-inspired state constitutions enshrined the "father your own family and let your families live in a nation with society" rubric by giving the Communist parties formal leadership in society—a provision that was interpreted to either ban other parties altogether or force them to accept the Communists' guaranteed right to rule as a condition of being allowed to exist as an alternative party. Robert Mayer wrote that Lenin redefined class identity to exclude dissenters, effectively stripping workers who opposed Bolshevik rule of their proletarian status and democratic rights. This strategy allowed Lenin to suppress opposition while maintaining the illusion of proletarian democracy.
In the 20th century, the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) continued regarding itself as the institutionalisation of Marxist–Leninist political consciousness in the Soviet Union; therein lay the justification for its political control of Soviet society. Article 6 of the 1977 Soviet Constitution refers to the CPSU as the "leading and guiding force of Soviet society, and the nucleus of its political system, of all state organizations and public organizations". The CPSU, precisely because it was the bearer of Marxist–Leninist ideology, determined the general development of society, directed domestic and foreign policy, and "imparts a planned, systematic, and theoretically substantiated virtuosity" to the struggle of the Soviet people for the victory of
communism
Communism () is a political sociology, sociopolitical, political philosophy, philosophical, and economic ideology, economic ideology within the history of socialism, socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a ...
.
Nonetheless, the politics of the vanguard party, as outlined by Lenin, is disputed among the contemporary communist
movement. Lenin's contemporary in the Bolshevik Party,
Leon Trotsky, further developed and established the vanguard party with the creation of the
Fourth International
The Fourth International (FI) was a political international established in France in 1938 by Leon Trotsky and his supporters, having been expelled from the Soviet Union and the Communist International (also known as Comintern or the Third Inte ...
. Trotsky, who believed in
permanent revolution, proposed that a vanguard party must be an international political party.
Frankfurt School
For some in the
Frankfurt School such as
Herbert Marcuse, the
lumpenproletariat (the
underclass, usually lacking class consciousness) have the potential to be supporters of the revolution. For others in the Frankfurt School such as
Jürgen Habermas, they held views similar to that of Marx and
classical Marxists who viewed the lumpenproletariat as likely counter-revolutionaries. The argument is that this underclass has the potential to help change the status quo because they are excluded from it and survive largely outside of the capitalist system. Marx viewed the lumpenproletariat with suspicion and as a
reserve army of labour with a primarily counter-revolutionary character unlike the proletariat, whose role in production led Marx see them as the primary agents of change. For others, the lumpenproletariat existing outside the capitalist production process gives them the unique ability to attack the capitalist system from outside which other revolutionary elements can not.
Other uses
Although Lenin honed the idea in terms of a class leadership forged out of a proletarian vanguard specifically to describe Marxist–Leninist parties, the term is also used for many kinds of movement shaping themselves as initially guided by a small elite.
Theodor Herzl, the theorist of
Zionism, believed legitimation from the majority would only hinder from the outset his movement and therefore advised that "we cannot all be of one mind; the ''gestor'' will therefore simply take the leadership into his hands and march in the van."
Herzl's principle antedated by some years the Leninist idea of Bolshevism as the vanguard of the revolution by characterizing the "Zionist movement as a vanguard of the Jewish people."
The Youth Guard at the forefront of Zionist mobilization in the
Yishuv likewise conceived of itself as a revolutionary vanguard, and the
kibbutz movement itself is said to have thought of itself as a 'selfless vanguard'. It is occasionally used with of certain
Islamist parties. Writers
Abul Ala Maududi and
Sayyid Qutb both urged the formation of an Islamic vanguard to restore Islamic society. Qutb discussed of an
Islamist vanguard in his book
Ma'alim fi al-Tariq (''Milestones'') and Maududi formed the radical
Islamist party
Jamaat-e-Islami in
Pakistan whose goal was to establish a pan-
Ummah worldwide Islamist ideological state starting from Pakistan, administered for God (
Allah
Allah ( ; , ) is an Arabic term for God, specifically the God in Abrahamic religions, God of Abraham. Outside of the Middle East, it is principally associated with God in Islam, Islam (in which it is also considered the proper name), althoug ...
) solely by Muslims "whose whole life is devoted to the observance and enforcement" of Islamic law (
Shari'ah), leading to the world becoming the
House of Islam. The party members formed an elite group (called ''arkan'') with "affiliates" (''mutaffiq'') and then "sympathizers" (''hamdard'') beneath them.
Today, the Jamaat-e-Islami has spread wings to other South Asian countries with large Muslim populations, such as Afghanistan, Bangladesh and India. The literature of the
Baháʼí Faith also frequently refers to those serving to raise the capacities of communities around the world as the "vanguard" of the Cause of
Baha'u'llah
According to Roger Eatwell, some
fascist parties have also operated in ways similar to the concept of a vanguard party.
See also
*
Authoritarian socialism
*
Avant-garde
*
Blanquism
*
Bonapartism
*
Cadre (politics)
*
Democratic centralism
*
Dictatorship of the proletariat
*
Elite theory
*
Foco
*
Jacobinism
*
Maoism
*
Organic centralism
*
Transitional government
References
Bibliography
*
Further reading
Arts
* Burger, Peter. ''Theory of the Avant-Garde''. Theory & History of Literature Series. 135 pages.
University of Minnesota Press, February 1, 1984. .
* Forster, Merlin H. and K. David Jackson, compilers. ''Vanguardism in Latin American Literature : An Annotated Bibliographic Guide''. Bibliographies and Indexes in
World Literature Series. 232 pages.
Greenwood Press, May 23, 1990. .
* Maerhofer, John. 2009. Rethinking the Vanguard: Aesthetic and Political Positions in the Modernist Debate, 1917–1962. New Castle: Cambridge Scholars Press.
Politics
* Vladimir Lenin
What is to be done?'
* Yevgeny Bugaev.
What Is the Party?' Moscow:
Progress Publishers. 1986.
*
Bakunin, Mikhail"Letter to Albert Richard" August 1870. Reprinted in ''Bakunin on Anarchy'', translated and edited by
Sam Dolgoff. A. A. Knopf, 1st edition, 1972. . Retrieved May 17, 2005.
* Gray, Phillip W. 2020. ''Vanguardism: Ideology and Organization in Totalitarian Politics''. London:
Routledge.
*
Mandel, Ernest"Trotsky’s conception of self-organisation and the vanguard party" Originally published in French in ''Quatrième Internationale'', No.36, pp. 35–49. November 1989. Translated by Mike Murray, marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for th
Marxists’ Internet Archive Retrieved May 24, 2005.
* Mitchell, Roxanne and Frank Weiss
Publisher: United Labor Press. 1977. Retrieved May 25, 2005.
* Slaughter, Cliff
''Labour Review''.
Socialist Labor League. 1964?. Retrieved May 17, 2005.
Polemics
* Cooper, Nick
''Critique of Revolutionary Communism '' Belgium Indymedia. Sep. 23, 2004. Retrieved June 3, 2005.
{{Revolutionary socialism
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