Why would a vanguard party wither away?

[miltonwasfried...man]

What incentive would a hypothetical vanguard party have to "wither away" and allow for a true communist society (stateless and classless) to occur? If they lead the revolution, they likely would want to continue to carve its path. Once they have tasted power why would they give it up? After all, they "know best".

[OhYesIdid]

because they, hypothetically, do know best, and would know when to step down. Personally, I find marxism-leninism pretty much bankrupt, it's all about teh collectives/communes nao.

[Broletariat]

1. Your criticism applies to the M-L conception of the vanguard state, I hold a more Marxist interpretation of what the "vanguard" is.

You, me, everyone on revleft is the vanguard, we're politically conscience, that's all the vanguard is to me, we're the first ones to wake up and go WHAT THE FUCK CAPITALISM STOP IT RIGHT NOW.

The actually Party is composed of the masses of working-class individuals who are striving to liquidate Capitalism. They don't "give up" power, they institute Socialism, after that the Party becomes kind of like a decision making platform of sorts since everyone would belong to the Party.

Edit: No idea, why I decided to number that, fuck it.

[Commissar Rykov]

Why? Because they should be in it for the Proletariat and improving their lives not to score political points for themselves.

[thefinalmarch]

The idea that a conscious (that is, aware that it is communist, or it claims to be such) vanguard (meaning 'the individuals at the forefront of a movement') party ('party' as in the sense of the modern structures of formal political organisation whose members are conscious adherents to a near-universally agreed-upon doctrine, and which exist with the intention of one day holding political power - as opposed to the historical party which is described in the quoted parts herein as a broadly-conceived interest group) should "lead" a revolution and - in some (mis)interpretations - take control of the state post-revolution is an aberration of Marxism. We don't want a conscious party taking power. We want the whole of the working class itself in power, and, as Broletariat has already mentioned, your criticism only really applies to the "Marxist"-Leninist conception of the vanguard.

To help explain my belief of what a vanguard actually is, allow me to quote a post I made in a thread a few weeks ago (Vanguardism applied to other forms of organization (http://www.revleft.com/vb/vanguardism-applied-other-t157617/index.html)):

For what it's worth, from a thread I bookmarked after I stumbled upon it:


question: What exactly is the party in the broad, historical sense?
Is it a mass of self-organised, militant workers fighting for their mutual class interests? Am I even close?
You are basically correct. Marx didn't actually have an elaborated theory of the 'historical party' as such, the passages of his work that touch on the subject are due to the very loose sense in which the word 'party' was often used in the 19th century prior to the rise of modern electoral machines to refer to any broadly concieved interest group. The loose way in which Marx uses the word 'party' in these instances however does touch on parts of his theoretical work which are integral to his project rather than just passing remarks. The only place Marx actually explicitly refers to the 'party in the broad historical sense' which I'm aware of his February 1860 letter (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1860/letters/60_02_29.htm) to Freiligrath. The context is him denying his involvement in any kind of organised socialist/communist group since 1852, since after the disbanding of the Communist League he and Engels had refused all the offers put to them to join some effort to rebuild the revolutionary movement. Elsewhere he discussed the Paris Commune and the June insurrection of 1848 as the acts of 'our party'.

The underlying thread is Marx's critique of utopian theories which build fantastic images of a future reality and seek to impose their visions on the world through propaganda work. This leads logically to the idea that the important 'party' is the party constituted by the 'conscious' socialists organised in the paticular sect of their preference. Marx on the contrary was keen to emphasise that he did not seek to impose anything on the world, but merely show the world what it was already fighting for. The important 'party' for Marx was the party constituted by workers' defending their own interests, more specifically we could say that the 'party' for Marx is a class union as opposed to the trades unions which only defend the interests of workers in a paticular trade. I personally think we could point to the Soviet movement of 1917 or the factory group movement associated with the KAPD - the Allgemeine Arbeiter Unionen Deutschlands (I believe Dauvé in his book on the Communist Left in Germany had also used 'class union' to refer to the AAUD, though I can't remember if he linked it to the idea of the party) - as examples of 'the party' in a much more accurate sense than we could point to, say, the Communist Party of Great Britain at any point in it's existence, and especially all of the laughably miniscule sect organisations which constitute the modern 'left'.
And from another thread:

It seems to me that a big assumption underpinning a lot of ideas that the 'left' has about 'the party' is that it has something to do with the organisation of 'conscious' socialist militants. Without going into the details (Since that is not the purpose of this thread), I think there is an alternative case to be made that Marx and Engels at least saw 'the party' as simply the organisation of workers in defence of their own interests - a union of the class as opposed to the unions of individual trades.
A vanguard is a group of the most class-conscious workers at the forefront of class struggle, and not just a bunch of more often than not "enlightened" intellectuals.
It should be noted that the vast majority of working class revolutionaries aren't going to be conscious communists. Most workers aren't going to be fighting for communism because they think it's a workers' utopia or because they want to realise the perceived ideals of equality, etc. - but they will be inadvertently fighting for such a society (and they won't address it by the name 'communism') because it's the inevitable result of the full realisation of their objective class interests. The workers' struggle today is a reaction to life under capitalism, and it revolves around not only labour struggles, but also more broadly around the issues of life in class society today, such as police brutality, corruption, rent, the cost of living, living conditions, schooling, etc. – and anything else that affects the working class.

The vanguard is simply an informal grouping of the most radical and class-conscious members of the working class who are at the forefront of class struggle. In this sense, it can be seen as more of an observable phenomenon that appears to manifest itself during heightened times of class struggle rather than a conscious organisation with definitive structure and objectives.

[AnonymousOne]

The problem with the Vanguard Party is that it makes it almost impossible to get the people into power after the revolution. Mainly because the Vanguard Party (not through any malicious or power-mongering motivations) has taken up such a central role in the building of the new society that it's almost impossible to replace with democratic communes without making the entire society completely unstable.

[Broletariat]

The problem with the Vanguard Party is that it makes it almost impossible to get the people into power after the revolution. Mainly because the Vanguard Party (not through any malicious or power-mongering motivations) has taken up such a central role in the building of the new society that it's almost impossible to replace with democratic communes without making the entire society completely unstable.

As myself and the poster above you have pointed out, nobody seriously considers the Vanguard Party as what you've described (NO ONE CARES ABOUT YOU M-LS).

[thesadmafioso]

The incentive for the vanguard to cede its power once it serves no purpose to the objectives of proletariat revolution is that of the Marxist dialectic itself. For it to progress into the final stages of communism, there ceases to be a need for a workers vanguard. When the synthesis of class has run its course political consciousness will have arrived at a new peak, onc which no longer would require the functions of a vanguard party. The goal of the workers vanguard is to create a society free of class, an end which would essentially do away with the party. So if we are to presume that the party has led society to this point, it is only reasonable to presume that it would wither away from there.

[Broletariat]

The incentive for the vanguard to cede its power once it serves no purpose to the objectives of proletariat revolution is that of the Marxist dialectic itself. For it to progress into the final stages of communism, there ceases to be a need for a workers vanguard. When the synthesis of class has run its course political consciousness will have arrived at a new peak, onc which no longer would require the functions of a vanguard party. The goals of the vanguard seek to make it an organ of proletariat rule which serves no purpose, so if we are to presume that it has achieved these goals it is only reasonable to presume that it would wither away at this given point.

Boo dialectics, could've just used ordinary language to explain it.

[Ostrinski]

1. Your criticism applies to the M-L conception of the vanguard state, I hold a more Marxist interpretation of what the "vanguard" is.

You, me, everyone on revleft is the vanguard, we're politically conscience, that's all the vanguard is to me, we're the first ones to wake up and go WHAT THE FUCK CAPITALISM STOP IT RIGHT NOW.

The actually Party is composed of the masses of working-class individuals who are striving to liquidate Capitalism. They don't "give up" power, they institute Socialism, after that the Party becomes kind of like a decision making platform of sorts since everyone would belong to the Party.

Edit: No idea, why I decided to number that, fuck it.The revolution will surely fail if the working people themselves aren't conscious about class and exploitation. If the working class is not in power, a central authoritarian state is bound to take the place of the bourgeois state.

[Obs]

Pretty much what mafioso said. The role of the vanguard party (which must consist almost entirely, if not solely, of workers) is to direct the working class as a whole during the revolution and the early stages of the dictatorship of the proletariat, while the material conditions for socialism are not yet secured. As soon as this has been overcome, there is no need for the vanguard. The only way it can fail is if the vanguard has morphed into a new bourgeosie, which is what will happen if a revolution takes place in a time and place with poor material conditions.

[thesadmafioso]

Boo dialectics, could've just used ordinary language to explain it.

Most of that was ordinary language, and I only briefly referenced the dialectic of Marxism.

[Broletariat]

The revolution will surely fail if the working people themselves aren't conscious about class and exploitation. If the working class is not in power, a central authoritarian state is bound to take the place of the bourgeois state.


Well yea bro, revolution won't even get off the ground unless the worker's are like, "fuck this noise."

[Q]

I believe two concepts are being confused here. 1. the "withering away" of the state and 2. the vanguard party.

About the "withering away" of the (workers)state, this has to do with the Marxist view that the state is an apparatus of class power that is designed to keep that class in power. Each class hegemony requires its own form of state. Capitalism requires a state that enables to empower a tiny minority (the capitalists) over a vast majority (the rest, primarily the working class). This is why the bureaucratic apparatus and the police and military are key features within any capitalist state, among other things.

Socialism (defined as "workers power") is where the state enables the vast majority to participate in power. A true democracy. Now, when the working class seizes power, class society won't magically disappear over night. While the "big" capitalists will most likely disappear the soonest (due to expropriations and other such measures) as a class, there will most likely still be an extended period where petit-bourgeois and middle class layers (those holding specific knowledge and skill monpolies) will continue to exist. These layers can only be absorbed into the working class bit by bit, for example through massively expanded adult education.

So, within socialism there is still a class society and as such also a class struggle, be it that it takes a very different form. As such also there must be a state of some form to keep the ruling class (the working class) in power. However, within socialism such a state is so broadly participative that it is only a "state" in the formal sense of the word, compared to the capitalist state we live under today. As soon as class society dies out ("withers away"), so too does the state, as all its functions are completely assimilated by society as a whole. There is no longer a differential between the state and the rest of society.

Now, onto the concept of the vanguard party. The trouble here is that the concept is very often confused with bureaucratic ideas, top-down methods of organisation. This leads, in our current situation, to the "we know best" type of leaderships and corresponding political sects. This is however not what a vanguard party is.

A vanguard is quite simply the politically advanced layer of the working class. Those "leaders on the ground" that can make or break a strike, for example. A vanguard party then is a party that strives to organise this vanguard and, consequently, the whole class as a class of its own. A real vanguard party seeks to politicise the whole working class in preparation for its own taking over of political power. We are talking here not of tiny conspirational elites, but of organisations containing many millions of workers.

I would argue that three core values of any such party would be (1) the independent position of the working class along (2) radical democratic lines on an (3) international level as any viable alternative to capitalism must have a global perspective.

[Ostrinski]

I don't understand the line of reasoning. If you're against the central party model, why have a worker's hierarchy at all?

[Broletariat]

I don't understand the line of reasoning. If you're against the central party model, why have a worker's hierarchy at all?

If that's in response to me, I love the idea of a central party model.

The central party being composed of the working class for itself.

[Ostrinski]

If that's in response to me, I love the idea of a central party model.

The central party being composed of the working class for itself.Don't you think the majority of the working class should be part of this vanguard apparatus?

[Broletariat]

Don't you think the majority of the working class should be part of this vanguard apparatus?
the vanguard and the Party are two different things.

[jake williams]

What incentive would a hypothetical vanguard party have to "wither away" and allow for a true communist society (stateless and classless) to occur? If they lead the revolution, they likely would want to continue to carve its path. Once they have tasted power why would they give it up? After all, they "know best".
The basic idea of a "vanguard party" is that the most class-conscious workers organize to fight to fundamentally democratize society and work for the long run abolition of class society. If they actually do this, then they're working to eliminate their own historical necessity - as classes disappear class struggle of course disappears, and as class struggle disappears no one is needed to fight it.

Some group of people might try to do something else. They may not try to democratize society or fight for the abolition of classes. But then they're not socialists.