Marxism-Leninism and the Vanguard?

[Mind_Zenith]

Hey all, I have a few (probably odd-sounding) questions on M-L and the vanguard party:

1. Does M-L call for necessary party membership? That is, can a communist be a supporter of revolutionary action of the communist party (through disseminating ideas, joining in on activities, etc.) but not actually be a member? The various socialist parties in Australia (where I'm from... mate) have been discussing this point, so that got me thinking about tendency differences.

2. Can there be more than one vanguard party in a country?

Thanks to all who answer! These are odd questions, I know, but as I've been reading through Lenin they've popped up.

[W1N5T0N]

1. Not really, you can either be in the party and be "free" or be outside of it and get ruthlessly marked a conspirator, enemy of the state and so on, and then land in a psychiatric hospital for "re-education".

2. There can be no more than one "true" vanguard party. In the case of a revolution, we can see what happens. There are many fractions, but the one fraction decides they know the golden mean and declare "either with us or against us".

[StoneFrog]

Didn't Lenin advocate a sort of open vanguard, but the political climate of Russia at the time prevented this?

[W1N5T0N]

That would be a good excuse XD no in my opinion he just decided that suddenly he wanted neither political opponents nor self rule of the farmers and crushed them while he could.

[Rusty Shackleford]

1: if you have dissenting views but still do work with the party then the only hinderence to ones membership would be whether or not they could advocate and defend a party's position and debate it internally. if they dont want to join, then so be it. its not like its a problem to work with people.

2: no, a vanguard is just one. And no party can claim to be the vanguard if they only have the support of a few thousand. or if they only have the support of a few million if other parties have the same support.


two "vanguards" is like a knife with two divergent blades.

[Geiseric]

In normal non revisionist LENINISM not M-L ism, there can be outside supporters of the party who may not be members. The whole professional revolutionary gig is a guy who uses much of his spare time in political activity. Anyways the vanguard is more of a de facto situation, it consists of all truly revolutionary parties in my opinion, be they leninist, anarchist, or anybody who wants to truly get rid of capitalism. any party who says "We're the vanguard! Come to us!" has either a huge ego or a complete misunderstanding of marxism. But yeah the vanguard is anybody who leads the masses to a revolution, they don't even have to be part of any party imo. However their time will be better spent if they cooperate with other comrades and organize on a huge area.

[Rusty Shackleford]

There is a distinction though.

The class orientation of an organization is very much a part of beign a "vanguard"

The Democratic and Republican parties in the US have massive membership but they are not vanguards. why? they do not express the historical interests of the working class.

[Geiseric]

I never said they were a vanguard. the jacobins and sans culottes in the french revolution were the vanguard since there was an absence of any other truly revolutionary party. It won't happen the same way but it is still important at this point that a unified left bloc is necessary.

[Rusty Shackleford]

oh i wasnt saying you were saying anything. i was just adding on.

[Geiseric]

Oh. indeed. the tea party is the vanguard of reactionaries.