What is vanguardism?

[ComradeJez]

I have heard people talking about a vanguard party and think it was theorised by Lenin (??) but I don't know any more than that... Educate me!

[Sinister Intents]

In the context of the theory of Marxist revolutionary struggle, vanguardism is a strategy whereby the most class-conscious and politically advanced sections of the proletariat or working class, known as the revolutionary vanguard, form organizations in order to draw larger sections of the working class towards revolutionary politics and serve as manifestations of proletarian political power against its class enemies.
In theory, the revolutionary vanguard is not intended to be an organization separate from the working class, that attempts to place itself at the center of the movement and steer it in a direction consistent with its own ideology. It is instead intended to be an organic part of the working class that comes to socialist consciousness as a result of the dialectic of class struggle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanguardism

[Jimmie Higgins]

I have heard people talking about a vanguard party and think it was theorised by Lenin (??) but I don't know any more than that... Educate me!It's a big question and there are very contested views of what vanguard means and what a vanguard party is.

The common straw-man, which does or did exist at various times unfortunately, are people who think that their politics are "advanced" proclaiming themselves and the dozen other people in their grouping as "the vanguard".

Lenin never talked about "vanguard paries" or came up with some definition or whatnot - at least not to my knowlege. So most of the ideas about it are more or less based in reading backwards and seeing what kind of party Lenin was advocating for. The problem is that he argued various things at various times because he didn't have a concept of "the ideal party" but made specific arguments based on what he felt the existing movment needed at that time. Lars Lihn, a scholar and russian translator, for example, argues that Lenin wasn't trying to do anything but build an orthodox 2nd International-type party, but in condisions of Russia where politics were often repressed. I think he's correct in terms of Lenin in 1903, but I think there are real differences as well between those kinds of parties and the concept of a revolutionary party that developed in the Bolsheviks (and similar developments by revolutionaries elsewhere who turned against the reformism and problems of the big socialist parties).

At any rate, as I see it, a vanguard is just people (activists/organizers who are actually involved with class struggles on different levels) with revolutionary consiousness. If there's a degree of militancy in the class in general, then there's a "vanguard" regardless of being organized together or in various groupings or whatnot. It's more of a descriptive label, and one that's not self-applied.

In the US, probably only the IWW and the early CP could have claimed to be the best representative of a "vanguard". The IWW was made up of revolutionaries, but more generally actual people who played local leading roles in class struggles, militant labor organizations and so on. But even then these would have been pretty small in the big picture.

Today in the US, there isn't really much of a vanguard at all IMO - not due to a lack in revolutionaries necissarily, but due to the lack of revolutionaries rooted in actual ongoing movements and struggles (the lack of movements and struggles being the main barrier to a "vanguard" developing). Induviduals or groups of revolutionaries might have "advanced" ideas or whatnot, but this doesn't mean much in the big picture - at best, it's a vanguard of ideas, not a vanguard of struggle.

[Blake's Baby]

Marx wrote about the Communists being the workers who had first realised the 'line of march' of the workers' movement. In this sense, they're the 'vanguard' (ie the ones that go first).

The problem with metaphors like 'vanguard' is that they're taken from a different (in this case military) context an when applied to politics can come to have strange and distorted meanings. Is the 'vanguard' a 'leadership', in the sense that it directs the working class (to keep up the military analogy, it directs from the rear, in which case, it isn't a vanguard, it's a general staff) or is it 'first into the fight' (so not so much a 'leadership' in terms of direction from the rear, but 'leading from the front')? Either way, if its job is seen as directing the working class, or being the first into the political fight, no-where in the 'vanguard' metaphor is the suggestion that the revolutionary organisation should administer society on behalf of the working class.

Jimmie says there is no vanguard in the sense that there is no workers' movement to be a vanguard of. This I think is true. The distinction between a vanguard 'of ideas' and a vanguard 'of struggle' is I think accurate. I'd argue however that there is a vanguard to the extent that there can be one in this period - the vanguard is those workers who have seen the line of march, that is, those of us who consciously identify as socialists, having realised that the working class needs to overthrow capitalist relations and establish the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.

But as Jimmie rightly points out, a 'vanguard of ideas' only.