What is Vanguard party?

[Red Spark]

How did Lenin defined a vanguard party? What are its features and what purpose it bears? I hope someone can help me here.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Contrary to the claims of certain anti-Leninists, the vanguard party is simply the political organisation of the most advanced layers of the proletariat (the vanguard; an element that goes before the main body of the class). The vanguard party is a rejection of the social-democratic "party of the entire class", which includes also the most backward layers, and petit-bourgeous strata such as the labour aristocracy and bureaucracy. This vanguard party, in turn, is the "organiser and director" of the revolution, with the backward layers being dragged in the wake of the more advanced ones.

Canon puts it like this:

"This irregular self-determination of the class as a whole is the primary cause for a vanguard party. It has to be constituted by those elements of the class and their spokesmen who grasp the requirements for revolutionary action and proceed to their implementation sooner than the bulk of the proletariat on both a national and international scale. Here also is the basic reason that the vanguard always begins as a minority of its class, a “splinter group”. The earliest formations of advanced workers committed to socialism, and their intellectual associates propagating its views, must first organise themselves around a definite body of scientific doctrine, class tradition, and experience, and work out a correct political program in order then to organise and lead the big battalions of revolutionary forces. The vanguard party should aim at all times to reach, move, and win the broadest masses. Yet, beginning with Lenin’s Bolsheviks, no such party has ever started out with the backing of the majority of the class and as its recognised head. It originates, as a rule, as a group of propagandists concerned with the elaboration and dissemination of ideas. It trains, teaches, and tempers cadres around that program and outlook which they take to the masses for consideration, adoption, action, and verification.
The size and influence of their organisation is never a matter of indifference to serious revolutionists. Nonetheless, quantitative indices alone cannot be taken as the decisive determinants for judging the real nature of a revolutionary grouping. More fundamental are such qualitative features as the program and relationship with the class whose interests it formulates, represents, and fights for."

[Rudolf]

A few points:

First, how can a vanguard party be identified without hindsight? It can't be self-identified because let's face it most people who would consider themselves as comprising a prole vanguard are suspect and instead tend to cling to the coattails of the labour aristocracy, the petit bourgeoisie and union bureaucrats. I'll use as an example here every party in the UK which derives itself from lenin, whether they meander or not.

Secondly, why is the vanguard always referred to in the singular? If the vanguard is the most advanced section of the working class and nothing more then surely we must recognise a simple fact: there wouldn't be one vanguard organisation there would be multiple to the extent that the 'most advanced section' (btw, how arrogant is that phrase? Fucking hell) would have theoretical and practical disagreements with itself.

Also, whats this about professional revolutionaries?

edit: and how linked in the concept of the vanguard party to lenin's notion that the working class is too fucking dumb to gain anything more than 'trade union consciousness'

[VivalaCuarta]

lenin's notion that the working class is too fucking dumb to gain anything more than 'trade union consciousness'

Lenin was a prolific writer about his political "notions," so one would think that this notion could be found somewhere in his writings.

[Zoop]

The self-appointed arrogant fuckwits who think they are superior to the "backwards" masses, thereby apparently giving them the right to "lead" these ignorant proles to their desired end, because, as we all know, workers are completely incapable of doing this themselves.

[VivalaCuarta]

I have a couple questions for our anti-vanguardists:

1. Are you a revolutionary?
2. Do all workers agree with your revolutionary views?

If you answered No to the first question, well, maybe you're being honest.

If you answered No to the second question then you are part of the vanguard -- according to your political conceptions.

As for all the indignation about "self-appointed arrogant fuckwits," "ignorant proles," etc. etc., methinks you doth protest too much.

[Rudolf]

Lenin was a prolific writer about his political "notions," so one would think that this notion could be found somewhere in his writings.


What you mean like this....


"The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness" - Lenin's What is to be Done?



I'm simply asking what relation the 'vanguard party' has with this which i must stress would mean i personally would have been incapable of developing a socialist consciousness.
I have a couple questions for our anti-vanguardists:

1. Are you a revolutionary?
2. Do all workers agree with your revolutionary views?

If you answered No to the first question, well, maybe you're being honest.

If you answered No to the second question then you are part of the vanguard -- according to your political conceptions.

As for all the indignation about "self-appointed arrogant fuckwits," "ignorant proles," etc. etc., methinks you doth protest too much.

If that's actually the only thing there is to the concept of a vanguard party why does it exist as a concept anyway? It's blatently obvious the political consciousness of differing individuals differs. If this is all there is to the vanguard party it goes without saying and talking about it is a complete waste of time. Personally i don't think that's actually the case, im skeptical.

[VivalaCuarta]

Rudolf quotes Lenin:


"The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness" - Lenin's What is to be Done?

And takes it to demonstrate that Lenin had the notion


that the working class is too fucking dumb to gain anything more than 'trade union consciousness'

But the problem is that the infamous quote above does not say that the working class is incapable ("fucking dumb" or not) of gaining revolutionary consciousness.

It does observe that the working class does not gain this consciousness "exclusively by its own effort."

These are two different ideas. Most workers are not "too fucking dumb" to appreciate this.

[WideAwake]

Hi, you are right, USA needs a vanguard party, in this country there is a lot of radical leftists intellectuals, but they are all outside of the vanguard party, without a powerful radical leftist vanguard party, it will be impossible to see the destruction of capitalism in USA in the near future



Contrary to the claims of certain anti-Leninists, the vanguard party is simply the political organisation of the most advanced layers of the proletariat (the vanguard; an element that goes before the main body of the class). The vanguard party is a rejection of the social-democratic "party of the entire class", which includes also the most backward layers, and petit-bourgeous strata such as the labour aristocracy and bureaucracy. This vanguard party, in turn, is the "organiser and director" of the revolution, with the backward layers being dragged in the wake of the more advanced ones.

Canon puts it like this:

"This irregular self-determination of the class as a whole is the primary cause for a vanguard party. It has to be constituted by those elements of the class and their spokesmen who grasp the requirements for revolutionary action and proceed to their implementation sooner than the bulk of the proletariat on both a national and international scale. Here also is the basic reason that the vanguard always begins as a minority of its class, a “splinter group”. The earliest formations of advanced workers committed to socialism, and their intellectual associates propagating its views, must first organise themselves around a definite body of scientific doctrine, class tradition, and experience, and work out a correct political program in order then to organise and lead the big battalions of revolutionary forces. The vanguard party should aim at all times to reach, move, and win the broadest masses. Yet, beginning with Lenin’s Bolsheviks, no such party has ever started out with the backing of the majority of the class and as its recognised head. It originates, as a rule, as a group of propagandists concerned with the elaboration and dissemination of ideas. It trains, teaches, and tempers cadres around that program and outlook which they take to the masses for consideration, adoption, action, and verification.
The size and influence of their organisation is never a matter of indifference to serious revolutionists. Nonetheless, quantitative indices alone cannot be taken as the decisive determinants for judging the real nature of a revolutionary grouping. More fundamental are such qualitative features as the program and relationship with the class whose interests it formulates, represents, and fights for."

[Rudolf]

Rudolf quotes Lenin:



And takes it to demonstrate that Lenin had the notion



But the problem is that the infamous quote above does not say that the working class is incapable ("fucking dumb" or not) of gaining revolutionary consciousness.


Oh you're right mr/ms pedant, its just that the working class is incapable of gaining a socialist consciousness on its own thus necessitating some external force to bring light to the darkness, enlightenment to the barbarians, socialist consciousness to the proles. No doubt that's why we poor proles are the target market for your newspapers.

It's beside the point though as my question remains unanswered. What relation if any does the concept that the working class is incapable of gaining anything more than trade union consciousness without an external educating force have with the vanguard party? No doubt this vanguard party is the educating force.



It does observe that the working class does not gain this consciousness "exclusively by its own effort." And i'd maintain that this is either false or an utterly meaningless phrase.


Anyway, i've still more content in this thread to be discussed. Some of which has been mentioned.

[Spectre of Spartacism]

Oh you're right mr/ms pedant, its just that the working class is incapable of gaining a socialist consciousness on its own thus necessitating some external force to bring light to the darkness, enlightenment to the barbarians, socialist consciousness to the proles. No doubt that's why we poor proles are the target market for your newspapers.

It's beside the point though as my question remains unanswered. What relation if any does the concept that the working class is incapable of gaining anything more than trade union consciousness without an external educating force have with the vanguard party? No doubt this vanguard party is the educating force.

And i'd maintain that this is either false or an utterly meaningless phrase.


Anyway, i've still more content in this thread to be discussed. Some of which has been mentioned.

If you read the entire piece, you'd know that "on its own" isn't a reference to people outside of the working class needing to teach the workers things they are too incompetent to grasp by themselves. It's a reference to how the immediate experiences of being a worker don't transmit theoretical knowledge of the inner workings of capitalism. If they did, all workers would be revolutionary anti-capitalists and Marxists. The larger work is an argument against the "economism" school whose advocates thought that if they just limited their politics to the immediate working-class struggles in the workplace, a revolutionary party would grow out of that. Lenin is saying that, no, there's an actual deeper level of politics that needs to be fought for, a level that can't be read off automatically from the fight for pro-worker reforms. This encompasses a deeper understanding of anti-capitalist tasks as well as ostensibly "unrelated" political issues like women's liberation and anti-racism (the "tribune for the oppressed" argument).

The real line of division here is about what the organizational principles of a revolutionary party are to be: mass reformist or vanguard revolutionary, with the understanding that a mass revolutionary party can only exist at exceptional moments in time. It's not non-worker versus worker. His argument doesn't seem to me to be all that remarkable, though it needs to be reiterated from time to time when people who should know better try to bury their actual politics in the hopes of appealing to enough workers to build a mass party that they wrongly hope can be transformed into a revolutionary all through the logic of immediate reforms.

[N. Senada]

If the working class (or any other class) would be capable of gaining itself a revolutionary consciousness without any subjective contribution we would live in a full-deterministic world and we'd already be living in the best possible world.

I really would like that way.

Unfortunately things are a little bit more complicated and human society is a little bit more dialectic.

I left a quote from Marx, one you cannot suspect to have read Lenin's What is to be done?


Originally Posted by Marx
Camille Desmoulins, Danton, Robespierre, St. Just, Napoleon, the heroes as well as the parties and the masses of the old French Revolution, performed the task of their time – that of unchaining and establishing modern bourgeois society – in Roman costumes and with Roman phrases. The first one destroyed the feudal foundation and cut off the feudal heads that had grown on it. The other created inside France the only conditions under which free competition could be developed, parceled-out land properly used, and the unfettered productive power of the nation employed; and beyond the French borders it swept away feudal institutions everywhere, to provide, as far as necessary, bourgeois society in France with an appropriate up-to-date environment on the European continent. Once the new social formation was established, the antediluvian colossi disappeared and with them also the resurrected Romanism – the Brutuses, the Gracchi, the publicolas, the tribunes, the senators, and Caesar himself. Bourgeois society in its sober reality bred its own true interpreters and spokesmen in the Says, Cousins, Royer-Collards, Benjamin Constants, and Guizots; its real military leaders sat behind the office desk and the hog-headed Louis XVIII was its political chief. Entirely absorbed in the production of wealth and in peaceful competitive struggle, it no longer remembered that the ghosts of the Roman period had watched over its cradle.

But unheroic though bourgeois society is, it nevertheless needed heroism, sacrifice, terror, civil war, and national wars to bring it into being. And in the austere classical traditions of the Roman Republic the bourgeois gladiators found the ideals and the art forms, the self-deceptions, that they needed to conceal from themselves the bourgeois-limited content of their struggles and to keep their passion on the high plane of great historic tragedy.

[ComradeAllende]

Personally, I'm somewhat suspicious of the concept of a vanguard movement leading the general working-class revolution. While such an approach may be necessary in the Third World or in authoritarian nations lacking any modern bourgeois institutions, the vanguard is fraught with risk. The cadres that form the initial movement may be tempted to launch a coup rather than organize the working class (an example of how Leninism can easily transform into Blanquism), and if they do seize power they could easily become out-of-touch with the interests of the working class, believing that they "know" more about the working class' general interest than the workers themselves.

On a side-note, I believe Lenin embraced the vanguardist approach due to the special conditions in Tsarist Russia (which resemble, however incompletely, modern Third World nations): a relatively small proletariat, a large agricultural sector, and the Tsar's aggressive secret police, among other things.

[willowtooth]

A 1 party vanguard should be in a perpetual state of war, why would a vanguard stop killing for any other reason than that they have achieved full communism? One party vanguards fail because they try to maintain a solitary isolated state, when they should be fully willing to abandon said state

[Rudolf]

If you read the entire piece, you'd know that "on its own" isn't a reference to people outside of the working class needing to teach the workers things they are too incompetent to grasp by themselves. It's a reference to how the immediate experiences of being a worker don't transmit theoretical knowledge of the inner workings of capitalism. If they did, all workers would be revolutionary anti-capitalists and Marxists. Im not gonna read lenin tbh with you because I couldn't give a shit.

Your assertion that if a worker can develop a theoretical understanding of the underpinnings of capitalism then everyone would be anti-capitalists and marxists is wrong. The ability to do such a thing does not mean it occurs all the time. As an example the everyday experiences of being a worker shows that your boss is not your friend, that you have conflicting interests. Yet there are still workers who fail to grasp this despite it being obvious.

Just because something can happen does not mean it will in all circumstances. I would assert that the everyday experiences of being a prole does have within it the potential to develop a revolutionary consciousness and the means to abolish capitalism. It has to otherwise I wouldn't be here. Me being an anti-capitalist and a revolutionary is a direct result of my lived experiences.




The real line of division here is about what the organizational principles of a revolutionary party are to be: mass reformist or vanguard revolutionary, with the understanding that a mass revolutionary party can only exist at exceptional moments in time. It's not non-worker versus worker.

Which brings me back to what ive already posted:


If that's actually the only thing there is to the concept of a vanguard party why does it exist as a concept anyway? It's blatently obvious the political consciousness of differing individuals differs. If this is all there is to the vanguard party it goes without saying and talking about it is a complete waste of time.

I've still yet in this thread seen any definition of a vanguard party that justifies its existence as a political concept. If it's simply 'the most advanced section' or your org not being full of reformists it's pointless as a concept in the same way that arguing against organising a union that's filled with scabs is... it goes without saying.



though it needs to be reiterated from time to time when people who should know better try to bury their actual politics in the hopes of appealing to enough workers to build a mass party that they wrongly hope can be transformed into a revolutionary all through the logic of immediate reforms.
which is a surprisingly common tactic amongst socialists that are descended from lenin.

[Spectre of Spartacism]

Im not gonna read lenin tbh with you because I couldn't give a shit.

Yet you care enough to make statements about Lenin's political thought without really being familiar with it. This is the Learning section. I don't understand why anybody would find it a source of pride to opine on a topic than boast that they will never educate themselves on the topic. That is anti-intellectualism, which is a peculiar thing to see in a forum called "Learning." Also, tendency baiting isn't helpful in general, and it's certainly not helpful here.


Your assertion that if a worker can develop a theoretical understanding of the underpinnings of capitalism then everyone would be anti-capitalists and marxists is wrong. The ability to do such a thing does not mean it occurs all the time. As an example the everyday experiences of being a worker shows that your boss is not your friend, that you have conflicting interests. Yet there are still workers who fail to grasp this despite it being obvious.Please re-read my contention about what Lenin was saying. I said that his argument was that the experience of suffering under capitalism doesn't automatically translate into a high-level theoretical understanding of how capitalism functions or of the political tasks necessary to overthrow it.

I didn't say, or claim that Lenin said, that experiences workers had of capitalism were worthless or could never guide select workers to a high-level understanding of capitalism. I said that experience wasn't an automatic transmission belt for that knowledge. The degree to which workers are able to translate their understanding of their experiences of capitalism to a theoretical understanding of it depends on their stepping beyond the boundaries of immediate experiences and into the world of science and abstraction.


Just because something can happen does not mean it will in all circumstances. I would assert that the everyday experiences of being a prole does have within it the potential to develop a revolutionary consciousness and the means to abolish capitalism. It has to otherwise I wouldn't be here. Me being an anti-capitalist and a revolutionary is a direct result of my lived experiences.If my, or Lenin's, contention was that experiences never have the potential to develop into a revolutionary consciousness, your response would be a damning rebuttal. Only, that's not what was being argued. In fact, if you had read What Is To Be Done?, you'd know that Lenin has a couple of great quotes about the working class is instinctively revolutionary and takes to revolutionary socialism like a fish to water. The role of the existing vanguard, organized collectively, is to be the political instrument through which that process occurs.


I've still yet in this thread seen any definition of a vanguard party that justifies its existence as a political concept. If it's simply 'the most advanced section' or your org not being full of reformists it's pointless as a concept in the same way that arguing against organising a union that's filled with scabs is... it goes without saying.The rationale behind the vanguard approach to organizing is that the political consciousness of the working class is fragmented and uneven. Some layers are militant and receptive to anti-capitalism (if not already anti-capitalist), while other segments can be downright reactionary and racist. The largest layer is probably in the middle in the normal course of events.

Lenin learned over the span of a decade that trying to build a mass party that was intending to capture layers of workers beyond the vanguard in non-revolutionary situations entailed compromising the program of the party and binding the political activity of the advanced workers to the more backward workers. What made this particularly dangerous in Lenin's view was his understanding that there arose a material basis for opportunism within workers' parties as a result of monopoly capitalism and imperialism, with sections of the working class earning well above the value of their labor power in a way that created a pressure release valve among the more skilled and powerful elements within the workers' movement.

The point of having the vanguard party and departing from the mass party model was to build an organization that would be trained in and accustomed to leading, rather than following, when a revolutionary situation developed. The Bolsheviks in Russia led the most militant layers of workers, in whose wake followed masses of workers, in carrying through the smashing of the bourgeois state in Russia. In Germany, the workers' party followed the backward elements of the working class in constraining the revolutionary workers. To you this might not be a big deal. To people for whom "smashing capitalism" is to be more than just a pleasant-sounding homily, this difference in outcome is everything.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

^^Of course we have to question the extent to which Lenin's observations, theories, and practice is relevant 100 years on, in different parts of the globe.

Just as we don't use WW1 military tactics today, nor drive around in the Ford Model T, nor communicate by telegram, it seems odd that some still can't get past a clearly out-dated and failed method of organisation.

[Rudolf]

Yet you care enough to make statements about Lenin's political thought without really being familiar with it. This is the Learning section. I don't understand why anybody would find it a source of pride to opine on a topic than boast that they will never educate themselves on the topic. That is anti-intellectualism, which is a peculiar thing to see in a forum called "Learning." Also, tendency baiting isn't helpful in general, and it's certainly not helpful here. The forum is called "learning". It's not called "read this old tome". Funnily enough i do have a copy of What is to be Done? in front of me but im not gonna read through it as I can't be arsed.

Only thing close to tendency baiting is me shitting on UK orgs derived from lenin... but you've not heard me talk about non-leninist orgs in the UK as most are shit as fuck



I didn't say, or claim that Lenin said, that experiences workers had of capitalism were worthless or could never guide select workers to a high-level understanding of capitalism. I said that experience wasn't an automatic transmission belt for that knowledge. The degree to which workers are able to translate their understanding of their experiences of capitalism to a theoretical understanding of it depends on their stepping beyond the boundaries of immediate experiences and into the world of science and abstraction.

If my, or Lenin's, contention was that experiences never have the potential to develop into a revolutionary consciousness, your response would be a damning rebuttal. Only, that's not what was being argued. In fact, if you had read What Is To Be Done?, you'd know that Lenin has a couple of great quotes about the working class is instinctively revolutionary and takes to revolutionary socialism like a fish to water. The role of the existing vanguard, organized collectively, is to be the political instrument through which that process occurs. Yet the context of the quote doesn't say what you're saying, it clearly attributes it to the propertied classes, to the bourgeois intelligentsia. It's in the same fucking paragraph. Maybe i'm just a philistine with my lack of background in politics, philosophy, academia etc but it seems pretty clear to me from the immediate context of that quote about "trade union consciousness" that Lenin is stating that the working class does need a force external to itself in order to attain a revolutionary, socialist consciousness.

This is beside the point as to why i brought this up though. I want to know what relation the vanguard party as a political concept has with this. I thought i could start to prod better claims about the vanguard party out but it turns out im shit at that.






The rationale behind the vanguard approach to organizing is that the political consciousness of the working class is fragmented and uneven. Some layers are militant and receptive to anti-capitalism (if not already anti-capitalist), while other segments can be downright reactionary and racist. The largest layer is probably in the middle in the normal course of events.

Lenin learned over the span of a decade that trying to build a mass party that was intending to capture layers of workers beyond the vanguard in non-revolutionary situations entailed compromising the program of the party and binding the political activity of the advanced workers to the more backward workers. What made this particularly dangerous in Lenin's view was his understanding that there arose a material basis for opportunism within workers' parties as a result of monopoly capitalism and imperialism, with sections of the working class earning well above the value of their labor power in a way that created a pressure release valve among the more skilled and powerful elements within the workers' movement.

The point of having the vanguard party and departing from the mass party model was to build an organization that would be trained in and accustomed to leading, rather than following, when a revolutionary situation developed. The Bolsheviks in Russia led the most militant layers of workers, in whose wake followed masses of workers, in carrying through the smashing of the bourgeois state in Russia. In Germany, the workers' party followed the backward elements of the working class in constraining the revolutionary workers. To you this might not be a big deal. To people for whom "smashing capitalism" is to be more than just a pleasant-sounding homily, this difference in outcome is everything.

This just further compounds the problem i'm having in this thread in that no one's bringing forth a substantial enough definition of the vangaurd party to make it a useful political concept.

Your mass reformist party vs the vanguard or the assertion that the vanguard is the most advanced section necessary because consciousness is uneven seems like a smoke screen when faced with criticisms in this thread and elsewhere that the vanguard party is an old strategy not really relevant to now.

Im missing something here. Either the critics are taking something from the vanguard party that's not there or those defining it are offering a smokescreen, a mirage. Im not gonna go read some dusty old tomes to find out because frankly i've got better things to do than read shit loads of Lenin. If i was going to do that i wouldn't be posting here i'd be reading lenin

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

SoS already addressed much of this.


A few points:

First, how can a vanguard party be identified without hindsight? It can't be self-identified because let's face it most people who would consider themselves as comprising a prole vanguard are suspect and instead tend to cling to the coattails of the labour aristocracy, the petit bourgeoisie and union bureaucrats. I'll use as an example here every party in the UK which derives itself from lenin, whether they meander or not.

First, let us clear up one potential misunderstanding: there is, in the year two thousandth and fifteenth of Our Lord, no revolutionary vanguard party anywhere on the globe. At best there are fighting propaganda groups struggling to gather around themselves the core cadres for a vanguard party, or at least making a literary pretense of doing so. Of these, the worst ones might delude themselves that they're, say, "the world's smallest mass party", but that simply denotes how far they are from revolutionary politics.

Second, the answer is in the Cannon quote I have provided: one looks at the programme of the party, at its actions and its intervention in the class struggle. One doesn't need a detailed breakdown of the membership of the IMT or some sort of Vanguard-O-Meter (TM) to know that calling for an "Enabling Act" to be passed by a Labour government is far from proletarian politics. Nor does one need to know what stratum of society the Redgraves belonged to to know that supporting Khomeini is anti-worker politics.


Secondly, why is the vanguard always referred to in the singular? If the vanguard is the most advanced section of the working class and nothing more then surely we must recognise a simple fact: there wouldn't be one vanguard organisation there would be multiple to the extent that the 'most advanced section' (btw, how arrogant is that phrase? Fucking hell) would have theoretical and practical disagreements with itself.

Any group has internal disagreements. But the question is, are these disagreements based on a common revolutionary programme, or something else? And there is only one revolutionary programme. As the old SWP (US) secretary Morris Stein put it:

"We are monopolists in the field of politics. We cannot stand any competition. We can tolerate no rivals. The working class, to make the revolution, can do it only through one party and one program ... This is why we are out to destroy every single party in the field that makes any pretence of being a working class revolutionary party. Ours is the only correct program that can lead to the revolution. Everything else is deception, treachery."


Also, whats this about professional revolutionaries?

A professional revolutionary is a cadre of the revolutionary political organisation; his professional life is subordinated to intervening in the class struggle.

[Rudolf]

Any group has internal disagreements. But the question is, are these disagreements based on a common revolutionary programme, or something else? And there is only one revolutionary programme. As the old SWP (US) secretary Morris Stein put it:

"We are monopolists in the field of politics. We cannot stand any competition. We can tolerate no rivals. The working class, to make the revolution, can do it only through one party and one program ... This is why we are out to destroy every single party in the field that makes any pretence of being a working class revolutionary party. Ours is the only correct program that can lead to the revolution. Everything else is deception, treachery."You say one programme but the quote also says one party. why the difference?

Also it's a pretty funny quote. I love irony. Do you not see the problem here in that it's self-decribed and accompanied by a desire to destroy their rivals? It's probably the most arrogant thing i've heard all day.




A professional revolutionary is a cadre of the revolutionary political organisation; his professional life is subordinated to intervening in the class struggle.
and this means what? They don't have a job?

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

You say one programme but the quote also says one party. why the difference?

There is no difference. There is one programme. Consequently there can be at most one world party of the revolution. But at the moment we don't have that one party - not because there are multiple revolutionary parties but because there are none at all.


Also it's a pretty funny quote. I love irony. Do you not see the problem here in that it's self-decribed and accompanied by a desire to destroy their rivals? It's probably the most arrogant thing i've heard all day.

I don't see the problem, and I don't see the arrogance. We hold one programme to be correct. As such we fight for that programme and seek to do away with those who mislead the class, not by force (you will note that unlike the SPA and their blue-shirted thugs, the SWP had no fighting squads) but by the methods of political struggle.


and this means what? They don't have a job?

They can have several. But they do them, not in order to be a bricklayer or steelworker, but to intervene in the class struggle.

[Rudolf]

There is no difference. There is one programme. Consequently there can be at most one world party of the revolution. Why's this?



I don't see the problem, and I don't see the arrogance. We hold one programme to be correct. As such we fight for that programme and seek to do away with those who mislead the class, not by force (you will note that unlike the SPA and their blue-shirted thugs, the SWP had no fighting squads) but by the methods of political struggle. You don't see the arrogance because you probably buy into it. The arrogance is in the assumption that you're the most advanced section, you're 100% correct and that everyone else is a deceiver. This is fundamentally problematic, it's not an appeal to a materialist analysis its dogmatism and delusion.

As a part of the most advanced section of the proletariat, as the vanguard, i most certainly am qualified to say this and any argument against it is an attempt to mislead the class and is fundamentally counter-revolutionary ;)





They can have several. But they do them, not in order to be a bricklayer or steelworker, but to intervene in the class struggle.

Interesting. So unlike the rest of us who work because we need a wage to live the professional revolutionary doesn't. From where comes their livelihood? If it's their wage and you're actually merely saying a professional revolutionary is a revolutionary who intervenes in class struggle you're playing with words as that's not the meaning of 'professional'. i'd reject someone who doesn't intervene in class struggle as being revolutionary. If all you do is sit on your hands flogging newspapers your politics are pointless.

[Comrade Jacob]

The Vanguard is the condensed working-class filled with the most class-conscious workers and revolutionaries.

[Heilmann]

1. Are you a revolutionary?
2. Do all workers agree with your revolutionary views?

...

If you answered No to the second question then you are part of the vanguard -- according to your political conceptions.

this is in fact wholly irrelevant to the question at hand. there's no doubt that the class develops political consciousness unevenly, and accordingly only minorities will radicalise, at least in periods without major social upheaval. i don't think a single tendency, be it within anarchim or communism, questions this. what role such minorities have vis-a-vis the working class in general, however, is a different question, and the above quoted schematic explanation mystifies the particular tactics and strategy tied to the leninist conception of a vanguard party.


The Vanguard is the condensed working-class filled with the most class-conscious workers and revolutionaries.

this is nonsensical. so the vanguard is a class on its own (?), but a condensed one (??), that in fact are made up of other classes (??? - workers and revolutionaries, which aren't necessarily workers). good to see the stalinists have their theory in order.

[Spectre of Spartacism]

The forum is called "learning". It's not called "read this old tome". Funnily enough i do have a copy of What is to be Done? in front of me but im not gonna read through it as I can't be arsed.

This might come as a surprise, but reading is a means by which to learn. If you want anybody to take what you say seriously when it comes to Lenin's ideas, you should familiarize yourself with those ideas beforehand. I mean, actually familiarize yourself with them, by reading them first-hand instead of reading some tendentious fourth-hand account of what Lenin supposedly said. If you don't care either way, that's fine. Just don't hold out much hope of persuading anybody.


Yet the context of the quote doesn't say what you're saying, it clearly attributes it to the propertied classes, to the bourgeois intelligentsia. It's in the same fucking paragraph. Maybe i'm just a philistine with my lack of background in politics, philosophy, academia etc but it seems pretty clear to me from the immediate context of that quote about "trade union consciousness" that Lenin is stating that the working class does need a force external to itself in order to attain a revolutionary, socialist consciousness.I am familiar with the quote. It makes the obvious and unobjectionable point that the theory of scientific socialism was first developed by the bourgeois intelligentsia. This point is made to reinforce the claim Lenin is driving home: the claim that there is an important distinction between experiencing exploitation and understanding that experience from a high-level theoretical perspective, so that some workers who experience it aren't revolutionary socialists, while some people who don't experience it at all are.


This is beside the point as to why i brought this up though. I want to know what relation the vanguard party as a political concept has with this. I thought i could start to prod better claims about the vanguard party out but it turns out im shit at that.

This just further compounds the problem i'm having in this thread in that no one's bringing forth a substantial enough definition of the vangaurd party to make it a useful political concept.

Your mass reformist party vs the vanguard or the assertion that the vanguard is the most advanced section necessary because consciousness is uneven seems like a smoke screen when faced with criticisms in this thread and elsewhere that the vanguard party is an old strategy not really relevant to now.

Im missing something here. Either the critics are taking something from the vanguard party that's not there or those defining it are offering a smokescreen, a mirage. Im not gonna go read some dusty old tomes to find out because frankly i've got better things to do than read shit loads of Lenin. If i was going to do that i wouldn't be posting here i'd be reading leninHey, if you don't want to put forth the effort to learn, that's your choice. Dont blame people in this thread for that, though.

[WideAwake]

I think that a powerful cause of why millions of poor americans [which are supposed to be by now full communists], are more anti-communism, more ultra-right-wingers and more full of vanity than rich people, is a psychologic problem, a behaviour script problem.

In USA since the neoliberal economic model was introduced into this country with Reganomics and Thatcherism, the official behaviour script has been to be sort of lone-ranger Rambo, a mysanthropist, un-social, angry Robinson Crusoe who has no friends and can control his whole reality by his own self, without the need of politics at all, without even the need of The Democratic Party, The Republican Party, politics, news, and without the need of communicating their own personal sufferings with others. That and the other personality disorder ingrained in most americans which is family-narcissism, and group-narcissism (most americans only care about members of their own families and members of their own specific group church, work place etc.

The excess of pathological narcissism, individualist narcissism, group-narcissism and family-narcissism is powerful even in the majority of poor low-wage workers. That's why most workers of blue collar painful jobs like Mcdonalds workers, the workers of Wal Marts, the workers of supermarkets, of grocery stores in America treat customers in a very bad way, because most low-wage workers in USA, most fast food workers live a shitty life, with shitty labor conditions [workers of Wal Marts have to eat their lunch in the parking lots], and all that mental, physical and emotional pain, has as a consequence the need of being narcissistic, angry, un-loving, un-social as an ego-boosting remedy.

US low-wage workers, know that they live a shitty hell on earth, but they have such low egoes, low self-esteems, [as a result of that very painful life], that instead of resorting to political activism, grass roots activism, protesting, etc. they resort to narcissism, deep competition with other poor people, hatred toward their own street neighbors, and competing with their own neighbors on who drives the best cars, who has the best green lawns, lots of envy, as a result of very painful and lives in a permanent state of existential vacuum (most poor americans are literally living a punishment of a life, without parties, without movie theaters, without music concerts) and getting into expensive cars [with debts], which forces most US poor people into a diabolical negative trap and circle, that it is very hard to escape from, called "The poverty trap" and "The vicious circle of poverty"

The poverty trap and the vicious circle of poverty is a mental emotional state, in which US poor people feel like shit, physically, mentally and emotionally, turns them into negative creeps, suicidal people, full of negative energies depressed and sad, and that depression and sadness itself makes them even poorer than they are, so it is a trap that is slowly and slow destroying about 200 million people in USA that are really poor, [some less poor than others] but most are living inside that negative energies hell.

Maybe when the economy gets worse and/or as a result of Bernie Sanders doing propaganda for the ideology of communism, and other mainstream icons like progressive celebrites etc. along with a very hard economic crisis like the price of basic foods like chicken, eggs, cheese and ham getting very expensive [4 important high protein foods for low-wage classes] most poor americans who live inside the poverty trap and viscious circle of poverty. Will get out of that negative hell and support the ideology of communism and communist parties.

But right now like i said, most poor americans are living inside a negative hell of negative vibrations, negative pessimist energies that forces them to behave very narcissistically, as an ego-boosting medicine for their depression. And that is really a powerful impediment for poor americans to support communism and any leftist political option.

PS: But do not have any possitive hope, not much good can come out of a population, of the USA that suffers from deep narcissism and many other personality disorders. Maybe USA needs a mental revolution first, a powerful psychologic revolution as a requirement for all poor americans to support the ideology of communism. Because right now most poor americans are too shy, too quiet, too narcissists, too silent, too depressed, too negative and have many other mental problems that are the main impediment for a marxist party to rise to the White House and install a dictatorship of the proletariat






the everyday experiences of being a worker shows that your boss is not your friend, that you have conflicting interests. Yet there are still workers who fail to grasp this despite it being obvious. .