Guerilla warfare and Vanguardism

[KurtFF8]

Some have claimed that Guerilla warfare is an ineffective way of organizing class conflict in favor of the working class.

This makes me wonder if those same critics also believe in the vanguard party theory. If a political organization can be formed to represent the working class, why would a militant organization be unable to capture power via this specific tactic of warfare to establish a worker's state?

I thought of this in thinking of the Cuban revolution, where a small band of rebels (of course they were not alone in any sense) helped liberate the island slowly from the Batista military. As they went on, they worked with peasants and workers and gained their support as the rebels were representing their interests instead of the interests too.

It seems then that guerilla warfare (at least when being used by leftists) also requires an adaptation of a vanguard theory as gureilla warfare is generally not a mass movement (as those tend to be "instant" revolutions).

I think that cuba demonstrates where the vanguard theory and guerilla warfare can be fused to form a workers state (although many will argue the nature of Cuba's socialism, which I suppose is quite important).

But one thing that Cuban Revolution does demonstrate is that the vanguard theory of orgnizing and gureilla warfare can gain mass support and represent the working and peasant classes, and while the nature of what type of state arises from it, this method of abolishing the previous state has shown to be effective.

And for those who point to the flaws of the Cuban state and thus their causes as the revolution itself, we can perhaps rethink the way in which the post-revolutionary state itself is organized as the problem, but perhaps we shouldn't be too hastey in writing off that method of getting rid of the previous ruling class.

[lombas]

I think the Cuban Revolution had a lot to do with luck.

The proof of this is a dead Ché.

[JimmyJazz]

I think the Cuban Revolution had a lot to do with luck.

The proof of this is a dead Ché.

The vanguard party tactic has also only worked once.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

There are those – mostly bourgeois mouthpieces, but also many so-called revolutionaries – that claim that the defeat of Che’s campaign in Bolivia proves that his theories of guerrilla war and revolution were flawed.

Often these same sources, which almost always have an agenda, distort and oversimplify Che’s theories in order to discredit them.

....

Fidel Castro condemned those “pseudorevolutionaries, opportunists, and charlatans of every kind who call themselves Marxists, communists, or give themselves any other titles” in the introduction to the first authorized edition of Che’s Bolivian Diary:

“They have not vacillated in qualifying Che as wrong, as an adventurer, and when referring to him in the most benign form, they call him an idealist whose death is the Swan Song of the revolutionary armed struggle in Latin America.

“‘If Che,’ they exclaim, ‘the highest exponent of these ideas and an experimented guerrilla fighter, was killed in guerrilla warfare and his movement did not liberate Bolivia, that only demonstrates how wrong he was!’ How many of these miserable characters have been happy about the death of Che and haven’t even blushed to think that their positions and reasoning coincide completely with those of the most reactionary oligarchies and with imperialism!”

Countering these ridiculous exclamations, Fidel wrote:

“Che contemplated his death as something natural and probable in the process and tried to emphasize, especially in the last documents, that this eventuality would not impede the inevitable march of the revolution in Latin America. In his message to the Tricontinental Congress, he reiterated this thought: ‘Our every action is a battle cry against imperialism... wherever death may surprise us, let it be welcomed, provided that this, our battle cry, may have reached some receptive ear and another hand may be extended to wield our weapons.’

“He considered himself a soldier of the revolution without ever worrying about surviving it. Those who see the end of his ideas in the outcome of his struggle in Bolivia could with the same simplicity negate the validity of the ideas and struggles of all the great precursors and revolutionary thinkers, including the founders of Marxism who were unable to culminate their work and see during their lifetimes the fruits of their noble efforts...

“Che knew from his experience in Cuba how often our small guerrilla attachment was on the verge of being extinguished. This could have occurred because of the likelihood of the hazards and imponderabilities of war, but, if we had indeed been extinguished, would it have given the right to anyone to have considered our line erroneous or to use this as an example to discourage the revolution and to instill impotency into the people? Many times in history the revolutionary processes have been proceeded by adverse episodes! Didn’t we in Cuba have the Moncada as an experience almost six years before the final triumph of the armed struggle by the people?

Che Guevara and the Coming World Revolution (http://powr-prm.org/cheandtheworld.html)

[Asoka89]

The vanguard party tactic has also only worked once.

I'm sorry mate, but I totally disagree. I'm to the left of Leninism, but there is a reason why almost all the national liberation movements of the 3rd world took on a Leninist-party-structure. The vanguardist worked, just never for a genuinely proletarian revolution-- only for revolution in the undeveloped world, but peasant, worker and (not in russia) "progressive" national bourgeois alliance

[Reclaimed Dasein]

Some have claimed that Guerilla warfare is an ineffective way of organizing class conflict in favor of the working class.

This makes me wonder if those same critics also believe in the vanguard party theory. If a political organization can be formed to represent the working class, why would a militant organization be unable to capture power via this specific tactic of warfare to establish a worker's state?

I thought of this in thinking of the Cuban revolution, where a small band of rebels (of course they were not alone in any sense) helped liberate the island slowly from the Batista military. As they went on, they worked with peasants and workers and gained their support as the rebels were representing their interests instead of the interests too.

It seems then that guerilla warfare (at least when being used by leftists) also requires an adaptation of a vanguard theory as gureilla warfare is generally not a mass movement (as those tend to be "instant" revolutions).

I think that cuba demonstrates where the vanguard theory and guerilla warfare can be fused to form a workers state (although many will argue the nature of Cuba's socialism, which I suppose is quite important).

But one thing that Cuban Revolution does demonstrate is that the vanguard theory of orgnizing and gureilla warfare can gain mass support and represent the working and peasant classes, and while the nature of what type of state arises from it, this method of abolishing the previous state has shown to be effective.

And for those who point to the flaws of the Cuban state and thus their causes as the revolution itself, we can perhaps rethink the way in which the post-revolutionary state itself is organized as the problem, but perhaps we shouldn't be too hastey in writing off that method of getting rid of the previous ruling class.

It's a gross simplification, but the essence of Cheism seems to be a vanguard carries out revolutionary acts to inspire the people to carry out revolutionary acts. It would certainly need to be reworked, but I think there's something valuable to the idea of inspiration from as small revolutionary group. However, there would need to be serious work to control the media message of such acts. Essentially, it would need a platform to articulate the revolutionary actions in a clear, class concious light. As a sort of fictionalized attempt at this, I recommend John Carpenter's "They Live."

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9005367754264973286

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Read what I linked to earlier. "Over simplification" doesn't even begin to describe the summing up of Che's ideas as a small group running into the jungle with guns and expecting a revolution to start.

Che made great contributions, but they are ignored and written off by people who haven't even investigated them.

[Reclaimed Dasein]

Read what I linked to earlier. "Over simplification" doesn't even begin to describe the summing up of Che's ideas as a small group running into the jungle with guns and expecting a revolution to start.

Che made great contributions, but they are ignored and written off by people who haven't even investigated them.
Well it's a good thing I didn't write Che's ideas included "a small group running into the jungle with guns and expecting a revolution to start." Maybe it would help if you actually read what I actually wrote.


the essence of Cheism seems to be a vanguard carries out revolutionary acts to inspire the people to carry out revolutionary acts. It would certainly need to be reworked, but I think there's something valuable to the idea of inspiration from as small revolutionary group. However, there would need to be serious work to control the media message of such acts.
I'll admit right now, it's been at least 3 years since I've read Guerrilla warfare. A lot of it doesn't particularly pertain to our current situation, although the section on converting a shotgun into a Molotov launcher is interesting. Furthermore, I don't want to hold up Wikipedia as the end all source of any debate, but they seem to clearly side with my admittedly gross characterization of Che's theories.


Guevara had a particularly keen interest in guerrilla warfare, with a dedication to foco techniques, also known as "focalism" (or "foquismo" in Spanish): vanguardism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanguardism) by small armed units, frequently in place of established communist parties (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_parties), initially launching attacks from rural areas to mobilize unrest into a popular front (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_front) against a sitting regime. Despite differences in approach--emphasizing guerrilla leadership and audacious raids that engender general uprising, rather than consolidating political power in military strongholds before expanding to new ones...


But the foquismo theory stated that this popular support would be created during the armed struggle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armed_struggle) itself: thus, against predominant Marxism theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism_theory), there was no need to wait for the "objective conditions" of a popular uprising to engage the last stage of the revolutionary struggle (i.e. armed struggle). In other words, a small group of revolutionaries was considered to be enough to jumpstart a revolution since this group could begin the revolutionary struggle while at the same time developing the conditions necessary for popular support for the revolution. This theory focused heavily on the notion of vanguardism and on the moral value of the example.

If you want to discuss Guerrilla Warfare or any of Che's writings that somehow refute this generally accepted view on wikipedia, I'm glad to hear them. But I don't appreciate you midcharacterizing my view and then somehow implying that I don't know what I'm talking about when just a simple search would have revealed I hold the dominante, albeit debatible, view.

(Note the bolds are mine and I underlined "example" for emphasis. The rest are underlines from the wikipage.)

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

I merely explained that the common view of Che's ideas and "focoism" have little to do with what he actually wrote, said, promoted or practiced.

I wasn't talking about you specifically, though you too repeat the oversimplification. Don't take it personally, I'm just pointing things out.

Wikipedia is not a valid source. Wikipedia usually reproduces the dominant thought on an issue, and only sometimes the actual facts. A glance at most of the entries having anything to do with communism will show you that.

Che wrote a lot more than Guerrilla Warfare. It all needs to be read, and put into context, if you want to draw out the necessary lessons.

I'm not got to spend time debunking these myths every single time they come up. I wrote about Che's contributions. I linked to it a few posts up. If you're really interested in Che's views, take a look at it. His actual ideas are laid out and the slander and mischaracterizations are dealt with.

A few quotes which appear there should be useful here:

“The initial struggle of the small fighting units is constantly nurtured by new forces; the mass movement begins to grow bold, bit by bit the old older breaks into a thousand pieces, and that is when the working class and the urban masses decide the battle.” - Che

“It is imperative to point out that one cannot hope for victory without the formation of a popular army.” - Che

“The guerrilla [must be] supported by the peasant and worker masses of the region and of the whole territory in which it acts.” - Che

“[Guerrilla war is not a matter of] slighting the struggles of the mass of organized workers. [It is] simply a matter of realistically analyzing the possibilities ... where the guarantees that usually adorn our constitutions are suspended or ignored [and where] the workers’ movements must go underground, without arms, illegal and facing enormous dangers. The situation is not as difficult in the open countryside, where the inhabitants can be supported by the armed guerrillas in places beyond the reach of the repressive forces." - Che

“The 26th of July organized and fought in an underground struggle in the 126 municipalities of Cuba, from the large cities to the smallest towns... the struggle was used in every part of the country....” - Carlos Franqui

“Many people say that [the guerrilla in Bolivia] was a group of military adventurers, a project that wasn’t linked to the masses, one that had no political links. They forget that Mario Monje, the general secretary of the Bolivian Communist Party, had pledged to support the initial plan headed by Che. Monje didn’t keep those pledges, and that held back the revolutionary movement that Che headed, depriving it of political support right from the beginning. It also caused difficulties with the urban networks, which were hard hit. Some members of the Bolivian Communist Party wanted to join the guerrilla movement but Monje placed obstacles in their way. For example, when Che left Cuba, there was a group of about 15 or 20 Bolivians here who had completed their training, but Monje didn’t give them the facilities for joining the guerrillas.” - Barbarroja

“Many grassroots cadres of the communist youth and other organizations and many miners [who] wanted to join the guerrilla movement headed by Che [were prevented from doing so].” - Barbarroja

“[Che’s] concept was political, military and of the masses, contradicting the interpretation of the ‘guerrilla foco’ that is attributed to him. He said that the mother column was a small motor that, when it functioned well, would start up the larger motor of the masses. What he proposed was not a small group of armed men acting in any way divorced from the people’s movement but rather an insurgent focal point linked to the masses.... [Che] didn’t think it was necessary for all of the initial conditions of the struggle to be present. He thought that, in the course of its development, the struggle could create those conditions.” - Barbarroja

[Reclaimed Dasein]

I merely explained that the common view of Che's ideas and "focoism" have little to do with what he actually wrote, said, promoted or practiced.

I wasn't talking about you specifically, though you too repeat the oversimplification. Don't take it personally, I'm just pointing things out.

Wikipedia is not a valid source. Wikipedia usually reproduces the dominant thought on an issue, and only sometimes the actual facts. A glance at most of the entries having anything to do with communism will show you that.

Che wrote a lot more than Guerrilla Warfare. It all needs to be read, and put into context, if you want to draw out the necessary lessons.

I'm not got to spend time debunking these myths every single time they come up. I wrote about Che's contributions. I linked to it a few posts up. If you're really interested in Che's views, take a look at it. His actual ideas are laid out and the slander and mischaracterizations are dealt with.

A few quotes which appear there should be useful here:

“The initial struggle of the small fighting units is constantly nurtured by new forces; the mass movement begins to grow bold, bit by bit the old older breaks into a thousand pieces, and that is when the working class and the urban masses decide the battle.” - Che

“It is imperative to point out that one cannot hope for victory without the formation of a popular army.” - Che

“The guerrilla [must be] supported by the peasant and worker masses of the region and of the whole territory in which it acts.” - Che

“[Guerrilla war is not a matter of] slighting the struggles of the mass of organized workers. [It is] simply a matter of realistically analyzing the possibilities ... where the guarantees that usually adorn our constitutions are suspended or ignored [and where] the workers’ movements must go underground, without arms, illegal and facing enormous dangers. The situation is not as difficult in the open countryside, where the inhabitants can be supported by the armed guerrillas in places beyond the reach of the repressive forces." - Che

“The 26th of July organized and fought in an underground struggle in the 126 municipalities of Cuba, from the large cities to the smallest towns... the struggle was used in every part of the country....” - Carlos Franqui

“Many people say that [the guerrilla in Bolivia] was a group of military adventurers, a project that wasn’t linked to the masses, one that had no political links. They forget that Mario Monje, the general secretary of the Bolivian Communist Party, had pledged to support the initial plan headed by Che. Monje didn’t keep those pledges, and that held back the revolutionary movement that Che headed, depriving it of political support right from the beginning. It also caused difficulties with the urban networks, which were hard hit. Some members of the Bolivian Communist Party wanted to join the guerrilla movement but Monje placed obstacles in their way. For example, when Che left Cuba, there was a group of about 15 or 20 Bolivians here who had completed their training, but Monje didn’t give them the facilities for joining the guerrillas.” - Barbarroja

“Many grassroots cadres of the communist youth and other organizations and many miners [who] wanted to join the guerrilla movement headed by Che [were prevented from doing so].” - Barbarroja

“[Che’s] concept was political, military and of the masses, contradicting the interpretation of the ‘guerrilla foco’ that is attributed to him. He said that the mother column was a small motor that, when it functioned well, would start up the larger motor of the masses. What he proposed was not a small group of armed men acting in any way divorced from the people’s movement but rather an insurgent focal point linked to the masses.... [Che] didn’t think it was necessary for all of the initial conditions of the struggle to be present. He thought that, in the course of its development, the struggle could create those conditions.” - Barbarroja
I'm hard pressed to think of any Communists who don't think that the Masses™ will be the main body of the Revolution™ when it comes. The point is how it gets there. When Barbarroja says

He said that the mother column was a small motor that, when it functioned well, would start up the larger motor of the masses. What he proposed was not a small group of armed men acting in any way divorced from the people’s movement but rather an insurgent focal point linked to the masses.... All he really is saying is "Che is a vanguardist." The important thing isn't that Che thought the masses would rise up. The important thing is how.

Grossly, but still accurately speaking:

Leninism believes a vanguard provides the educational and organizational core to make the revolutionary masses rise up.

Trotskyism believe a vanguard provides the military and organizational core to offensively overthrow capitalist systems.

Mao believed that communists would go from trying to survive in the countryside, to waging a form of guerrilla warfare in the country side, to waging pitched military battles.

Che believe that by using the terrain to establish a secure base (foco) revolutionaries can inspire the people to rise into a mass movement.

Ultra-leftism believes capitalism will exploit the workers and then magic will happen.

I think this basically covers in a sentence the general characterization these views (except maybe ultra leftism which I will charitably say I don't understand at all). However, that's, of course, not all the story. That's why the proponents of each theory individual wrote several books and essays about it. Guerrilla Warfare is certainly not the only thing Che Guevara wrote. He wrote numerous essays and gave many speeches. The fact that he didn't view Cuba as necessarily falling within the Soviet sphere, but just pragmatically going with the more friendly force at the time poses an interesting position for the "third world" and non-alignment movement. However, his theory of revolution is the only substantive theoretical contribution he has made to Communism.

Also, I don't hold that Che's theories are necessarily wrong or the absurd position that he was "refuted" by Bolivia.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

However, his theory of revolution is the only substantive theoretical contribution he has made to Communism.

No, not just on making revolution...

He made significant contributions on the transition from capitalism to communism (eg. "Man and socialism in Cuba," etc.), socialist economics and construction (eg. "On the budgetary finance system," etc.), defeating imperialism (eg. "Tactics and strategy of the Latin American Revolution," "Create one, two, many Viet Nams," etc.), political economy (eg. Critical notes on political economy, etc.).

More than anything else, he was able to draw from the lessons of the workers movement since the days of Marx and put forward a useful synthesis.

I don't even have time to get into your mischaracterization of the vanguard as seen by the various groups. Maybe some other time.

[Reclaimed Dasein]

No, not just on making revolution...

He made significant contributions on the transition from capitalism to communism (eg. "Man and socialism in Cuba," etc.), socialist economics and construction (eg. "On the budgetary finance system," etc.), defeating imperialism (eg. "Tactics and strategy of the Latin American Revolution," "Create one, two, many Viet Nams," etc.), political economy (eg. Critical notes on political economy, etc.).

More than anything else, he was able to draw from the lessons of the workers movement since the days of Marx and put forward a useful synthesis.

I don't even have time to get into your mischaracterization of the vanguard as seen by the various groups. Maybe some other time.
Sure you do. Just do a better job characterizing a complex social, political, and military idea in one sentence. I think that's only fair. If you're going to criticize me, that's fine, but then you should be able to do it. Give me one sentence positions on Lenin, Trotsky, Mao, and Che. We'll leave ultra leftism out because they're not vanguardists.

[KurtFF8]

Read what I linked to earlier. "Over simplification" doesn't even begin to describe the summing up of Che's ideas as a small group running into the jungle with guns and expecting a revolution to start.

Che made great contributions, but they are ignored and written off by people who haven't even investigated them.

I certainly didn't mean to sum them up in this way, obviously that would indeed be a gross oversimplification. I was just trying to see what everyone thought of the necessity of linking vanguardism and Marxist Guerilla Warfare.

[Asoka89]

About ultra-leftism, I think that were anarchism was really successful--- in Spain in the 1930s, they weren't neglecting organization. They formed the CNT, FAI, they armed and organized workers militas. Now what is the state "armed bodies of men..." we all know what it is. Now if these anarchists took power by instituionalizing in a decentralized manner these militas, worker occupied factories, collectivized farms, which already were organized, that would have been the dictatorship of the proletariat. No real "vanguard" was needed, unless you consider the leadership of these organziations vanguards.

Now one of the reasons why leninism is dead/dying around the world is because the traditional Marxist analysis places too much emphasis on exploitation and not enough on control. By returning more to the control analysis of the anarchist and the alienation of early Marx, we can see that "state-socialism" with a coordinating class could never be the dictatorship of the proletariat.

[griffjam]

Vanguard parties are anti-socialist

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

A vanguard is something that exists. It's the most advanced section of the working class. Class consciousness doesn't develop evenly. The proletariat doesn't uniformly and simultaneously gain a communist understanding. There are some who come to understand the tasks of our class before others. Those who are class conscious are going to look for organizations to fight for socialism.

Now, having a small sect that most workers have never heard of and claiming yourself to be the vanguard party is something else entirely.

[Asoka89]

I agree. I'm more against small fake "vanguard" sects than the concept. I want a lot of these small parties to follow LCR's (France) example and try to form a mass party that can become a real vanguard down the line.

Remember the Bolskeviks came from a mass organization, they werent just a sect with a correct line that became bigger.

[KurtFF8]

I agree. I'm more against small fake "vanguard" sects than the concept. I want a lot of these small parties to follow LCR's (France) example and try to form a mass party that can become a real vanguard down the line.

Remember the Bolskeviks came from a mass organization, they werent just a sect with a correct line that became bigger.

Well obviously any vanguard party (which by definition is distinct from a mass party) has to be involved with the masses (which includes working with mass organizations as the Bolsheviks did and came from), otherwise it's impossible to represent the masses.

Even bourgeois parties know this and do this. They have a lot of involvement with the masses, although they are of course exploiting them and continuing capitalism.

[Asoka89]

Do you really think that Leninism--- an ideology that HAS only worked in the undeveloped work has any role in advanced imperialist nations


Keep in mind that Lenin sought to build a party that was in sync with the latest developments in capitalist industry. By 1905 Russian factories were among the most modern on the planet despite the overall backwardness of the economy. Lenin believed that the Bolshevik party needed to reflect the division of labor, etc. that typified the latest industrial techniques. Hence the concept of professional revolutionaries, a kind of changeable part that could be replaced when a comrade was hauled off to prison. He saw the Economist trend as reflecting earlier phases of the Russian economy that were based in the handicrafts. Their refusal to adopt a nationwide and fully accountable structure based on democratic centralism reflected outmoded thinking that was connected to a more backward mode of production.

Within in this context, isn’t it about time that we thought in the same terms about how our movement broadly speaking fits in with the latest changes in the capitalist mode of production? Aren’t the printing press and the party headquarters a kind of throwback to smokestack industries? Inevitably, when a new aspiring “vanguard” party is established, the very first thing on the minds of the leadership is how long it will take them to launch a weekly newspaper, a full-time staff, and a headquarters-elements of which constituted a kind of sine qua non for Marxist-Leninist parties of the 20th century.

Dont you think the basic structure of capitalism has altered to the extent that new modes of thinking are needed-- a revolution in thought in the same way that Lenin's thought represented a revolutionary fissure from Kautsky and his ilk

[Guerrilla22]

Guerrilla warfarw has been unsuccessful more often than not and in some cases has led to perpetual warfare, as in the case of Colombia. A couple of things to consider: during the Cuban revolution M-26 was backed by a general worker's/people's movement that acted in concert with the guerrilla army to not only defeat Bautista's army, but to mobilize and educate the masses as well. The combined movement worked in a cohesive manner.

In contrast Spain had several different groups, with numerous different aims and conflicting ideas about how to go about things. Ultimately this lack of cohesion led to the opposition crushing a divied and thus weakend movement.

The efforts in the Congo and Bolivia never really had much support behind them in the first place. you cannot simply show up some place with a couple dozen fighters and expect to solely defeat the ruling government and institute socialism. Cuba was a rare and right circumstances for revolutionary change.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

you cannot simply show up some place with a couple dozen fighters and expect to solely defeat the ruling government and institute socialism.That's not what happened in either case. Have you bothered to do any research at all or even read the piece I linked to in this thread? I expect more from you comrade.


“[In regards to Bolivia] Many people say that it was a group of military adventurers, a project that wasn’t linked to the masses, one that had no political links. They forget that Mario Monje, the general secretary of the Bolivian Communist Party, had pledged to support the initial plan headed by Che. Monje didn’t keep those pledges, and that held back the revolutionary movement that Che headed, depriving it of political support right from the beginning. It also caused difficulties with the urban networks, which were hard hit. Some members of the Bolivian Communist Party wanted to join the guerrilla movement but Monje placed obstacles in their way. For example, when Che left Cuba, there was a group of about 15 or 20 Bolivians here who had completed their training, but Monje didn’t give them the facilities for joining the guerrillas.”

In another interview, Barbarroja spoke of the “[m]any grassroots cadres of the communist youth and other organizations and many miners [who] wanted to join the guerrilla movement headed by Che” but were prevented from doing so. He went on to speak of Monje, who “[h]idebound by established procedures as general secretary of the Communist Party of Bolivia ... wasn’t aware of the continental dimensions of Che’s plan. He didn’t know (or didn’t want to know) that Che would be in Bolivia only until the Bolivian combatants had been forged in the struggle and had gained enough experience to enable them to take over the leadership of the guerrilla movement in their country.” In the Congo, Che and the other Cuban internationalists showed up to help Laurent-Desire Kabila and his organization, which had many members and supporters. That effort was lost due to the lack of discipline and dedication of Kabila and co. The Cubans didn't go there to fight the revolutionary war for them.

Has guerrilla war failed? Yep. So has every other tactic. There is no foolproof way of overthrowing capitalism.

Struggles with guerrilla warfare as a component part overthrew capitalism in China and Cuba, defeated the fascists and overthrew capitalism in Yugoslavia and Albania, defeated the U.S. imperialists in Viet Nam and Laos and paved the way for the overthrow of capitalism there, overthrew the U.S. backed dictator of Nicragua and raised the possibility of overthrowing capitalism there, prevented the victory of the U.S. imperialists in Korea, and brought comrades to the verge of victory in el Salvador.

[Guerrilla22]

That's not what happened in either case. Have you bothered to do any research at all or even read the piece I linked to in this thread? I expect more from you comrade.

I should clarify my statement. I meant that as a hypothetical, not refering to the Congo or Bolivia campaigns. A guerrilla war simply cannot happen was point; there needs to be support from the masses and a large amount of cohesion and organization.

In both the Congo and Bolivia campaigns there was a lack of support, especially in the case of Bolivia where the Bolivian communist party abandoned Che and his fighters and communication with Havanna was lost. The failure of these campaigns cannot be attributed solely to Che, that would be extremely unfair.

[griffjam]

The reason why vanguard parties are anti-socialist is simply because of the role assigned to them by Lenin, which he thought was vital. Simply put, without the party, no revolution would be possible. As Lenin put it in 1900, "[i]solated from Social-Democracy, the working class movement becomes petty and inevitably becomes bourgeois." [Collected Works, vol. 4, p. 368] In What is to be Done?, he expands on this position:

"Class political consciousness can be brought to the workers only from without, that is, only outside of the economic struggle, outside the sphere of relations between workers and employers. The sphere from which alone it is possible to obtain this knowledge is the sphere of relationships between all the various classes and strata and the state and the government - the sphere of the interrelations between all the various classes." [Essential Works of Lenin, p. 112]

Thus the role of the party is to inject socialist politics into a class incapable of developing them itself.

Lenin is at pains to stress the Marxist orthodoxy of his claims and quotes the "profoundly true and important" comments of Karl Kautsky on the subject. [Op. Cit., p. 81] Kautsky, considered the "pope" of Social-Democracy, stated that it was "absolutely untrue" that "socialist consciousness" was a "necessary and direct result of the proletarian class struggle." Rather, "socialism and the class struggle arise side by side and not one out of the other . . . Modern socialist consciousness can arise only on the basis of profound scientific knowledge . . . The vehicles of science are not the proletariat, but the bourgeois intelligentsia: it was in the minds of some members of this stratum that modern socialism originated, and it was they who communicated it to the more intellectually developed proletarians who, in their turn, introduced it into the proletarian class struggle." Kautsky stressed that "socialist consciousness is something introduced into the proletarian class struggle from without." [quoted by Lenin, Op. Cit., pp. 81-2]

So Lenin, it must be stressed, was not inventing anything new here. He was simply repeating the orthodox Marxist position and, as is obvious, wholeheartedly agreed with Kautsky's pronouncements (any attempt to claim that he did not or later rejected it is nonsense). Lenin, with his usual modesty, claimed to speak on behalf of the workers when he wrote that "intellectuals must talk to us, and tell us more about what we do not know and what we can never learn from our factory and 'economic' experience, that is, you must give us political knowledge." [Op. Cit., p. 108] Thus we have Lenin painting a picture of a working class incapable of developing "political knowledge" or "socialist consciousness" by its own efforts and so is reliant on members of the party, themselves either radical elements of the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie or educated by them, to provide it with such knowledge.

The obvious implication of this argument is that the working class cannot liberate itself by its own efforts. Without the radical bourgeois to provide the working class with "socialist" ideas, a socialist movement, let alone society, is impossible. If the working class cannot develop its own political theory by its own efforts then it cannot conceive of transforming society and, at best, can see only the need to work within capitalism for reforms to improve its position in society. A class whose members cannot develop political knowledge by its own actions cannot emancipate itself. It is, by necessity, dependent on others to shape and form its movements. To quote Trotsky's telling analogy on the respective roles of party and class, leaders and led:

"Without a guiding organisation, the energy of the masses would dissipate like steam not enclosed in a piston. But nevertheless, what moves things is not the piston or the box, but the steam." [History of the Russian Revolution, vol. 1, p. 17]

While Trotsky's mechanistic analogy may be considered as somewhat crude, it does expose the underlying assumptions of Bolshevism. After all, did not Lenin argue that the working class could not develop "socialist consciousness" by themselves and that it had to be introduced from without? How can you expect steam to create a piston? You cannot. Thus we have a blind, elemental force incapable of conscious thought being guided by a creation of science, the piston (which, of course, is a product of the work of the "vehicles of science," namely the bourgeois intelligentsia). In the Leninist perspective, if revolutions are the locomotives of history (to use Marx's words) then the masses are the steam, the party the locomotive and the leaders the train driver. The idea of a future society being constructed democratically from below by the workers themselves rather than through periodically elected leaders seems to have passed Bolshevism past. This is unsurprising, given that the Bolsheviks saw the workers in terms of blindly moving steam in a box, something incapable of being creative unless an outside force gave them direction (instructions).

Libertarian socialist Cornelius Castoriadis provides a good critique of the implications of the Leninist position:

"No positive content, nothing new capable of providing the foundation for the reconstruction of society could arise out of a mere awareness of poverty. From the experience of life under capitalism the proletariat could derive no new principles either for organising this new society or for orientating it in another direction. Under such conditions, the proletarian revolution becomes . . . a simple reflex revolt against hunger. It is impossible to see how socialist society could ever be the result of such a reflex . . . Their situation forces them to suffer the consequences of capitalism's contradictions, but in no way does it lead them to discover its causes. An acquaintance with these causes comes not from experiencing the production process but from theoretical knowledge . . . This knowledge may be accessible to individual workers, but not to the proletariat qua proletariat. Driven by its revolt against poverty, but incapable of self-direction since its experiences does not give it a privileged viewpoint on reality, the proletariat according to this outlook, can only be an infantry in the service of a general staff of specialists. These specialists know (from considerations that the proletariat as such does not have access to) what is going wrong with present-day society and how it must be modified. The traditional view of the economy and its revolutionary perspective can only found, and actually throughout history has only founded, a bureaucratic politics . . . [W]hat we have outlined are the consequences that follow objectively from this theory. And they have been affirmed in an ever clearer fashion within the actual historical movement of Marxism, culminating in Stalinism." [Social and Political Writings, vol. 2, pp. 257-8]

Thus we have a privileged position for the party and a perspective which can (and did) justify party dictatorship over the proletariat. Given the perspective that the working class cannot formulate its own "ideology" by its own efforts, of its incapacity to move beyond "trade union consciousness" independently of the party, the clear implication is that the party could in no way be bound by the predominant views of the working class. As the party embodies "socialist consciousness" (and this arises outside the working class and its struggles) then opposition of the working class to the party signifies a failure of the class to resist alien influences. As Lenin put it:

"Since there can be no talk of an independent ideology being developed by the masses of the workers in the process of their movement, the only choice is: either bourgeois or socialist ideology. There is no middle course . . . Hence, to belittle socialist ideology in any way, to deviate from it in the slightest degree means strengthening bourgeois ideology. There is a lot of talk about spontaneity, but the spontaneous development of the labour movement leads to its becoming subordinated to bourgeois ideology . . . Hence our task, the task of Social-Democracy, is to combat spontaneity, to divert the labour movement from its spontaneous, trade unionist striving to go under the wing of the bourgeoisie, and to bring it under the wing of revolutionary Social-Democracy." [Op. Cit., pp. 82-3]

The implications of this argument became clear once the Bolsheviks seized power. As a justification for party dictatorship, you would be hard pressed to find any better. If the working class revolts against the ruling party, then we have a "spontaneous" development which, inevitably, is an expression of bourgeois ideology. As the party represents socialist consciousness, any deviation in working class support for it simply meant that the working class was being "subordinated" to the bourgeoisie. This meant, obviously, that to "belittle" the "role" of the party by questioning its rule meant to "strengthen bourgeois ideology" and when workers spontaneously went on strike or protested against the party's rule, the party had to "combat" these strivings in order to maintain working class rule! As the "masses of the workers" cannot develop an "independent ideology," the workers are rejecting socialist ideology in favour of bourgeois ideology. The party, in order to defend the "the revolution" (even the "rule of the workers"!) has to impose its will onto the class, to "combat spontaneity."

None of the leading Bolsheviks were shy about drawing these conclusions once in power and faced with working class revolt against their rule. Indeed, they raised the idea that the "dictatorship of the proletariat" was also, in fact, the "dictatorship of the party" and integrated this into their theory of the state. Thus, Leninist ideology implies that "workers' power" exists independently of the workers. This means that the sight of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" (i.e. the Bolshevik government) repressing the proletariat is to be expected.

This elitist perspective of the party, the idea that it and it alone possesses knowledge can be seen from the resolution of the Communist International on the role of the party. It stated that "the working class without an independent political party is a body without a head." [Proceedings and Documents of the Second Congress 1920, vol. 1, p. 194] This use of biological analogies says more about Bolshevism that its authors intended. After all, it suggests a division of labour which is unchangeable. Can the hands evolve to do their own thinking? Of course not. Yet again, we have an image of the class as unthinking brute force. As the Cohen-Bendit brothers argued, the "Leninist belief that the workers cannot spontaneously go beyond the level of trade union consciousness is tantamount to beheading the proletariat, and then insinuating the Party as the head . . . Lenin was wrong, and in fact, in Russia the Party was forced to decapitate the workers' movement with the help of the political police and the Red Army under the brilliant leadership of Trotsky and Lenin." [Obsolute Communism, pp. 194-5]

As well as explaining the subsequent embrace of party dictatorship over the working class, vanguardism also explains the notorious inefficiency of Leninist parties faced with revolutionary situations. Basing themselves on the perspective that all spontaneous movements are inherently bourgeois they could not help but be opposed to autonomous class struggle and the organisations and tactics it generates. James C. Scott, in his excellent discussion of the roots and flaws in Lenin's ideas on the party, makes the obvious point that since, for Lenin, "authentic, revolutionary class consciousness could never develop autonomously within the working class, it followed that that the actual political outlook of workers was always a threat to the vanguard party." [Seeing like a State, p. 155] As Maurice Brinton argued, the "Bolshevik cadres saw their role as the leadership of the revolution. Any movement not initiated by them or independent of their control could only evoke their suspicion." These developments, of course, did not occur by chance or accidentally for "a given ideological premise (the preordained hegemony of the Party) led necessarily to certain conclusions in practice." [The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control, p. xi and p. xii]

Bakunin expressed the implications of the vanguardist perspective extremely well. It is worthwhile quoting him at length:

"Idealists of all sorts, metaphysicians, positivists, those who uphold the priority of science over life, the doctrinaire revolutionists - all of them champion with equal zeal although differing in their argumentation, the idea of the State and State power, seeing in them, quite logically from their point of view, the only salvation of society. Quite logically, I say, having taken as their basis the tenet - a fallacious tenet in our opinion - that thought is prior to life, and abstract theory is prior to social practice, and that therefore sociological science must become the starting point for social upheavals and social reconstruction - they necessarily arrived at the conclusion that since thought, theory, and science are, for the present at least, the property of only a very few people, those few should direct social life; and that on the morrow of the Revolution the new social organisation should be set up not by the free integration of workers' associations, villages, communes, and regions from below upward, conforming to the needs and instincts of the people, but solely by the dictatorial power of this learned minority, allegedly expressing the general will of the people." [The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, pp. 283-4]

The idea that "socialist consciousness" can exist independently of the working class and its struggle suggests exactly the perspective Bakunin was critiquing. For vanguardism, the abstract theory of socialism exists prior to the class struggle and exists waiting to be brought to the masses by the educated few. The net effect is, as we have argued, to lay the ground for party dictatorship. The concept is fundamentally anti-socialist, a justification for elite rule and the continuation of class society in new, party approved, ways.

[Reclaimed Dasein]

About ultra-leftism, I think that were anarchism was really successful--- in Spain in the 1930s, they weren't neglecting organization. They formed the CNT, FAI, they armed and organized workers militas. Now what is the state "armed bodies of men..." we all know what it is. Now if these anarchists took power by instituionalizing in a decentralized manner these militas, worker occupied factories, collectivized farms, which already were organized, that would have been the dictatorship of the proletariat. No real "vanguard" was needed, unless you consider the leadership of these organziations vanguards.

Now one of the reasons why leninism is dead/dying around the world is because the traditional Marxist analysis places too much emphasis on exploitation and not enough on control. By returning more to the control analysis of the anarchist and the alienation of early Marx, we can see that "state-socialism" with a coordinating class could never be the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Well I mean this is the perennial Leninist-Anarchist question, "how vanguardist must you be to ride the vanguard ride?" I want to always go back to Marx and the "material conditions." Where there's no party, no movement, no class consciousness, etc. The "vanguard" exists as that subset of people who realize they're getting fucked over and aren't happy about it. Now, what happens when you have broad socialist movements of conflicting ideologies then the necessary centralization probably should be called into question.

There might be a time where a strong Leninist style vanguard would be necessary and useful. First, that time is not now. Secondly, I want to give Lenin credit by thinking he would realize that a more flexible open party/vanguard would be what's necessary now in our material conditions, at least in the United States.

[duffers]

Guerrilla war's effective is never in question, only those who are waging it.

During the Irish War of Independence, the IRA only had 3,000 at any one time, when in contrast, the English Army would roll out 40,000. Flying columns that would hold up to 30 men, were utilised, able to move quick, disrupt the enemy with small or no losses at all, and retreat whenever the odds were getting too insurmountable. Tom Barry's 3rd West Cork Brigade were infamous for their successes. These tactics were suited to the Irish terrain, and lack of numbers and men. More crucially, the men involved would have a week's training at secret billets, and would go out and fight.

These men won this war with such tactics.

[Die Neue Zeit]

<snip>

Lenin is at pains to stress the Marxist orthodoxy of his claims and quotes the "profoundly true and important" comments of Karl Kautsky on the subject. [Op. Cit., p. 81] Kautsky, considered the "pope" of Social-Democracy, stated that it was "absolutely untrue" that "socialist consciousness" was a "necessary and direct result of the proletarian class struggle." Rather, "socialism and the class struggle arise side by side and not one out of the other . . . Modern socialist consciousness can arise only on the basis of profound scientific knowledge . . . The vehicles of science are not the proletariat, but the bourgeois intelligentsia: it was in the minds of some members of this stratum that modern socialism originated, and it was they who communicated it to the more intellectually developed proletarians who, in their turn, introduced it into the proletarian class struggle." Kautsky stressed that "socialist consciousness is something introduced into the proletarian class struggle from without." [quoted by Lenin, Op. Cit., pp. 81-2]

So Lenin, it must be stressed, was not inventing anything new here. He was simply repeating the orthodox Marxist position and, as is obvious, wholeheartedly agreed with Kautsky's pronouncements (any attempt to claim that he did not or later rejected it is nonsense).

<snip>

Consider reading Chapter 1 of Lenin Rediscovered by Lars Lih - available online courtesy of Google. Or even this:

http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/750/rediscovering.html

But more importantly, this (to get a much more informed position on vanguardism than your rant):

http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?b=60

[davidasearles]

"Vanguardist" and "vanguardism" mean nothing if those in the advance turn around and see no one following behind them.

Turn around. Honestly, what do you see?

[KurtFF8]

"Vanguardist" and "vanguardism" mean nothing if those in the advance turn around and see no one following behind them.

Turn around. Honestly, what do you see?

Well isn't that just a tautology? Of course a strategy, if failed, didn't work. If the aim of any vanguard organization is to lead the people they represent to some goal and those people don't support them, they cease to truly be a vanguard.

But the point of this thread is to point to a specific tactic (Gureilla Warfare) as it's relevant to vanguardism, and we can look at the Cuban revolution as a situation where it worked, when earlier vanguardists (I believe) weren't supportive of Guerilla Warfare.

[Cumannach]

The reason why vanguard parties are anti-socialist is simply because of the role assigned to them by Lenin, which he thought was vital...

Thanks for the excellent well written post comrade. However I have to admit I can't find much argument in it against socialism.

You say at the end that that the net effect is to lay the ground for party dictatorship- but if the party does in fact represent the interests of the working class - and given that it's ascent to power was on the back of the the working class, as they smashed the power of the bourgeoisie, there's a good chance they do- what argument is there against it? Is it a fetish for elections? As long as the party uses it's power for the greatest benefit of society- where is the sin in it's dictatorship?

Apologies if I have misunderstood part of your post, but as regards the discussion of "socialist conscioussness" and the idea of Lenin to 'inject it' into the proletariat as you said, my understanding was that Lenin's point was to educate the working class in their class role, in the structure of the political economy, in the general progression of economic history and classes and in their exact historical role as a revolutionary class.

This theory that Lenin sought to inform the workers of was 'scientific Socialism'/'Marxism'.

I think Lenin never thought of the proletariat as ignorant brutes, as incapable of forming a socialist consciousness, in the sense of their position in relation to their bosses, the factory owners, their natural antagonism to them, the injustice of their exploitation and such, which ideas they naturally formed out of their experience.

But, say the Socialists, being working men, they did not have the time to make scientific studies, to, spend time learning theory and history and raising organization and agitation to it's highest possible efficiency through study and practised theory. In short, the exploitation of the proletariat did somewhat limit their capacity to fashion the most effective tools of class struggle, as it limited their whole lives, though they were conscious of struggle and engaged in it. This is not elitism, it is a consequence of the conditions of exploitation.

Lenin sought to provide these tools the better to give socialism the chance of succeeding. You can argue that it is convenient, it placed great power in the hands of the party, but did the party use this power to benefit the revolution and for the good of the working class-and did the working class use the party power thus? Did this party political power actually function as an effective tool in the revolutionary struggle and in the construction of socialism? If it did, then talk of dictatorship, of authoritarianism, of totalitarian power or of elite hierarchies is irrelevant. The aim is not elections- the aim is socialism- the ordering of society for the greatest benefit of the greatest number of it’s members.
Maybe I am mistaken on the last part, discussing what Bakunin said. As far as scientific Socialism being in existence independently of the working class;

“… taken as their basis the tenet - a fallacious tenet in our opinion - that thought is prior to life, and abstract theory is prior to social practice, and that therefore sociological science must become the starting point for social upheavals and social reconstruction…” – Bakunin

The basis of Marxism is historical materialism which argues that ideas arise from material conditions, that life is prior to thought. This is why the scientific Socialists will say, Marxism did not arise under Ancient Rome or Feudal France, but in Bourgeois Germany and England where a working class existed. Marxism therefore did not at all arise independently of the working class, but as a direct consequence of that class’s existence.

Finally, if party power and party dictatorship served the working class in it’s overthrow of capitalism, why would it not be a useful – even an essential tool in constructing socialism and defending against and repressing capitalism?

edit; sorry about the format can't fix it

[redguard2009]

The problem with the (illogical) stance against vanguardism and the importance of a worker's party in heading the advancement towards socialist revolution is that a headless body, while perfectly capable of generating powerful momentum, is ultimately a victim of it headless character and can easily be manipulated in one way or another, or scattered entirely.

The examples of the Congo and Bolivia are good ones in this case, from a negative perspective. In both situations the role of guerilla resistence was coupled with relative lack of vanguardism -- there was a critical and substantial distinction between the political work of the communist parties and organizations and the military work of the revolutionary armed forces. In both cases the lack of political organization and lack of subordination to it from the military cadres led to a complete breakdown of military capacity as various warlords, leaders and cadres found it nearly impossible for any coherent, co-operative action. Inparticular in the Congo (which I know more about than Bolivia), Che talked at length about the complete inability of native Congolese military leaders to trust one another let alone co-operate extensively, and it was even more problematic when attempting to co-ordinate various other national groups (the Rwandans and Cubans).

This is in stark contrast to other, more militarily effective guerilla campaigns in which a unified, coherent, centralized vanguardist party was in effect in control of the armed forces; the political aims of the proletarian revolution guiding the activities of the mobilized armed masses. This is actually one of the important aspects of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and one which seperates it from Guevarism (a more independant revolutionary armed force). From China to Peru, Nepal, the Philippines, India, etc, it was paramount that the political work of the party supercede the military work of the army. Though some of these have failed (Peru, primarily), this was mainly due to successful enemy action and not self-destruction which has plagued many vanguardists and Guevarists.

The point is that guerilla resistence can usually only be successful if it is properly managed by vanguardist principles, and vanguardist principles are required in order to establish a coherent all-encompassing revolutionary strategy to bring down the ruling class. It simply can not, and has not, worked any other way.

[PoWR]

Comrades who are sincerely interested in this question should take a look at "Che Guevara and the Coming World Revolution" by Rico Dean which is available to read on the PoWR site and for sale on Workers Press and Amazon.com

[Armand Iskra]

A vanguard party, and its armed wing must have mass support, especially in conducting a revolution; as what Mao said that:
"Fish can't leave the water nor melons leave no vine, the revolutionary masses cannot live without the communist party."

And in handling an armed wing, the vanguard party must have a proper management since they are conducting an armed resistance. The new people's army, for example was founded by a group of armed members, defected from the old people's liberation army to join into the reestablished communist party of the philippines, which most of the members were from the old Philippine communist party; upon analyzing it, the party needs an army while the army needs a political party; and thus to keep it, there must be a centralized and proper management, being a vanguard of the resistance against the rotten system and its cohorts.

[davidasearles]

"Some have claimed that Guerilla warfare is an ineffective way of organizing class conflict in favor of the working class."

Organizing class conflict in favor of the working class?
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Do you really think that would be effective use of "class conscious" resources?

Or is it that you are simply a paid agent provocatuer with limited imagination.

[iraqnevercalledmenigger]

The reason why vanguard parties are anti-socialist is simply because of the role assigned to them by Lenin, which he thought was vital. Simply put, without the party, no revolution would be possible. As Lenin put it in 1900, "[i]solated from Social-Democracy, the working class movement becomes petty and inevitably becomes bourgeois." [Collected Works, vol. 4, p. 368] In What is to be Done?, he expands on this position:

"Class political consciousness can be brought to the workers only from without, that is, only outside of the economic struggle, outside the sphere of relations between workers and employers. The sphere from which alone it is possible to obtain this knowledge is the sphere of relationships between all the various classes and strata and the state and the government - the sphere of the interrelations between all the various classes." [Essential Works of Lenin, p. 112]

Thus the role of the party is to inject socialist politics into a class incapable of developing them itself.

Lenin is at pains to stress the Marxist orthodoxy of his claims and quotes the "profoundly true and important" comments of Karl Kautsky on the subject. [Op. Cit., p. 81] Kautsky, considered the "pope" of Social-Democracy, stated that it was "absolutely untrue" that "socialist consciousness" was a "necessary and direct result of the proletarian class struggle." Rather, "socialism and the class struggle arise side by side and not one out of the other . . . Modern socialist consciousness can arise only on the basis of profound scientific knowledge . . . The vehicles of science are not the proletariat, but the bourgeois intelligentsia: it was in the minds of some members of this stratum that modern socialism originated, and it was they who communicated it to the more intellectually developed proletarians who, in their turn, introduced it into the proletarian class struggle." Kautsky stressed that "socialist consciousness is something introduced into the proletarian class struggle from without." [quoted by Lenin, Op. Cit., pp. 81-2]

So Lenin, it must be stressed, was not inventing anything new here. He was simply repeating the orthodox Marxist position and, as is obvious, wholeheartedly agreed with Kautsky's pronouncements (any attempt to claim that he did not or later rejected it is nonsense). Lenin, with his usual modesty, claimed to speak on behalf of the workers when he wrote that "intellectuals must talk to us, and tell us more about what we do not know and what we can never learn from our factory and 'economic' experience, that is, you must give us political knowledge." [Op. Cit., p. 108] Thus we have Lenin painting a picture of a working class incapable of developing "political knowledge" or "socialist consciousness" by its own efforts and so is reliant on members of the party, themselves either radical elements of the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie or educated by them, to provide it with such knowledge.

The obvious implication of this argument is that the working class cannot liberate itself by its own efforts. Without the radical bourgeois to provide the working class with "socialist" ideas, a socialist movement, let alone society, is impossible. If the working class cannot develop its own political theory by its own efforts then it cannot conceive of transforming society and, at best, can see only the need to work within capitalism for reforms to improve its position in society. A class whose members cannot develop political knowledge by its own actions cannot emancipate itself. It is, by necessity, dependent on others to shape and form its movements. To quote Trotsky's telling analogy on the respective roles of party and class, leaders and led:

"Without a guiding organisation, the energy of the masses would dissipate like steam not enclosed in a piston. But nevertheless, what moves things is not the piston or the box, but the steam." [History of the Russian Revolution, vol. 1, p. 17]

While Trotsky's mechanistic analogy may be considered as somewhat crude, it does expose the underlying assumptions of Bolshevism. After all, did not Lenin argue that the working class could not develop "socialist consciousness" by themselves and that it had to be introduced from without? How can you expect steam to create a piston? You cannot. Thus we have a blind, elemental force incapable of conscious thought being guided by a creation of science, the piston (which, of course, is a product of the work of the "vehicles of science," namely the bourgeois intelligentsia). In the Leninist perspective, if revolutions are the locomotives of history (to use Marx's words) then the masses are the steam, the party the locomotive and the leaders the train driver. The idea of a future society being constructed democratically from below by the workers themselves rather than through periodically elected leaders seems to have passed Bolshevism past. This is unsurprising, given that the Bolsheviks saw the workers in terms of blindly moving steam in a box, something incapable of being creative unless an outside force gave them direction (instructions).

Libertarian socialist Cornelius Castoriadis provides a good critique of the implications of the Leninist position:

"No positive content, nothing new capable of providing the foundation for the reconstruction of society could arise out of a mere awareness of poverty. From the experience of life under capitalism the proletariat could derive no new principles either for organising this new society or for orientating it in another direction. Under such conditions, the proletarian revolution becomes . . . a simple reflex revolt against hunger. It is impossible to see how socialist society could ever be the result of such a reflex . . . Their situation forces them to suffer the consequences of capitalism's contradictions, but in no way does it lead them to discover its causes. An acquaintance with these causes comes not from experiencing the production process but from theoretical knowledge . . . This knowledge may be accessible to individual workers, but not to the proletariat qua proletariat. Driven by its revolt against poverty, but incapable of self-direction since its experiences does not give it a privileged viewpoint on reality, the proletariat according to this outlook, can only be an infantry in the service of a general staff of specialists. These specialists know (from considerations that the proletariat as such does not have access to) what is going wrong with present-day society and how it must be modified. The traditional view of the economy and its revolutionary perspective can only found, and actually throughout history has only founded, a bureaucratic politics . . . [W]hat we have outlined are the consequences that follow objectively from this theory. And they have been affirmed in an ever clearer fashion within the actual historical movement of Marxism, culminating in Stalinism." [Social and Political Writings, vol. 2, pp. 257-8]

Thus we have a privileged position for the party and a perspective which can (and did) justify party dictatorship over the proletariat. Given the perspective that the working class cannot formulate its own "ideology" by its own efforts, of its incapacity to move beyond "trade union consciousness" independently of the party, the clear implication is that the party could in no way be bound by the predominant views of the working class. As the party embodies "socialist consciousness" (and this arises outside the working class and its struggles) then opposition of the working class to the party signifies a failure of the class to resist alien influences. As Lenin put it:

"Since there can be no talk of an independent ideology being developed by the masses of the workers in the process of their movement, the only choice is: either bourgeois or socialist ideology. There is no middle course . . . Hence, to belittle socialist ideology in any way, to deviate from it in the slightest degree means strengthening bourgeois ideology. There is a lot of talk about spontaneity, but the spontaneous development of the labour movement leads to its becoming subordinated to bourgeois ideology . . . Hence our task, the task of Social-Democracy, is to combat spontaneity, to divert the labour movement from its spontaneous, trade unionist striving to go under the wing of the bourgeoisie, and to bring it under the wing of revolutionary Social-Democracy." [Op. Cit., pp. 82-3]

The implications of this argument became clear once the Bolsheviks seized power. As a justification for party dictatorship, you would be hard pressed to find any better. If the working class revolts against the ruling party, then we have a "spontaneous" development which, inevitably, is an expression of bourgeois ideology. As the party represents socialist consciousness, any deviation in working class support for it simply meant that the working class was being "subordinated" to the bourgeoisie. This meant, obviously, that to "belittle" the "role" of the party by questioning its rule meant to "strengthen bourgeois ideology" and when workers spontaneously went on strike or protested against the party's rule, the party had to "combat" these strivings in order to maintain working class rule! As the "masses of the workers" cannot develop an "independent ideology," the workers are rejecting socialist ideology in favour of bourgeois ideology. The party, in order to defend the "the revolution" (even the "rule of the workers"!) has to impose its will onto the class, to "combat spontaneity."

None of the leading Bolsheviks were shy about drawing these conclusions once in power and faced with working class revolt against their rule. Indeed, they raised the idea that the "dictatorship of the proletariat" was also, in fact, the "dictatorship of the party" and integrated this into their theory of the state. Thus, Leninist ideology implies that "workers' power" exists independently of the workers. This means that the sight of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" (i.e. the Bolshevik government) repressing the proletariat is to be expected.

This elitist perspective of the party, the idea that it and it alone possesses knowledge can be seen from the resolution of the Communist International on the role of the party. It stated that "the working class without an independent political party is a body without a head." [Proceedings and Documents of the Second Congress 1920, vol. 1, p. 194] This use of biological analogies says more about Bolshevism that its authors intended. After all, it suggests a division of labour which is unchangeable. Can the hands evolve to do their own thinking? Of course not. Yet again, we have an image of the class as unthinking brute force. As the Cohen-Bendit brothers argued, the "Leninist belief that the workers cannot spontaneously go beyond the level of trade union consciousness is tantamount to beheading the proletariat, and then insinuating the Party as the head . . . Lenin was wrong, and in fact, in Russia the Party was forced to decapitate the workers' movement with the help of the political police and the Red Army under the brilliant leadership of Trotsky and Lenin." [Obsolute Communism, pp. 194-5]

As well as explaining the subsequent embrace of party dictatorship over the working class, vanguardism also explains the notorious inefficiency of Leninist parties faced with revolutionary situations. Basing themselves on the perspective that all spontaneous movements are inherently bourgeois they could not help but be opposed to autonomous class struggle and the organisations and tactics it generates. James C. Scott, in his excellent discussion of the roots and flaws in Lenin's ideas on the party, makes the obvious point that since, for Lenin, "authentic, revolutionary class consciousness could never develop autonomously within the working class, it followed that that the actual political outlook of workers was always a threat to the vanguard party." [Seeing like a State, p. 155] As Maurice Brinton argued, the "Bolshevik cadres saw their role as the leadership of the revolution. Any movement not initiated by them or independent of their control could only evoke their suspicion." These developments, of course, did not occur by chance or accidentally for "a given ideological premise (the preordained hegemony of the Party) led necessarily to certain conclusions in practice." [The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control, p. xi and p. xii]

Bakunin expressed the implications of the vanguardist perspective extremely well. It is worthwhile quoting him at length:

"Idealists of all sorts, metaphysicians, positivists, those who uphold the priority of science over life, the doctrinaire revolutionists - all of them champion with equal zeal although differing in their argumentation, the idea of the State and State power, seeing in them, quite logically from their point of view, the only salvation of society. Quite logically, I say, having taken as their basis the tenet - a fallacious tenet in our opinion - that thought is prior to life, and abstract theory is prior to social practice, and that therefore sociological science must become the starting point for social upheavals and social reconstruction - they necessarily arrived at the conclusion that since thought, theory, and science are, for the present at least, the property of only a very few people, those few should direct social life; and that on the morrow of the Revolution the new social organisation should be set up not by the free integration of workers' associations, villages, communes, and regions from below upward, conforming to the needs and instincts of the people, but solely by the dictatorial power of this learned minority, allegedly expressing the general will of the people." [The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, pp. 283-4]

The idea that "socialist consciousness" can exist independently of the working class and its struggle suggests exactly the perspective Bakunin was critiquing. For vanguardism, the abstract theory of socialism exists prior to the class struggle and exists waiting to be brought to the masses by the educated few. The net effect is, as we have argued, to lay the ground for party dictatorship. The concept is fundamentally anti-socialist, a justification for elite rule and the continuation of class society in new, party approved, ways.


This is a misrepresentation of Lenin's historical position given his later attitudes as informed by the 1905 and 1917 revolutions. For example:

" At every step the workers come face to face with their main enemy — the capitalist class. In combat with this enemy the worker becomes a socialist, comes to realize the necessity of a complete reconstruction of the whole of society, the complete abolition of all poverty and oppression." ("The Lessons of the Revolution," Collected Works, Volume 16, page 302.)

[davidasearles]

"Class political consciousness can be brought to the workers only from without, that is, only outside of the economic struggle, outside the sphere of relations between workers and employers. The sphere from which alone it is possible to obtain this knowledge is the sphere of relationships between all the various classes and strata and the state and the government - the sphere of the interrelations between all the various classes." [Essential Works of Lenin, p. 112]

Thus the role of the party is to inject socialist politics into a class incapable of developing them itself.


What a crock. You just don't want to acknowledge its existence. It will be the politics of the workers from precisely what they (we) have learned in wage slave university (plus a few tid bits that we may have picked up in highschools here and there) that will make the revolution.