Vanguardism, in the context of Leninistrevolutionary struggle, relates to a strategy whereby the most class-conscious and politically "advanced" sections of the proletariat or working class, described as the revolutionary vanguard, form organizations to advance the objectives of communism. They take actions to draw larger sections of the working class toward revolutionary politics and to serve as manifestations of proletarian political power opposed to the bourgeoisie. This theory serves as the underpinning of the leading role of the Communist party, usually enshrined in the constitution, after the seizure of power in the state by Communists.
Vladimir Lenin popularised political vanguardism as conceptualised by Karl Kautsky, detailing his thoughts in one of his earlier works, What is to be done?.[1] Lenin argued that Marxism's complexity and the hostility of the establishment (the autocratic, semi-feudal state of Imperial Russia) required that a close-knit group of individuals pulled from the working class vanguard to safeguard the revolutionary ideology within the particular circumstances presented by the Tsarist régime (Russian Empire) at the time. While Lenin wished for a revolutionary organisation akin to the contemporary Social Democratic Party of Germany, which was open to the people and more democratic in organisation, the Russian autocracy prevented this.[2][3]
Leninists argue that Lenin's ideal vanguard party would have open membership: "The members of the Party are they who accept the principles of the Party program and render the Party all possible support."[4] This party could be completely transparent, at least internally: the "entire political arena is as open to the public view as is a theatre stage to the audience".[5] A party that supposedly implemented democracy to such an extent that "the general control (in the literal sense of the term) exercised over every party man in the politics brings into existence an automatically operating mechanism which produces what in biology is called the "survival of the fittest"". The party would be completely open while educating the proletariat to remove the false consciousness that had been instilled in them.[5]
In its first phase, the vanguard party would exist for two reasons. Firstly, it would protect Marxism from outside corruption from other ideas, as well as advance its plans. Secondly, it would educate the proletariat in Marxism in order to cleanse them of their "false individual consciousness" and instill the revolutionary "class consciousness" in them.
Our task is not to champion the degrading of the revolutionary to the level of an amateur, but to raise the amateurs to the level of revolutionaries.[5]
If the party is successful in their goal, on the eve of revolution, a critical mass of the working class population would be prepared to usher forth the transformation of society. Furthermore, a great number of them, namely their most dedicated members, would belong to the party cadres as professional revolutionaries, and would be elected to leadership positions by the mass party membership. Thus the organisation would quickly include the entire working class.[5]
A vanguard party is a political party at the fore of a population-wide political movement and of a revolution. In the praxis of revolutionary political science the vanguard party was composed of professional revolutionaries, first effected by the Bolshevik Party in the Russian Revolution of 1917. Lenin, the first leader of the Bolsheviks, coined the term vanguard party, and argued that such a party was necessary in order to provide the practical and political leadership that would impel the proletariat to achieve a communist revolution. Hence, as a political-science term, vanguard party most often is associated with Leninism; however, similar ideas (under different names) also are present in other revolutionary ideologies.
Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx presented the concept of the vanguard party as solely qualified to politically lead the proletariat in revolution; in Chapter II: "Proletarians and Communists" of The Communist Manifesto (1848), they said:
The Communists, therefore, are, on the one hand, practically the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the lines of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement. The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties: Formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.
According to Lenin, the purpose of the vanguard party is to establish a dictatorship of the proletariat; a rule of the working class. The change of ruling class, from the bourgeoisie to the proletariat, makes possible the full development of society. In early 20th-century Russia, Lenin argued that the vanguard party would lead the revolution to depose the incumbent Tsarist government, and transfer government power to the working class.[6] In the pamphlet What is to be Done? (1902), Lenin said that a revolutionary vanguard party, mostly recruited from the working class, should lead the political campaign, because it was the only way that the proletariat could successfully achieve a revolution; unlike the economist campaign of trade union struggle advocated by other socialist political parties and later by the anarcho-syndicalists. Like Karl Marx, Lenin distinguished between the two aspects of a revolution, the economic campaign (labour strikes for increased wages and work concessions), which featured diffused leadership; and the political campaign (socialist changes to society), which featured the decisive revolutionary leadership of the Bolshevik vanguard party.
As he surveyed the European milieu in the late 1890s, Lenin found several theoretic problems with the Marxism of the late 19th century. Contrary to what Karl Marx had predicted, capitalism had become stronger in the last third of the 19th century. In Western Europe, the working class had become poorer; the workers and their trade unions, although they had continued to militate for better wages and working conditions, had failed to develop a revolutionary class consciousness, as predicted by Marx. To explain that undeveloped political awareness, Lenin said that the division of labour in a bourgeois capitalist society prevented the emergence of a proletarian class consciousness, because of the ten-to-twelve-hour workdays that the workers laboured in factories, which left them no time to learn and apply the philosophic complexities of Marxist theory. Finally, in trying to effect a revolution in Tsarist Imperial Russia (1721–1917), Lenin knew the problem of an autocratic régime that had outlawed almost all political activity. Although the Tsarist autocracy could not enforce a ban on political ideas, until 1905—when Tsar Nicholas II (ruled 1894–1917) agreed to the formation of a national duma—the Okhrana, the Tsarist secret police, suppressed every political group seeking social and political changes, including those with a democratic program. To counter such political conditions, Lenin said that a professional revolutionary organisation was necessary to organise and lead the most class-conscious workers into a politically cohesive movement. Concerning the Russian class struggle, in the book What Is to Be Done? (1902), against the "economist" trend of the socialist parties (who proposed that the working class would develop a revolutionary consciousness from demanding solely economic improvements), Lenin said that the "history of all countries bears out that, through their own powers alone, the working class can develop only a trade-union consciousness"; and that under reformist, trade-union leadership, the working class could only engage spontaneous local rebellions to improve their political position within the capitalist system, and that revolutionary consciousness developed unevenly. Nonetheless, optimistic about the working class's ability to develop a revolutionary class consciousness, Lenin said that the missing element for escalating the class struggle to revolution was a political organisation that could relate to the radicalism of political vanguard of the working class, who then would attract many workers from the middling ranks of the reformist leaders of the trade unions.
It is often believed that Lenin thought the bearers of class consciousness were the common intellectuals who made it their vocation to conspire against the capitalist system, educate the public in revolutionary theory, and prepare the workers for the proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat that would follow. Yet, unlike his Menshevik rivals, Lenin distinguished himself by his hostility towards the bourgeoisintelligentsia, and was routinely criticised for placing too much trust in the intellectual ability of the working class to transform society through its own political struggles.[citation needed]
Like other political organisations that sought to change Imperial Russian society, Lenin's Bolshevik Party resorted to conspiracy, and operated in the political underground. Against Tsarist repression, Lenin argued for the necessity of confining membership to people who were professionally trained to overthrow the Okhrana;[citation needed] however, at its core, the Bolshevik Party was an exceptionally flexible organisation who pragmatically adapted policy to changing political situations.[citation needed] After the Revolution of 1905, Lenin proposed that the Bolshevik Party "open its gates" to the unhappiest of the working class, who were rapidly becoming political radicals, in order for the Party to become a mass political party with genuine roots in the working class movement.[citation needed]
The notion of a 'vanguard', as used by Lenin before 1917, did not necessarily imply single-party rule. Lenin considered the Social-Democrats (Bolsheviks) the leading elements of a multi-class (and multi-party) democratic struggle against Tsarism.[7] For a period after the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks (now renamed the Communist Party) operated in the soviets, trade unions, and other working-class mass organisations with other revolutionary parties, such as Mensheviks, Social-Revolutionaries and anarcho-communists, and local soviets often elected non-Bolshevik majorities.[8] Lenin did consider the Bolsheviks the vanguard insofar as they were the most consistent defenders of Soviet power (which he considered the dictatorship of the proletariat or 'Commune-state').[9] However, the situation changed drastically during the Russian Civil War and economic collapse, which decimated the working class and its independent institutions, and saw the development of irreconcilable conflicts between the Bolsheviks and their rivals. At the 10th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in 1921, the Party made the de facto reality de jure by outlawing opposition parties and formalising single-Party rule.[10]
The impetus for having a vanguard party was used by the Bolsheviks to justify their suppression of other parties. Their rationale was that since they were the vanguard of the proletariat, their right to rule could not be legitimately questioned.[citation needed] Hence, opposition parties could not be permitted to exist. From 1936 onward, Communist-inspired state constitutions enshrined the "father your own family and let your families live in a nation with society" rubric by giving the Communist parties formal leadership in society—a provision that was interpreted to either ban other parties altogether or force them to accept the Communists' guaranteed right to rule as a condition of being allowed to exist as an alternative party.
In the 20th century, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) continued regarding itself as the institutionalisation of Marxist–Leninist political consciousness in the Soviet Union; therein lay the justification for its political control of Soviet society. Article 6 of the 1977 Soviet Constitution refers to the CPSU as the "leading and guiding force of Soviet society, and the nucleus of its political system, of all state organizations and public organizations". The CPSU, precisely because it was the bearer of Marxist–Leninist ideology, determined the general development of society, directed domestic and foreign policy, and "imparts a planned, systematic, and theoretically substantiated virtuosity" to the struggle of the Soviet people for the victory of communism.
Nonetheless, the politics of the vanguard party, as outlined by Lenin, is disputed among the contemporary communist movement. Lenin's contemporary in the Bolshevik Party, Leon Trotsky, further developed and established the vanguard party with the creation of the Fourth International. Trotsky, who believed in permanent revolution, proposed that a vanguard party must be an international political party.[citation needed]
Frankfurt School
For some in the Frankfurt School, the lumpenproletariat (underclass) have the potential to be vanguardists in the revolution. They argue this underclass has the potential to change the status quo because they are excluded from it and survive largely outside of the capitalist system. Marx viewed the lumpenproletariat with suspicion and as a reserve army of labour with a primarily counter-revolutionary character unlike the industrial proletariat, whose role in production led Marx see them as the primary agents of change. For some in the Frankfurt School, the lumpenproletariat existing outside the capitalist production process gives them the unique ability to attack the capitalist system from outside which other revolutionary elements can not.[11]
Other uses
Although Lenin honed the idea in terms of a class leadership forged out of a proletarian vanguard specifically to describe Marxist–Leninist parties,[12] the term is also used for many kinds of movement shaping themselves as initially guided by a small elite. Theodor Herzl, the theorist of Zionism, believed legitimation from the majority would only hinder from the outset his movement and therefore advised that "we cannot all be of one mind; the gestor will therefore simply take the leadership into his hands and march in the van."
Herzl's principle antedated by some years the Leninist idea of Bolshevism as the vanguard of the revolution by characterizing the "Zionist movement as a vanguard of the Jewish people."[13]The Youth Guard at the forefront of Zionist mobilization in the Yishuv likewise conceived of itself as a revolutionary vanguard,[14] and the kibbutz movement itself is said to have thought of itself as a 'selfless vanguard'.[15] It is occasionally used with of certain Islamist parties. Writers Abul Ala Maududi and Sayyid Qutb both urged the formation of an Islamic vanguard to restore Islamic society. Qutb discussed of an Islamist vanguard in his book Ma'alim fi al-Tariq (Milestones)[16] and Maududi formed the radical Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami[17] in Pakistan whose goal was to establish a pan-Ummah worldwide Islamist ideological state starting from Pakistan, administered for God (Allah) solely by Muslims "whose whole life is devoted to the observance and enforcement" of Islamic law (Shari'ah), leading to the world becoming the House of Islam. The party members formed an elite group (called arkan) with "affiliates" (mutaffiq) and then "sympathizers" (hamdard) beneath them.[17] Today, the Jamaat-e-Islami has spread wings to other South Asian countries with large Muslim populations, such as Afghanistan, Bangladesh and India. The literature of the Baháʼí Faith also frequently refers to those serving to raise the capacities of communities around the world as the "vanguard" of the Cause of Baha'u'llah[18]
According to Roger Eatwell, some fascist parties have also operated in ways similar to the concept of a vanguard party.[19]
Leninism is a political ideology developed by Russian Marxist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin that proposes the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat led by a revolutionary vanguard party as the political prelude to the establishment of communism. Lenin's ideological contributions to the Marxist ideology relate to his theories on the party, imperialism, the state, and revolution. The function of the Leninist vanguard party is to provide the working classes with the political consciousness and revolutionary leadership necessary to depose capitalism.
Marxism–Leninism is a communist ideology that became the largest faction of the communist movement in the world in the years following the October Revolution. It was the predominant ideology of most communist governments throughout the 20th century. It was developed in Russia by Joseph Stalin and drew on elements of Bolshevism, orthodox Marxism, and Leninism. It was the state ideology of the Soviet Union, Soviet satellite states in the Eastern Bloc, and various countries in the Non-Aligned Movement and Third World during the Cold War, as well as the Communist International after Bolshevization.
A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term "communist party" was popularized by the title of The Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. As a vanguard party, the communist party guides the political education and development of the working class (proletariat). As a ruling party, the communist party exercises power through the dictatorship of the proletariat. Vladimir Lenin developed the idea of the communist party as the revolutionary vanguard, when the socialist movement in Imperial Russia was divided into ideologically opposed factions, the Bolshevik faction and the Menshevik faction. To be politically effective, Lenin proposed a small vanguard party managed with democratic centralism which allowed the centralized command of a disciplined cadre of professional revolutionaries. Once a policy was agreed upon, realizing political goals required every Bolshevik's total commitment to the agreed-upon policy.
Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Russian revolutionary and intellectual Leon Trotsky along with some other members of the Left Opposition and the Fourth International. Trotsky described himself as an orthodox Marxist, a revolutionary Marxist, and a Bolshevik–Leninist as well as a follower of Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Vladimir Lenin, Karl Liebknecht, and Rosa Luxemburg.
Bolshevism is a revolutionary socialist current of Soviet Leninist and later Marxist–Leninist political thought and political regime associated with the formation of a rigidly centralized, cohesive and disciplined party of social revolution, focused on overthrowing the existing capitalist state system, seizing power and establishing the "dictatorship of the proletariat".
Council communism or Councilism is a current of communist thought that emerged in the 1920s. Inspired by the November Revolution, council communism was opposed to state socialism and advocated workers' councils and council democracy. It is regarded as being strongest in Germany and the Netherlands during the 1920s.
The State and the Revolution: The Marxist Doctrine of the State and the Tasks of the Proletariat in the Revolution (1917) is a book by Vladimir Lenin describing the role of the state in society, the necessity of proletarian revolution, and the theoretic inadequacies of social democracy in achieving revolution to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as "historical materialism," to understand class relations and social conflict. It also uses a dialectical perspective to view social transformation. Marxism originates from the works of 19th-century German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marxism has developed over time into various branches and schools of thought, As a result, there is no single, definitive Marxist theory. Marxism has had a profound impact in shaping the modern world, with various left-wing and far-left political movements taking inspiration from it in varying local contexts.
In Marxist theory, a new democratic society will arise through the organised actions of an international working class, enfranchising the entire population and freeing up humans to act without being bound by the labour market. There would be little, if any, need for a state, the goal of which was to enforce the alienation of labor; as such, the state would eventually wither away as its conditions of existence disappear. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels stated in The Communist Manifesto and later works that "the first step in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle for democracy" and universal suffrage, being "one of the first and most important tasks of the militant proletariat". As Marx wrote in his Critique of the Gotha Program, "between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat". He allowed for the possibility of peaceful transition in some countries with strong democratic institutional structures, but suggested that in other countries in which workers can not "attain their goal by peaceful means" the "lever of our revolution must be force", stating that the working people had the right to revolt if they were denied political expression. In response to the question "What will be the course of this revolution?" in Principles of Communism, Friedrich Engels wrote:
Above all, it will establish a democratic constitution, and through this, the direct or indirect dominance of the proletariat.
Communism is a left-wing to far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered around common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange that allocates products to everyone in the society based on need. A communist society would entail the absence of private property and social classes, and ultimately money and the state.
Before the perestroika Soviet era reforms of Gorbachev that promoted Eurocommunism, the formal ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) was Marxism–Leninism, a form of socialism consisting of a centralised command economy with a vanguardist one-party state that aimed to realize the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Soviet Union's ideological commitment to achieving communism included the national communist development of socialism in one country and peaceful coexistence with capitalist countries while engaging in anti-imperialism to defend the international proletariat, combat the predominant prevailing global system of capitalism and promote the goals of Russian Communism. The state ideology of the Soviet Union—and thus Marxism–Leninism—derived and developed from the theories, policies and political praxis of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin.
Marxism is a method of socioeconomic analysis that originates in the works of 19th century German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marxism analyzes and critiques the development of class society and especially of capitalism as well as the role of class struggles in systemic, economic, social and political change. It frames capitalism through a paradigm of exploitation and analyzes class relations and social conflict using a materialist interpretation of historical development – materialist in the sense that the politics and ideas of an epoch are determined by the way in which material production is carried on.
Left communism, or the communist left, is a position held by the left wing of communism, which criticises the political ideas and practices espoused by Marxist–Leninists and social democrats. Left communists assert positions which they regard as more authentically Marxist than the views of Marxism–Leninism espoused by the Communist International after its Bolshevization by Joseph Stalin and during its second congress.
Revolutionary socialism is a political philosophy, doctrine, and tradition within socialism that stresses the idea that a social revolution is necessary to bring about structural changes in society. More specifically, it is the view that revolution is a necessary precondition for transitioning from a capitalist to a socialist mode of production. Revolution is not necessarily defined as a violent insurrection; it is defined as a seizure of political power by mass movements of the working class so that the state is directly controlled or abolished by the working class as opposed to the capitalist class and its interests.
In Marxist philosophy, the dictatorship of the proletariat is a condition in which the proletariat, or working class, holds control over state power. The dictatorship of the proletariat is the transitional phase from a capitalist and a communist economy, whereby the post-revolutionary state seizes the means of production, mandates the implementation of direct elections on behalf of and within the confines of the ruling proletarian state party, and institutes elected delegates into representative workers' councils that nationalise ownership of the means of production from private to collective ownership. During this phase, the administrative organizational structure of the party is to be largely determined by the need for it to govern firmly and wield state power to prevent counterrevolution, and to facilitate the transition to a lasting communist society.
Orthodox Marxism is the body of Marxist thought which emerged after the death of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the late 19th century, expressed in its primary form by Karl Kautsky. Kautsky's views of Marxism dominated the European Marxist movement for two decades, and orthodox Marxism was the official philosophy of the majority of the socialist movement as represented in the Second International until the First World War in 1914, whose outbreak caused Kautsky's influence to wane and brought to prominence the orthodoxy of Vladimir Lenin. Orthodox Marxism aimed to simplify, codify and systematize Marxist method and theory by clarifying perceived ambiguities and contradictions in classical Marxism. It overlaps significantly with Instrumental Marxism.
A socialist state, socialist republic, or socialist country, sometimes referred to as a workers' state or workers' republic, is a sovereign state constitutionally dedicated to the establishment of socialism. The term communist state is often used synonymously in the West, specifically when referring to one-party socialist states governed by Marxist–Leninist communist parties, despite these countries being officially socialist states in the process of building socialism and progressing toward a communist society. These countries never describe themselves as communist nor as having implemented a communist society. Additionally, a number of countries that are multi-party capitalist states make references to socialism in their constitutions, in most cases alluding to the building of a socialist society, naming socialism, claiming to be a socialist state, or including the term people's republic or socialist republic in their country's full name, although this does not necessarily reflect the structure and development paths of these countries' political and economic systems. Currently, these countries include Algeria, Bangladesh, Guyana, India, Nepal, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka and Tanzania.
Proletarian internationalism, sometimes referred to as international socialism, is the perception of all proletarian revolutions as being part of a single global class struggle rather than separate localized events. It is based on the theory that capitalism is a world-system and therefore the working classes of all nations must act in concert if they are to replace it with communism.
Permanent revolution is the strategy of a revolutionary class pursuing its own interests independently and without compromise or alliance with opposing sections of society. As a term within Marxist theory, it was first coined by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels as early as 1850, but since then it has been used to refer to different concepts by different theorists, most notably Leon Trotsky.
A proletarian revolution or proletariat revolution is a social revolution in which the working class attempts to overthrow the bourgeoisie and change the previous political system. Proletarian revolutions are generally advocated by socialists, communists and anarchists.
Forster, Merlin H. and K. David Jackson, compilers. Vanguardism in Latin American Literature: An Annotated Bibliographic Guide. Bibliographies and Indexes in World Literature Series. 232 pages. Greenwood Press, May 23, 1990. ISBN0-313-24861-3.
Maerhofer, John. 2009. Rethinking the Vanguard: Aesthetic and Political Positions in the Modernist Debate, 1917–1962. New Castle: Cambridge Scholars Press. ISBN1-4438-1135-1
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