Vanguardism Puns

I'm a Marxist-Leninist for full disclosure.

Because political consciousness doesn't naturally develop evenly across the population, because co-ordination without hierarchy is especially difficult, and because the bourgeois state has immense control over society's propaganda apparatus, you need a disciplined, well-organized, well coordinated group of people with a shared political line seeking to elevate the political consciousness of the masses and lead the revolutionary struggle.

Discipline, coordination, organization, and shared political lines aren't necessarily in contradiction with anarchism, though (none of these elements necessitate hierarchy, though it's undoubtedly easier to meet these criteria in hierarchical organizations, hence the Leninist "party of a new type" being designed as a way to streamline these faculties in Marxist organizations).

This is emphasized in the Makhnovist conceptualization of platformism, which basically attempts to create anarchist vanguards based on the practical experience, successes, and failures of anarchists during the Russian Civil War.

As we all know, Yun Jin’s performance in The Divine Damsel of Devastation was wonderful. Nonetheless, why was the music in it so different from the traditional Chinese opera music? Im not complaining, but it sure was interesting to listen to drums and an electric guitar in an opera. Now, I have a theory regarding why this may be…

As some of us know, because of Yun Jin’s lore and voicelines, that she is quite fond of Xinyan as a person and a musician. Yun Jin has said that “rock n’ roll vibrates with vigor” and finds herself very happy while listening to it. The elders of the Yun Opera, unfortunately, don’t agree with the existence of Rock n’ Roll nor with the friendship between the two musicians. They have repeteadly scolded Yun Jin multiple times for getting entangled with “such an individual”. Nonetheless, through some witty deception and an agreement with one of the few (if not the only) musically-liberal elders of the Yun Opera, Xinyan and Yun Jin have managed to maintain their friendship and visit each other quite often.

Was this friendship be the start of a new movement of opera, which combines the instrumentalities of Rock n’ Roll and the singing of traditional Chinese opera? Apparently, this friendship gave birth to (in my opinion) one of the most particularly enjoyable genres of music ever shown in videogames.

This was a comment I wrote a while back in response to an anarchist comrade who was moving toward Marxist Leninism. They mentioned the Black Panthers as a ML group that most anarchists like, hence me bringing them up in the second paragraph. I'm posting it here because I'm proud of it and want to be able to link to it in future discussions.

I agree that anarchists often throw the baby out with the bathwater with Marxist-Leninism. Just because my ultimate goal isn't to recreate the Soviet Union, doesn't mean that the Soviet Union doesn't have lessons to teach us about what can be achieved, about where the problems of socialism end and the problems of state power begin, etc.

The Panthers' centralization was a big part of their downfall. First off, highly centralized organizations are vulnerable to repression and infiltration. But they are also inflexible. People on the ground always know more than people in a city far away, and the further your implementation is from the origin of the idea (spatially, temporally, etc.) the more likely it that something will get lost in translation.

Like, let's say I'm the General Secretary of The American Communist Party and I've just won the civil war, and now I'm committed to stamping out racism, sexism, and homophobia. I figure people in my party share my values, so I sign some edicts saying that Party Members are to audit churches and seize the assets of churches they deem to be advancing oppression.

That'll be setting off alarm bells in most contemporary leftists' brains because despite being something a noble (albeit naïve) leader could enact, the reality is that not all party members are going to be committed true believers, and party members are not immune to corruption or bias.

In this situation, I can easily imagine white party members wielding the edict specifically against predominantly Black churches or against religious minorities. This is a bit of a heavy handed example, but centralized political repression is vulnerable to abuse and corruption.

Not everyone in your movement is a true believer, nor are they perfect, so you have to build your structures in such a way that you can release an abuser into them, and the amount of damage they can do is limited.

A lot of the Little Red Book talks about how impossibly virtuous party members must be for the party to work, and I just don't think that in a countr

TL;DR What are the key BMA positions we need to acquire? Please DM me if you feel public comments below are high risk, but please comment if you have sent me a message so that it helps with community engagement.

I've been a member of the BMA since I began my medical career. That said, I will confess I'm not a very good member. I mainly joined for union protection reasons, not because I believed the BMA would bring about significant change as I had already been jaded about this.
Reading into the politics and nature of power, I have come to believe that Vanguardism is the best approach, and this is something that sharkdick and the jduk community has also come to and are now running with.
With that said, strategy is important. We will have to focus down the nodes of control and gates that we shall have to keep within the BMA if we go about actually redirecting it in the direction we'd like it to go. I'll delete this post eventually, but now is a good time to crowdsource information whilst the subreddit is private.
As I've not been a very involved member, the inner workings of the BMA are not something that I understand very keenly.
What, are these positions? Which committees, which seats, which forums etc hold power within the BMA? Those are where we should focus our aims and resources.
Sincerely,
Vagus

Hi Junior Doctors UK,

Between the BMA being filled with "gunners" who want to cv-points their way into prestige, "true-believers" who's first priority is the NHS as an abstraction above doctors as a group, "single issuers" who have a specific cause they are aiming to change within the framework of the BMA, and "isolated optimists" who want to improve doctors conditions but have no allies, I feel like the BMA is a largely lost cause when it comes to further improving conditions, pay and clarity around the role and responsibilities that encompass "Doctors". I assert this because due to the mix of the above, the organisation is fundamentally rendered inert and not a threat to those who prevent the changes from happening.

Taking lessons from history, from elite theorists, from figures in history who attained power to enact change (use your imagination, but this applies to all sides of the political spectrum) I have come to the conclusion that there is only one solution left.

Vanguardism.

We need a hard core, die hard group of members who will achieve positions within the BMA for the purposes of taking it over and specifically enacting a unified and focused vision. This would require long term vision and promise of collaboration for a specific set of aims that have yet to be agreed. It also requires geographic spread, and the aggressive and unashamed policing from outside influence as soon as the group is formed.

Personally, I have been very cynical and disaffected when it comes to the BMA from long before now, but I think this is a possible route to creating an organised response that actually has a chance of success. Waiting for spontaneous action at the grassroots isn't enough. If you would like a recent example to picture (political affiliation not withstanding, I mean from a power analysis point of view) look at momentum's takeover over the labour party from the blairite and brownite factions. They took key positions first, then used mass power afterwards to turf out the old guard.

My question to JDUK is what should that vision be? I propose it's limited to 10 bullet points maximum, as a starting point for discussion.

TL;DR BMA is a crowbar for change with people refusing to wield it, we need to change the people holding it.

I think I am questioning the viability of grassroots socialism, similar to the governments in Rojava and Chiapas, since they are able to fare off well, mainly due to either cooperation with the state or ceasefires. If this is the case, is it possible that a grassroots socialism will appear on a small scale in the USA before the state control is seized by a vanguard party?

So, I’m trying to generally get a better understanding on Marxist-Leninist beliefs, so I thought this would be the best place to ask for people’s general opinions and ideas on the topic.

As I understand it, Vanguardism is the belief that a small core section of the most class-conscious and politically advanced members of the working class, fighting to safeguard the revolutionary cause, taking more authoritarian control of the initial revolutionary and post-revolutionary period. This is done in order to prevent counter-revolutionaries and outside capitalist influence from immediately reforming and quashing the workers again.

Personally, with how I understand it, I worry that this can lead to an abuse of power happening when the Capitalists can infiltrate anyway, and I’d be generally against the level of power consolidation as I’d be quite a big believer in decentralization, but I clearly see the issue this is trying to address.

Is this understanding correct, or do you have a different one? Furthermore, do you support this idea, and if so, why?

Thanks in advance for any answers, they’re greatly appreciated.

I was reading an anarchist anti-vanguard text and wondered what Marxists thoughts on this are and how you can justify believing in a vanguard party.

Essentially, the article says that by seizing the means of production from the state, the vanguard is becoming the state and will slowly stop caring about socialism, but rather about the party staying in power. It says that the only way to achieve communism is by everyone doing actions that will help communism to materialise (eg, unionising, striking, etc.).

Do you as Marxists believe in a Vanguard party (or is it only Marxist-Leninists) and if so how do you argue against this.

Thx, Much love

Just like it says in the title, vanguard-style socialism results in fragmentation of what should've been a a unified anti-capitalist front by all extant socialist states. When there's more than one vanguard the two or more vanguards will begin to argue with each other and insist that they are the one true vanguard that demands all other vanguards subordinate themselves to it. Those that cannot strike out on their own fall in line and those that can will do so and split apart.

That's why the Third International became nothing more than instrument of Soviet foreign policy, a means by which the supreme vanguard that is the CPSU would control the nascent revolutionary vanguards of other socialist movement in capitalist nations. This has led on its surface to one bad decision after another being imposed on national-level International-affiliated socialist organizations, from the September 1922 Uprising in Bulgaria which was a horrific failure for the unprepared communists in the country to the "social fascism" miscalculation which saw Hitler win against a divided leftist field in Germany that otherwise would've commanded a decisive plurality in the Reichstag and block Hitler from seizing power, a decision from which the international over-course corrected into supporting the Popular Front strategy in France and Spain to mixed results. The Third International would ultimately meet an ignoble end at the hands of Stalin's realpolitiking since he decided that it was more important not to risk the alliance of convenience with the UK than it was to have the means to co-ordinate the international proletariat, ironically giving Trotsky and his followers the opening to repeatedly fail to make a Fourth International (no seriously, look up how many "Fourth Internationals" there are).

And that's just the pre-WWII and WWII events. After World War II Stalin and Mao's intolerance of any vanguard that isn't 100% like them and refuses to fall in line resulted in the Tito-Soviet and Sino-Soviet splits, the former leading the charge in creating the Non-Aligned Movement, the epitome of the "both sides are bad" mentality and the latter giving the capitalist world all the cheep industrial manufacturing it could ever ask for, likely staving off catastrophic economic collapse in the capitalist bloc in the process since China literally had nowhere else to go.

The reason why I'm bringing this up is because if we're going to attempt to build an international anti-capitalist movement,

The four principles of Platformism is

1. Ideological unity

2. Tactical unity

3. Collective responsibility

4. Federalism

Idk about you but that sounds very authoritarian to me, like these are rules that need enforcement and therefore authority making it not anarchist. Can someone explain to me how Platformism works in practice, what does collective responsibility mean and how is it done? How do they ensure ideological unity? And finally what is your personal opinion on Platformism?

Independently of wether you are in favour of Vanguardism or not, do you have any criticisms that can be used to better future socialist movements?

Idealistically I am a Marxist, usually using the term "Luxembourgism" to describe my ideology. Since I admit that Rosa Luxembourg is my favourite Marxist philosopher, you can imagine that I have my biases against Vanguardism, but I am interested in learning more.

I am at a crossroads. To me, the very concept of the revolution being run and controlled by a vanguard party acting as the representative of the greater working class, then making up the transitionary committee is at a direct contradiction to the concept of the working class freeing themselves and controlling themselves. The vanguard become the new ruling class, and then oppress the former oppresseors, which is only doomed to cause a huge counter-revolution, especially at this time in the US where the military and even private contracting armies far out-gun any revolutionary power. Can someone clear up this for me, and how a revolution would work now with a highly advanced nation as the US that is also split highly in opinion of the working, and has spent so much time on propaganda against communism and the capital accumulation has reached Astronomical heights

I am aware of the existence of libertarian communists, council coms, and such but did Marx support a vanguard party ? Or did such a concept even exits before communists like Marx existed ?

I feel like with the usage of unions and dual power structures, they can be organized in a syndicalist format so that the present heirarchies are flattened as much as possible, but at the same time there are still vanguard organizations dedicated to guiding the revolution and protecting against counter-revolution. I would like to hear opinions from both sides on this.

I know that obviously ‘What is to be Done’ is considered a key example of Vanguardism, but can Lenin be considered the founder of Vanguard thought?

I believe that Anarchy could be combined with a sort of Vanguard system. For example, the government has been abolished, however, we need somebody to run the military parts, economy and so forth, can we elect them democratically where the people still have more power over the leader but, he shall complete tasks the people cannot complete.

Hello everyone,

I just wanted to ask a quick question. What was Trotsky's view on the concept of the vanguard party? Did he agree with the concept of an advanced detachment of the working class etc?

Thanks in advance for any responses.

To me it seems like history shows that vanguardism is a great risk to take in order to create a worker's democracy. Its been acknowledged in representative democracies that there needs to be a power distribution amongst the people and the leaders in order to keep abuse from happening. Historically however, when the workers have shared their collective strength with a vanguard party, they've generally been treated disproportionate to the power they gave the vanguard. The workers have, that I know of, been punished for discriminating the power when the workers feel like the vanguard i not representing their particular interests (see the level of censorship in countries with Liberal vs Marxist backgrounds). An argument of "manufactured consent in liberalism" can be made here, though censorship, which has been prevalent in vanguardism states, is just another tool to create consent by misinforming the workers.

Vanguardism has always resulted in authoritarian states that tell the workers what socialism is. It has in my opinion been shown to protect the socialism its leaders propose, and oppose criticism which they themselves deem inappropriate, not what the workers deem so. This likely has to do with the idea of educating the working class, instead of learning from it.

In my opinion, I think that instead of vanguarding and teaching workers, we need to learn from the workers and put the collective in the front with educated socialists being simply spokespersons. There needs to be a power distribution from the leaders to the workers from the start, else it'll be like putting faith in hoping for the goodwill of politicians, even if socialist.

So, I use the term 'militant vanguardism' to refer to an explictly leftist military or paramilitary formation that largely leaves communities its captured self-governing. An example of this might include the EZLN. Essentially, a hierarchical military creating and guarding self-governing communities.

So, what are the potential benefits and flaws of this approach?

I was wondering if I could get some info from the anarchist community here on what vanguardism is from an anarchist perspective?

For reference, my current understanding of Vanguardism is the ML Communist Vanguard, i.e. a political elite or centralized polity meant to in some way guide the working class away from capitalism via top-down revolutionary action.

But as i've done the rounds i've noticed another representation of the term used by Communists seeking to distance themselves from Marxism-Leninism: that being the use of the state by an organized working class in a DOTP to facilitate a revolutionary transition.

I've even seen the Makhnovists called vanguardist?

So, from the anarchist perspective, is Vanguardism just the use of the state to facilitate a socialist revolution in some way? i.e. would say, using an industrial union to get local politicians elected to control local government be vanguardist and thus something anarchism would seek to avoid?

What's the leftcom/ultraleft view on the vanguard or syndycalism as means of organizing the revolution?

Also how should the socialist revolution start/organize according to leftcom doctrine?

Thanks!