On Vanguard Parties

By Alex

However necessary a vanguard party is, the Left as a whole is currently confused and disoriented because not only is there no vanguard, but the whole idea of a vanguard has become muddled and distorted by the degeneration of the workers’ state in the USSR and the flat-out non-existence of the workers’ state in other “communist” nations.

The massive amount of misconceptions that came out of the October Revolution of 1917 will be difficult to clear up, but it is possible.

Unfortunately, the main reason those misconceptions have NOT been cleared up at this point is because of the countless cult-like organization where Marxism and Leninism have been converted into a sort of religion. These groups denounce the failures of the USSR and other regimes on the surface, yet they turn around and throw phrases at us like “democratic centralism” and “dictatorship of the proletariat” without understanding what those phrases actually mean.

These organizations claim to support democracy and genuine workers’ rule, but when asked the tough questions like “will one party hold a monopoly over political power?” they cannot answer! When asked about the need for the entire working class to have CONCRETE democratic rights of free speech and organization, they cannot answer! When asked about whether the workers will have direct control over their vanguard organization, they will not answer!

This is extremely confusing for people on the Left and it has led to the complete theoretical bankruptcy of nearly all 21st century “Marxist” thought.

We have to be clear that classes are led by parties. I believe that history has demonstrated that a vanguard party in some form will be a necessary tool in mobilizing the masses.

However, if we want to create a successful vanguard capable of mobilizing the masses and ending bourgeois rule, I believe there are several things that have to be done:

1. This organization must implement the principle of COMPLETE TRANSPARENCY. Workers need to be able to see what goes on behind the curtain and provide input, or else it’s not really their organization is it?

2. We must dare to talk about our goal. We must make clear that workers’ rule WILL NOT look like the degenerated police state of the USSR. Further, we must also drive home that even workers’ rule is not our ultimate goal. Stateless, classless society with peace and abundance is our long-term goal, with the necessary precursor of workers’ rule as a short-term goal.

3. We must make clear that in a post-revolutionary situation, the vanguard party CANNOT be the ruling party. If there is one party that maintains a monopoly over political power, it must suppress all that oppose it to maintain this position. This includes the suppression of those who expose the possible corruption, hypocrisy, and degeneration that may exist within the party. Thus, a monolithic party-state will lead to degeneration (this is what has happened every time to date) and is contradictory to the concept of workers’ rule.

4. Above all, we have to be clear that workers will have concrete democratic rights of free speech under workers’ rule.

We have to be sure not to separate democratic rights from popular support, however. Revolutions like the Hungarian revolution ultimately failed because the revolution did not have popular support.

If the vanguard party does not have the popular support of the masses before and after the revolution, it cannot allow democratic rights of free speech and organization because the unhappy population will go along with anyone who opposes the vanguard, and thus the bourgeoisie will be able to manipulate the masses and retake power.

However, workers’ rule will be suffocated and in its place will arise a corrupt bureaucracy if such democratic rights of free speech do not exist.

So, we had damn well better make sure that the vanguard party has the support of the masses.

Many Leftist organizations insist that one party (the “real” Marxist party) will have to maintain a monopoly over political power because they are the only “real” representatives of the class, and that socialism cannot afford “breaks in the ranks.”

But if the “real” Marxist party has the popular support of the masses, it will not need to suppress democratic rights, and thus, workers will be able to expose any potential corruption from within the party and deal with it. In short, workers’ rule will be successful.

Further, the key to gaining the popular support of the masses is to assure them that true workers’ rule will not have to suppress democratic rights. So it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy: if we gain popular support, workers will have democratic rights of free speech and workers’ rule will be successful; if we assure the masses that they will have democratic rights and workers’ rule will be successful, we will have popular support.

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Appendix A: On Centralism

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One of the reasons for the rejection of the concept of a vanguard party is that it has a tendency, many claim, to become a corrupt group of elitists who do not really represent the class. They assert that such a party is naturally undemocratic. It is true that vanguard parties in the past have has this problem, but this is no reason to reject the entire notion of a vanguard party. The Left in a state of confusion and disarray, and a vanguard in some form will be a very usefull and, I believe, necessary tool in organizing the masses. Unfortunately, this issue is not being resolved because of the prethera of “Marxist-Leninist” groups that continue to assert that centralism is a necessary feature of a vanguard party in the 21st century.

Lenin’s ideal vanguard organization was one that would have been completely transparent, where the “entire political arena is as open to the public view as is a theatre stage to the audience.” In this way, elitism and corruption that could emerge in the party would be exposed, and the masses would be able to assert genuine control over the vanguard organization. In short, transparency would allow such a party to belong to the working class.

However, the implementation in Russia was quite different. The extremely harsh political conditions led Lenin to believe that the vanguard would need a more centralized and secretive structure. Members of the party had to distribute pamphlets and newspapers in secret, as they were illegal, and they often had to avoid Russia’s secret police. Further, such a centralized structure can be useful in terms of military effectiveness, as it was understood that in Russia, such military discipline would be necessary in order to effectively confront the powerful Czarist regime.

The first thing we have to understand is that this centralized structure comes with a fairly large number of problems. Centralization and secresy, which was intended to keep the Russian government “out of the loop,” in many cases kept the workers “out of the loop” as well. And organization can also be so secretive that members of the party don’t know what’s going on. Although this ensures that no one will leak any information, it can lead to huge misunderstandings in a time when clarity is needed. Moreover, if the workers cannot see what goes on behind the curtain, corruption, hypocrisy, elitism, etc. can all go unchecked.

The second thing we have to realize is that the centralization of the vanguard party in Russia was a measure designed for Russia specifically. Russia was an extremely backward society. It is wrong to believe that such measures will be necessary in a stable, modern society like the United States, for example. And the risks of centralism today far outweigh its benefits.

It is necessary for vanguard organizations in the 21st century to adopt a much more transparent program similar to that which was advocated initially by Lenin in “What is to be Done?” The workers must be able to see what goes on behind or else it’s not really their organization.

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Appendix B: What about counter-revolutionaries?

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This came up in a discussion when I mentioned that the vanguard party cannot be the ruling party:

>not necessarily. The revolution may need to defend itself and thus need to
>defend the workers. a party of opposition may be to the state a party of counter-
>revolution.

Indeed. But first of all, it is not practical or necessary to suppress such parties for this reason:

The authority to decide what is acceptable, healthy, or unhealthy in culture must be given to the working class and not a centralized point of control.

Frank (founder of the CVO and a proponent of single-party rule) argues:

> To even gain power and therefore have democratic rights
> like freedom of speech the proletariat is going to have
> to deny such freedoms to others.

This is simply not true. In capitalist nations, the bourgeoisie firmly hold power, but the workers still have democratic rights of free speech even though what they say goes against the very existence of the bourgeoisie [this is why we are able to have this discussion :)]. But no one who truly understands how our society works would say that the workers rule.

Similarly, the democratic rights of those who oppose workers’ rule will not need to be suppressed for the workers to rule.

Secondly, if the vanguard party has the popular support of the masses, it will have nothing to fear from allowing democratic rights. Specific, corrupt individuals may have something to fear from it, but workers’ rule, as a whole, will have nothing to fear. On the contrary, workers’ rule NEEDS these democratic rights.

Further still, there is a major difference between closing a bourgeois TV station that exploits its workers and limiting the ability of people to organize in the streets and distribute leaflets, etc. The first would be completely acceptable. But the second is extremely dangerous and such suppression has led to the degeneration of every single workers’ state to date.

The fetish with centralized control over politics and economy that has infected a large portion of the Left comes from a misunderstanding of what happened in the USSR. The suppression of democratic rights in the USSR didn’t start with Stalin. It started with Lenin. But the fundamental difference between these two people was that Lenin made clear that the limitations on democratic rights and the merger between party and state were temporary emergency measures. Lenin knew it was a gamble but in Russia there were two options: a) Hand over power to the bourgeoisie, or b) temporarily suppress democratic rights to allow the Bolsheviks time to repair the shattered economy, so that there might be a chance that workers’ rule would be possible in the future.

But Lenin was incapacitated and Stalin took over. Stalin turned these temporary emergency measures into supposedly necessary and essential features of socialism. And although most organizations on the Left denounce the Stalin of the 1930s that murdered a huge portion of the working class, they do not denounce the early Stalin that asserted that the suppression of democratic rights was essential to socialism. And this is where the Left is crippled theoretically.

It is completely backward to assume that such measures, which were recognized by Lenin to be temporary emergency measures that were necessary specifically in Russia, will be necessary in a stable modern society.

In fact, such suppression will not only be dangerous to the emergence of genuine workers’ rule, but it will be detrimental to the economy. Suppression of democratic rights will necessarily mean the censorship of the internet to some extent. And since so much of the economy has gone digital, this will mean that limiting the internet will cripple a modern economy’s ability to function and sustain itself. One only has to look at China to discover the impracticality of censoring democratic rights.

In short, we need new paradigms that apply to modern societies like the ones in which we currently live and are applicable to the 21st century. And to be able to mobilize the masses and guide them to victory, political organizations will have to make this point clear; they will have to physically go out an tell people that complete democratic rights will be essential to workers’ rule, instead of just “implying” it the same evasive way that people use to justify the corrupt Soviet and Chinese regimes. Because without doing this, the masses will remain confused and will be turned off by the increasing cultishness of mainstream Leftist organizations.

The party can lead the class, but the party is not the class. If one party rules, the class does not. It doesn’t get much simpler than that.

“The proletariat cannot achieve the socialist revolution unless it is prepared for this task by the struggle for democracy; victorious socialism cannot retain its victory and lead humanity to the stage when the state withers away unless it establishes complete democracy.” — V.I. Lenin