Revolutionary vanguard
A Revolutionary vanguard movement, revolutionary vanguard party, vanguard movement, vanguard party, revolutionary vanguard, or sometimes simply vanguard refers to the problem in Marxist doctrine of governing after violent revolution is achieved. While it takes years of ideological indoctrination, training and agitation to overthrow the existing government and social order, the objective can be achieved in a moment. At that point Socialists are faced with the practical realities of governing. There is a tendency to rest on one's laurels after victory, and a danger of taking on the characteristics of the former regime that led to discontent, sparked the revolution, and was overthrown.
Stagnation and corruption will ensure unless "revolutionary fervor," class hatred, and bigotry become institutionalized in the new Socialist regime party and bureaucracy.
Origins of term
Lenin's ideological contribution was to make the Communist party itself the exclusive "vanguard of the proletariat" and thus the final arbiter of what was proletarian or bourgeois.[1] In Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder[2] written in 1920, Lenin discovered his earlier account of the workers' consciousness was too optimistic. Workers are not only indifferent to revolution, they oppose it. To some extent the workers are positively "reactionary." Two stubborn obstacles remain: "force of habit," the powerful attachment to "the forces and traditions of the old society," and "small-scale production," which continues "spontaneously and on a mass scale." Lenin calls "habit", using a Marxian term, "bourgeois passions," the inclination of people to acquire, love, and defend what is their own to the exclusion of others in the community. Springing from and reinforcing this "force of habit in millions and tens of millions" are "millions upon millions of petty proprietors" and "small commodity producers" whose private mode of production continues to foster the non-socialist habits that stand in the way of transition to communism. Since the workers and the rest of the people "can (and must) be remodeled and re-educated only by very prolonged, slow, cautious organizational work" the party must continue to rule dictatorially on behalf of the workers just as it earlier took the lead in making the revolution. This process will take "very many years." The "proletarian vanguard," Lenin admits, is the Politburo of the party, consisting of Lenin and a handful of close colleagues.[3]
References
- ↑ Revelations from the Russian Archives, Attacks on Intelligentsia: Suppressing Dissidents, Library of Congress Exhibit. Retrieved March 18, 2010.
- ↑ V. I. Lenin, "Left-Wing" Communism, An Infantile Disorder (1920) V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, English edition, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1952, Vol. II, Part 2.
- ↑ Marx and Lenin, Thomas G. West, The Claremont Institute, Posted on October 10, 2006. Retrieved March 18, 2010.
