A vanguard party is a political party at the forefront of a mass action, movement, or revolution. The idea of a vanguard party has its origins in the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The concept is most well known for being put into practice by the Bolshevik Party in Russia.
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In the Chapter II: Proletarians and Communists of the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels outline the role of a communist party as a proletarian vanguard party:
- 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.
As he surveyed the European milieu in the late 1890s, Lenin found several problems with the Marxism of his day. Contrary to what Karl Marx had predicted, capitalism had strengthened in the last third of the 19th century. In Western Europe, the working class had become poorer, rather than becoming progressive, thinking people, as Marx had predicted. Hence, the workers and their labour unions, although continuing to agitate for better wages and working conditions, failed to develop the revolutionary class consciousness that Marx had predicted. To that, Lenin argued that the division of labour in a capitalist society prevented the emergence of a proletarian class consciousness, because the workers had to work ten-to-twelve-hour workdays in a factory, and so had no time to learn the philosophic complexities of Marxist theory. Finally, in trying to effect revolution in Tsarist Imperial Russia, Lenin faced 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 the Tsar agreed to the formation of a national duma — the Okhrana, the Tsarist police, suppressed every political group seeking social and political changes, including those with a democratic program.
Based on his observations, Lenin argued that an organisation was necessary to lead the most class conscious section of the working class to political coherence. Amidst a period of increased class struggle, in the polemic pamphlet What Is to Be Done? (1902), Lenin said against the "economist" trend of socialism, which proposed that solely demanding economic improvements was sufficient for the working class to develop a revolutionary consciousness, that the "history of all countries bears out the fact that through their own powers alone, the working class can develop only a trade-union consciousness". That history had demonstrated that under reformist trade-union leadership, the working class could engage only in local, spontaneous workers' rebellions to improve its political position within the capitalist system, but that revolutionary consciousness developed unevenly. Nonetheless, optimistic about the proletariat's ability to acquire class consciousness, Lenin argued that the only missing component for escalating the class struggle was a political organisation that could relate to the radicalism of the most militant section — the vanguard — of the working class with the aim of winning greater numbers of workers away from their reformist, trade-union leaders.
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 bourgeois intelligentsia, 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.
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 combat the Okhrana secret police; however, at its core, the Bolshevik Party was an exceptionally flexible organisation who pragmatically adapted policy to changing political situations. After the Revolution of 1905, Lenin proposed that the Bolshevik Party "open its gates" to the militant working class, who were rapidly becoming political radicals, in order for the Party to become a mass-action political party with genuine roots in the working class movement.
In the 20th century, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) continued regarding itself as the institutionalization 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 character" to the struggle of the Soviet people for the victory of Communism.
Nonetheless, the political role 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 worldwide permanent revolution, proposed that a vanguard party must be an international political party who organised the most militant activists of the working classes of the countries of the world. Although the Fourth International faded from the public upon the death Trotsky, there continued some efforts to revive the concept of an international vanguard party.
Although Lenin developed the term and it is used to describe Marxist Leninist parties, the term is also sometimes used for some Islamist parties. Islamist writers Abul Ala Maududi and Sayyid Qutb both urged the formation of an Islamic vanguard to restore Islamic society. Qutb talked of an Islamist vanguard in his book Ma'alim fi al-Tariq (Milestones)[1] and Maududi formed an Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami[2] whose goal was to establish an ideological state, administered for God solely by Muslims "whose whole life is devoted to the observance and enforcement" of Islamic law. The party members formed an elite group (called arkan) with "affiliates" (mutaffiq) and then "sympathisers" (hamdard) beneath them.[2] Another elite or vanguard Islamist party is Hizb ut-Tahrir, which seeks to take power for a pan-Islamic state not by a vanguard-led armed struggle, but by a Coup d'état. The party seeks to obtains "support from army generals, leaders, and other influential figures or bodies to facilitate the change of the government."[3]
This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the Library of Congress Country Studies. "A Country Study: Soviet Union (Former).". http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/cshome.html. Retrieved 2006-12-04.