The notion of a vanguard is not a notion of a political elite, though it can decay into one, but rather it is a notion of a highly developed strata of professional revolutionaries who guide the proletariat simply because of the fact that they had better access to political education. Sometimes this is described as "the most advanced section of the proletariat" but we often find not merely highly educated and motivated proletarians in the vanguard, but also plenty of bourgeois class traitors in (Engels), class traitors from the nobility (Felix Dzerzhinsky, Zhou Enlai) peasants (Lenin, Mao), the child of a plantation owner (Castro), and petty bourgeoisie (Marx himself, at least the young Marx, before his exile and relative poverty and England).
In the 19th century and early 20th century, this vanguard naturally contained many class traitors, since political education was rarely extended to the working class. Marx had maids, even in his apartment in London, and Lenin employed housekeepers even in his exile to a cabin in Siberia. This was a group of unusually educated professional revolutionaries who did so much reading, so much writing, so much public speaking, and attended so many meetings, that they did not have time to cook their own meals, do their own laundry, wash their own dishes, and could not have done so even if they wanted to. They needed help with basic domestic tasks from the very workers they wanted to liberate.
Today it is different. The worker can listen to the entire Marxist-Leninist canon as audiobooks while attending to the menial tasks which occupy daily life, both at work and at home. The worker can publish their thoughts to a site such as this easily, without needing access to a publishing company or a printing press. A worker can attend a party meeting in the form of a video call, while driving. This enables the worker to be every bit as involved in the theoretical half of the class struggle (reading theory, writing theory, speaking publicly, attending meetings) as they already were in the practical half of the class struggle (working, striking, fighting, dying). This calls into question whether the vanguard is the individual in a suit sitting in an office publishing theses against bourgeois rivals while servants bring tea and warm meals, or whether the vanguard is the individual who listens to Marx and Lenin while washing dishes.
19 posts and 3 image replies omitted.>>2701160There’s not gonna be an alternative when nukes fly and the entire population of the global south is forced northward and oil runs out
>>2700837Marx and Engels were never the vanguard, and as far as Lenin and the other key figures of the RSDLP who lived in exile, they were not even close to the whole vanguard. The real vanguard was sleeping on the floor of poor workers' homes while organizing study circles among factory workers. They were smuggling literature, setting up clandestine printing presses piece by piece, forging documents to get comrades across state lines or out of prison, etc. I agree broadly though that in the modern day we don't need saviors from a higher class, since literacy is widespread. Just from the more educated, literate, and politically lucky among the working class. All of the past revolutions can be thought of as nationalist first and communist second. The only one that doesn't fit this mold so well is the Russian revolution, but if you look from the point of view of the soldiers calling for peace before they're wiped out and peace is settled by terms set by Germany, and the bourgeoisie was calling for Germany to come save them from revolution, and even the bourgeoisie were attempting to kill the bourgeois revolution and were against a republic, it makes more sense that while the previously small and relatively junior bolsheviks did take the reins of the situation, the people who gave them their power, the soldiers, peasants, and workers, were not communist first.
>>2700882The coming communist sneakernet will be glorious and unstoppable
>>2700895The guy who got kicked in the head by a horse is the vanguard if he picks up a gun. You're conflating the ideological leadership with the vanguard as a whole.
>" Specifically, I wholly agree with you that special stress should be laid on the tasks connected with the work on an all-Russian scale and with the work of the Party as a whole; in your draft this is expressed in Clause One, which reads: “The newspaper Iskra, which has permanent correspondents among the workers and close contact with the work within the organisation, is the leading centre of the Party (and not only of a committee or a district).” I should merely like to remark that the newspaper can and shoPost too long. Click here to view the full text. >>2701393communism isnt an ideology
>All of the past revolutions can be thought of as nationalist first and communist secondlol yeah i "can" also "think of" things as something entirely different, wouldnt change the actual reality of it though
>The only one that doesn't fit this mold so well is the Russian revolutionoh you mean the only one that led to an actual DOTP? interesting!
>>2700837The future vanguard party is going to be a Twitter or Discord GC and I'm all for it except for hoping Discord dies