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H.5 What is vanguardism and why do anarchists reject it?

Many socialists follow the ideas of Lenin and, in particular, his ideas on vanguard parties. These ideas were expounded by Lenin in his (in)famous work, What is to be Done?, which is considered as one of the important books in the development of Bolshevism.

The core of these ideas is the concept of "vanguardism," or the "vanguard party." According to this perspective, socialists need to organise together in a party, based on the principles of "democratic centralism," which aims to gain a decisive influence in the class struggle. The ultimate aim of such a party is revolution and its seizure of power. Its short term aim is to gather into it all "class conscious" workers into a "efficient" and "effective" party, alongside members of other classes who consider themselves as revolutionary Marxists. The party would be strictly centralised, with all members expected to submit to party decisions, speak in one voice and act in one way. Without this "vanguard," injecting its politics into the working class (who, it is argued, can only reach trade union consciousness by its own efforts), a revolution is impossible.

Lenin laid the foundation of this kind of party in his book What is to be Done? and the vision of the "vanguard" party was explicitly formalised in the Communist International. As Lenin put it, "Bolshevism has created the ideological and tactical foundations of a Third International . . . Bolshevism can serve as a model of tactics for all." [Collected Works, vol. 28, p. 292-3] Using the Russian Communist Party as its model, Bolshevik ideas on party organisation were raised as a model for revolutionaries across the world. Since then, the various followers of Leninism and its offshoots like Trotskyism have organised themselves in this manner (with varying success).

The wisdom of applying an organisational model that had been developed in the semi-feudal conditions of Tsarist Russia to every country, regardless of its level of development, has been questioned by anarchists from the start. After all, could it not be wiser to build upon the revolutionary tendencies which had developed in specific countries rather than import a new model which had been created for, and shaped by, radically different social, political and economic conditions? The wisdom of applying the vanguard model is not questioned on these (essentially materialist) points by those who subscribe to it. While revolutionary workers in the advanced capitalist nations subscribed to anarchist and syndicalist ideas, this tradition is rejected in favour of one developed by, in the main, bourgeois intellectuals in a nation which was still primarily feudal and absolutist. The lessons learned from years of struggle in actual capitalist societies were simply rejected in favour of those from a party operating under Tsarism. While most supporters of vanguardism will admit that conditions now are different than in Tsarist Russia, they still subscribe to organisational method developed in that context and justify it, ironically enough, because of its "success" in the totally different conditions that prevailed in Russia in the early 20th Century! And Leninists claim to be materialists! Perhaps the reason why Bolshevism rejected the materialist approach was because most of the revolutionary movements in advanced capitalist countries were explicitly anti-parliamentarian, direct actionist, decentralist, federalist and influenced by libertarian ideas? This materialist analysis was a key aspect of the council-communist critique of Lenin's Left-Wing Communism, for example (see Herman Gorter's Open Letter to Comrade Lenin for one excellent reply to Bolshevik arguments, tactics and assumptions).

However, this attempt to squeeze every working class movement into one "officially approved" model dates back to Marx and Engels. Faced with any working class movement which did not subscribe to their vision of what they should be doing (namely organised in political parties to take part in "political action," i.e. standing in bourgeois elections) they simply labelled it as the product of non-proletarian "sects." They went so far as to gerrymander the 1872 conference of the First International to make acceptance of "political action" mandatory on all sections in an attempt to destroy anarchist influence in it.

So this section of our FAQ will explain why anarchists reject this model. In our view, the whole concept of a "vanguard party" is fundamentally anti-socialist. Rather than present an effective and efficient means of achieving revolution, the Leninist model is elitist, hierarchical and highly inefficient in achieving a socialist society. At best, these parties play a harmful effect in the class struggle by alienating activists and militants with their organisational principles and manipulative tactics within popular structures and groups. At worse, these parties can seize power and create a new form of class society (a state capitalist one) in which the working class is oppressed by new bosses (namely, the party hierarchy and its appointees). As we discuss in section H.5.9, their "efficiency" is a false economy.

However, before discussing why anarchists reject "vanguardism" we need to stress a few points. Firstly, anarchists recognise the obvious fact that the working class is divided in terms of political consciousness. Secondly, from this fact most anarchists recognise the need to organise together to spread our ideas as well as taking part in, influencing and learning from the class struggle. As such, anarchists have long been aware of the need for revolutionaries to organise as revolutionaries. Thirdly, anarchists are well aware of the importance of revolutionary minorities playing an inspiring and "leading" role in the class struggle. We do not reject the need for revolutionaries to "give a lead" in struggles, we reject the idea of institutionalised leadership and the creation of a leader/led hierarchy implicit (and sometimes no so implicit) in vanguardism.

As such, we do not oppose "vanguardism" for these reasons. So when Leninists like Tony Cliff argue that it is "unevenness in the class [which] makes the party necessary," anarchists reply that "unevenness in the class" makes it essential that revolutionaries organise together to influence the class but that organisation does not and need not take the form of a vanguard party. [Tony Cliff, Lenin, vol. 2, p. 149] This is because we reject the concept and practice for three reasons.

Firstly, and most importantly, anarchists reject the underlying assumption of vanguardism. As we discuss in the next section, vanguardism is based on the argument that "socialist consciousness" has to be introduced into the working class from outside. We argue that not only is this position is empirically false, it is fundamentally anti-socialist in nature. This is because it logically denies that the emancipation of the working class is the task of the working class itself. Moreover, it serves to justify elite rule. Some Leninists, embarrassed by the obvious anti-socialist nature of this concept, try and argue that Lenin (and so Leninism) does not hold this position. As we prove in section H.5.4, such claims are false.

Secondly, there is the question of organisational structure. Vanguard parties are based on the principle of "democratic centralism" (see section H.5.5). Anarchists argue that such parties, while centralised, are not, in fact, democratic nor can they be. As such, the "revolutionary" or "socialist" party is no such thing as it reflects the structure of the capitalist system it claims to oppose. We discuss this in sections H.5.6 and H.5.10.

Lastly, anarchists argue that such parties are, despite the claims of their supporters, not actually very efficient or effective in the revolutionary sense of the word. At best, they hinder the class struggle by being slow to respond to rapidly changing situations. At worse, they are "efficient" in shaping both the revolution and the post-revolutionary society in a hierarchical fashion, so re-creating class rule. We discuss this aspect of vanguardism in section H.5.9.

So these are key aspects of the anarchist critique of vanguardism, which we discuss in more depth in the following sections. It is a bit artificial to divide these issues into different sections because they are all related. The role of the party implies a specific form of organisation (as Lenin himself stressed), the form of the party influences its effectiveness. However, it is for ease of presentation we divide up our discussion so.

H.5.1 Why are vanguard parties anti-socialist?

The reason why vanguard parties are anti-socialist is simply because of the role assigned to them by Lenin, which he thought was vital. Simply put, without the party, no revolution would be possible. As Lenin put it in 1900, "[i]solated from Social-Democracy, the working class movement becomes petty and inevitably becomes bourgeois." [Collected Works, vol. 4, p. 368]

In What is to be Done?, he expands on this position:

"Class political consciousness can be brought to the workers only from without, that is, only outside of the economic sruggle, outside the sphere of relations between workers and employers. The sphere from which alone it is possible to obtain this knowledge is the sphere of relationships between all the various classes and strata and the state and the government -- the sphere of the interrelations between all the various classes." [Essential Works of Lenin, p. 112]

Thus the role of the party is to inject socialist politics into a class incapable of developing them itself.

Lenin is at pains to stress the Marxist orthodoxy of his claims and quotes the "profoundly true and important" comments of Karl Kautsky on the subject. [Op. Cit., p. 81] Kautsky, considered the "pope" of Social-Democracy, stated that it was "absolutely untrue" that "socialist consciousness" was a "necessary and direct result of the proletarian class struggle." Rather, "socialism and the class struggle arise side by side and not one out of the other . . . Modern socialist consciousness can arise only on the basis of profound scientific knowledge . . . The vehicles of science are not the proletariat, but the bourgeois intellegentsia: it was on the minds of some members of this stratum that modern socialism originated, and it was they who communicated it to the more intellectually developed proletarians who, in their turn, introduced it into the proletarian class struggle." Kautsky stressed that "socialist consciousness is something introduced into the proletarian class struggle from without." [quoted by Lenin, Op. Cit., pp. 81-2]

Lenin, as is obvious, wholeheartedly agreed with this position (any attempt to claim that he did not or later rejected it is nonsense, as we prove in section H.5.4). Lenin, with his usual modesty, claimed to speak on behalf of the workers when he wrote that "intellectuals must talk to us, and tell us more about what we do not know and what we can never learn from our factory and 'economic' experience, that is, you must give us political knowledge." [Op. Cit., p. 108] Thus we have Lenin painting a picture of a working class incapable of developing "political knowledge" or "socialist consciousness" by its own efforts and so is reliant on members of the party, themselves either radical elements of the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie or educated by them, to provide it with such knowledge.

The obvious implication of this argument is that the working class cannot liberate itself by its own efforts. After all, if the working class cannot develop its own political theory by its own efforts then it cannot conceive of transforming society and, at best, can see only the need to work within capitalism for reforms to improve its position in society. Without the radical bourgeois to provide the working class with "socialist" ideas, a socialist movement, let alone society, is impossible. A class whose members cannot develop political knowledge by its own actions cannot emancipate itself. It is, by necessity, dependent on others to shape and form its movements. To quote Trotsky's telling analogy on the respective roles of party and class, leaders and led:

"Without a guiding organisation, the energy of the masses would dissipate like steam not enclosed in a piston. But nevertheless, what moves things is not the piston or the box, but the steam." [History of the Russian Revolution, vol. 1, p. 17]

While Trotsky's mechanistic analogy may be considered as somewhat crude, it does expose the underlying assumptions of Bolshevism. After all, did not Lenin argue that the working class could not develop "socialist consciousness" by themselves and that it had to be introduced from without? How can you expect steam to create a piston? You cannot. Thus we have a blind, elemental force incapable of conscious thought being guided by a creation of science, the piston (which, of course, is a product of the work of the "vehicles of science," namely the bourgeois intellegentsia). In the Leninist perspective, if revolutions are the locomotives of history (to use Marx's words) then the masses are the steam, the party the locomotive and the leaders the train driver. The idea of a future society being constructed democratically from below by the workers themselves rather than through occasionally elected leaders seems to have passed Bolshevism past. This is unsurprising, given that the Bolsheviks saw the workers in terms of blindly moving steam in a box, something incapable of being creative unless an outside force gave them direction (instructions).

Cornelius Castoriadis provides a good critique of the implications of the Leninist position:

"No positive content, nothing new capable of providing the foundation for the reconstruction of society could arise out of a mere awareness of poverty. From the experience of life under capitalism the proletariat could derive no new principles either for organising this new society or for orientating it in another direction. Under such conditions, the proletarian revolution becomes . . . a simple reflex revolt against hunger. It is impossible to see how socialist society could ever be the result of such a reflex . . . Their situation forces them to suffer the consequences of capitalism's contradictions, but in no way does it lead them to discover its causes. An acquaintance with these causes comes not from experiencing the production process but from theoretical knowledge . . . This knowledge may be accessible to individual workers, but not to the proletariat qua proletariat. Driven by its revolt against poverty, but incapable of self-direction since its experiences does not give it a privileged viewpoint on reality, the proletariat according to this outlook, can only be an infantry in the service of a general staff of specialists. These specialists know (from considerations that the proletariat as such does not have access to) what is going wrong with present-day society and how it must be modified. The traditional view of the economy and its revolutionary perspective can only found, and actually throughout history has only founded, a bureaucratic politics . . . [W]hat we have outlined are the consequences that follow objectively from this theory. And they have been affirmed in an ever clearer fashion within the actual historical movement of Marxism, culminating in Stalinism." [Social and Political Writings, vol. 2, pp. 257-8]

Thus we have a privileged position for the party and a perspective which can (and did) justify party dictatorship over the proletariat. Given the perspective that the working class cannot formulate its own "ideology" by its own efforts, of its incapacity to move beyond "trade union consciousness" independently of the party, the clear implication is that the party could in no way be bound by the predominant views of the working class. As the party embodies "socialist consciousness" (and this arises outside the working class and its struggles) then opposition of the working class to the party signifies a failure of the class to resist alien influences. As Lenin put it:

"Since there can be no talk of an independent ideology being developed by the masses of the workers in the process of their movement, the only choice is: either bourgeois or socialist ideology. There is no middle course . . . Hence, to belittle socialist ideology in any way, to deviate from it in the slightest degree means strengthening bourgeois ideology. There is a lot of talk about spontaneity, but the spontaneous development of the labour movement leads to its becoming subordinated to bourgeois ideology . . . Hence our task, the task of Social-Democracy, is to combat spontaneity, to divert the labour movement from its spontaneous, trade unionist striving to go under the wing of the bourgeoisie, and to bring it under the wing of revolutionary Social-Democracy." [Lenin, Op. Cit., pp. 82-3]

The implications of this argument became clear once the Bolsheviks seized power. As a justification for party dictatorship, you would be hard pressed to find any better. If the working class revolts against the ruling party, then we have a "spontaneous" development which, inevitably, is an expression of bourgeois ideology. As the party represents socialist consciousness, any deviation in working class support for it simply meant that the working class was being "subordinated" to the bourgeoisie. This meant, obviously, that to "belittle" the "role" of the party by questioning its rule meant to "strengthen bourgeois ideology" and when workers spontaneously went on strike or protested against the party's rule, the party had to "combat" these strivings in order to maintain working class rule! As the "masses of the workers" cannot develop an "independent ideology," the workers are rejecting socialist ideology in favour of bourgeois ideology. The party, in order to defend the "the revolution" (even the "rule of the workers") has to impose its will onto the class, to "combat spontaneity."

As we saw in section H.1.2, none of the leading Bolsheviks were shy about drawing these conclusions once in power and faced with working class revolt against their rule. Indeed, they raised the idea that the "dictatorship of the proletariat" was also, in fact, the "dictatorship of the party" and, as we discuss in section H.3.8 integrated this into their theory of the state. Thus, Leninist ideology implies that "workers' power" exists independently of the workers. This means that the sight of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" (i.e. the Bolshevik government) repressing the proletariat, who cannot develop socialist conscious by themselves, is to be expected.

This elitist perspective of the party, the idea that it and it alone possesses knowledge can be seen from the resolution of the Communist International on the role of the party. It stated that "the working class without an independent political party is a body without a head." [Proceedings and Documents of the Second Congress 1920, vol. 1, p. 194] This use of biological analogies says more about Bolshevism that its authors intended. After all, it suggests a division of labour which is unchangeable. Can the hands evolve to do their own thinking? Of course not. Thus, yet again, we have an image of the class as unthinking brute force.

The implications of this model can be draw from Victor Serge's comments from 1919. As he put it, the party "is in a sense the nervous system of the class. Simultaneously the consciousness and the active, physical organisation of the dispersed forces of the proletariat, which are often ignorant of themselves and often remain latent or express themselves contradictorily." And the masses, what is their role? Well, the party is "supported by the entire working population," although, strangely enough, "it maintains its unique situation in dictatorial fashion." He admits "the energies which have just triumphed . . . exist outside" the party and that "they constitute its strength only because it represents them knowingly." Thus the workers are "[b]ehind" the communists, "sympathising instinctively with the party and carrying out the menial tasks required by the revolution." [Revolution in Danger, p. 67, p. 66 and p. 6] Can we be surprised that the workers have the "menial tasks" to perform when the party is the conscious element? Equally, can we be surprised that this situation is maintained "in dictatorial fashion"? It was precisely this kind of social division of labour between manual and mental labour which helped cause the Russian revolution in the first place!

As the Cohen-Bendit brothers argue, the "Leninist belief that the workers cannot spontaneously go beyond the level of trade union consciousness is tantamount to beheading the proletariat, and then insinuating the Party as the head . . . Lenin was wrong, and in fact, in Russia the Party was forced to decapitate the workers' movement with the help of the political police and the Red Army under the brilliant leadership of Trotsky and Lenin." [Obsolute Communism, pp. 194-5]

As well as explaining the subsequent embrace of party dictatorship over the working class, vanguardism also explains the notorious inefficiency of Leninist parties faced with revolutionary situations we discuss in section H.5.8. After all, basing themselves on the perspective that all spontaneous movements are inherently bourgeois they could not help but be opposed to autonomous class struggle and the organisations and tactics it generates. James C. Scott, in his excellent discussion of the roots and flaws in Lenin's ideas on the party, makes the obvious point that since, for Lenin, "authentic, revolutionary class consciousness could never develop autonomously within the working class, it followed that that the actual political outlook of workers was always a threat to the vanguard party." [Seeing like a State, p. 155] As Maurice Brinton argues, the "Bolshevik cadres saw their role as the leadership of the revolution. Any movement not initiated by them or independent of their control could only evoke their suspicion." These developments, of course, did not occur by chance or accidentally. As Brinton notes, "a given ideological premise (the preordained hegemony of the Party) led necessarily to certain conclusions in practice." [The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control, p. xi and p. xii]

Bakunin expressed the implications of the vanguardist perspective extremely well. It is worthwhile quoting him at length:

"Idealists of all sorts, metaphysicians, positivists, those who uphold the priority of science over life, the doctrinaire revolutionists -- all of them champion with equal zeal although differing in their argumentation, the idea of the State and State power, seeing in them, quite logically from their point of view, the only salvation of society. Quite logically, I say, having take as their basis the tenet -- a fallacious tenet in our opinion -- that thought is prior to life, and abstract theory is prior to social practice, and that therefore sociological science must become the starting point for social upheavals and social reconstruction -- they necessarily arrived at the conclusion that since thought, theory, and science are, for the present at least, the property of only a very few people, those few should direct social life; and that on the morrow of the Revolution the new social organisation should be set up not by the free integration of workers' associations, villages, communes, and regions from below upward, conforming to the needs and instincts of the people, but solely by the dictatorial power of this learned minority, allegedly expressing the general will of the people." [The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, pp. 283-4]

The idea that "socialist consciousness" can exist independently of the working class and its struggle suggests exactly the perspective Bakunin was critiquing. For vanguardism, the abstract theory of socialism exists prior to the class struggle and exists waiting to be brought to the masses by the educated few. The net effect is, as we have argued, to lay the ground for party dictatorship. The basic idea of vanguardism, namely that the working class is incapable of developing "socialist consciousness" by its own efforts, contradictions the socialist maxim that "the emancipation of the working class is the task of the working class itself." Thus the concept is fundamentally anti-socialist, a justification for elite rule and the continuation of class society in new, party approved, ways.

H.5.2 Have vanguardist assumptions been validated?

As discussed in the last section, Lenin claimed that workers can only reach a "trade union consciousness" by their own efforts. Anarchists argued that such an assertion is empirically false. The history of the labour movement is marked by revolts and struggles which went far further than just seeking reforms and revolutionary theories derived from such experiences.

As such, the category of the "economic struggle" corresponds to no known social reality. Every "economic" struggle is "political" in some sense and those involved can, and do, learn political lessons from them. As Kropotkin noted in the 1880s, there "is almost no serious strike which occurs together wwith the appearance of troops, the exchange of blows and some acts of revolt. Here they fight with the troops; there they march on the factories . . . Thanks to government intervention the rebel against the factory becomes the rebel against the State." [quoted by Caroline Cahm, Kropotkin and the Rise of Revolutionary Anarchism, p. 256] If history shows anything, it shows that workers are more than capable of going beyond "trade union consciousness." The Paris Commune, the 1848 revolts and, ironically enough, the 1905 and 1917 Russian Revolutions show that the masses are capable of revolutionary struggles in which the self-proclaimed "vanguard" of socialists spend most of their time trying to catch up with them!

These last two examples, the Russian Revolutions, also help to discredit Lenin's argument that the workers cannot develop socialist consciousness alone due to the power of bourgeois ideology. This, according to Lenin, required the bourgeois intelligentsia to import "socialist" ideology from outside the movement. Lenin's argument is flawed. Simply put, if the working class is subjected to bourgeois influences, then so are the "professional" revolutionaries within the party. Indeed, the strength of such influences on the "professionals" of revolution must be higher as they are not part of proletarian life. After all, if social being determines consciousness than if a revolutionary is no longer part of the working class, then they no longer are rooted in the social conditions which generate socialist theory and action. Rootless and no longer connected with collective labour and working class life, the "professional" revolutionary is more likely to be influenced by the social milieu he or she now is part of (i.e. a bourgeois, or at best petit-bourgeois, environment). This may explain the terrible performance of such "vanguards" in revolutionary situations (see section H.5.8).

This tendency for the "professional" revolutionary and intellectuals to be subject to the bourgeois influences which Lenin subscribes solely to the working class can continually be seen from the history of the Bolshevik party. For example, as Trotsky himself notes:

"It should not be forgotten that the political machine of the Bolshevik Party was predominantly made up of the intelligentsia, which was petty bourgeois in its origin and conditions of life and Marxist in its ideas and in its relations with the proletariat. Workers who turned professional revolutionists joined this set with great eagerness and lost their identity in it. The peculiar social structure of the Party machine and its authority over the proletariat (neither of which is accidental but dictated by strict historical necessity) were more than once the cause of the Party's vacillation and finally became the source of its degeneration . . . In most cases they lacked independent daily contact with the labouring masses as well as a comprehensive understanding of the historical process. They thus left themselves exposed to the influence of alien classes." [Stalin, vol. 1, pp. 297-8]

He pointed to the example of the First World War, when, "even the Bolshevik party did not at once find its way in the labyrinth of war. As a general rule, the confusion was most pervasive and lasted longest amongst the Party's higher-ups, who came in direct contact with bourgeois public opinion." Thus the professional revolutionaries "were largely affected by compromisist tendencies, which emanated from bourgeois circles, while the rank and file Bolshevik workingmen displayed far greater stability resisting the patriotic hysteria that had swept the country." [Op. Cit., p. 248 and p. 298] It should be noted that he is repeating earlier comments from his History of the Russian Revolution when he argued that the "immense intellectual backsliding of the upper stratum of the Bolsheviks during the war" was caused by "isolation from the masses and isolation from those abroad -- that is primarily from Lenin." [vol. 3, p. 134] As we discuss in the appendix on "What happened during the Russian Revolution?", even Trotsky had to admit that during 1917 the working class was far more revolutionary than the party and the party more revolutionary than the "party machine" of "professional revolutionaries."

Ironically enough, Lenin himself recognised this aspect of the intellectuals after he had praised their role in bringing "revolutionary" consciousness to the working class in his 1904 work One Step Forward, Two Steps Back. He argued that it was now the "presence of large numbers of radical intellectuals in the ranks . . . [which] has made . . . the existence of opportunism, produced by their mentality, inevitable." [contained in Robert V. Daniels, A Documentary History of Communism, vol. 1, p. 25] According to Lenin's new philosophy, the working class simply needs to have been through the "schooling of the factory" in order to give the intelligentsia lessons in political discipline, the very same intelligentsia which up until then had played the leading role in the Party and had given political consciousness to the working class. In his words:

"The factory, which seems only a bogey to some, represents that highest form of capitalist co-operation which has united and disciplined the proletariat, taught it to organise . . . And it is precisely Marxism, the ideology of the proletariat trained by capitalism, that has taught . . . unstable intellectuals to distinguish between the factory as a means of exploitation (discipline based on fear of starvation) and the factory as a means of organisation (discipline based on collective work . . ). The discipline and organisation which come so hard to the bourgeois intellectual are especially easily acquired by the proletariat just because of this factory 'schooling.'" [Op. Cit., p. 24]

Lenin's analogy is, of course, flawed. The factory is a "means of exploitation" because its "means of organisation" is top-down and hierarchical. The "collective work" which the workers are subjected to is organised by the boss and the "discipline" is that of the barracks, not that of free individuals. In fact, the "schooling" for revolutionaries is not the factory, but the class struggle. As such, healthy and positive discipline is generated by the struggle against the way the workplace is organised under capitalism. Factory discipline, in other words, is completely different from the discipline required for social struggle or revolution. Thus the workers become revolutionary in so far as they reject the hierarchical discipline of the workplace and develop the self-discipline required to fight that discipline.

A key task of anarchism is encourage working class revolt against this type of discipline, particularly in the capitalist workplace. The "discipline" Lenin praises simply replaces human thought and association with the following of orders and hierarchy. Thus anarchism aims to undermine capitalist (imposed and brutalising) discipline in favour of solidarity, the "discipline" of free association and agreement based on the community of struggle and the political consciousness and revolutionary enthusiasm that struggle creates. To the factory discipline Lenin argues for, anarchists argue for the discipline produced in workplace struggles and conflicts against that hierarchical discipline. Thus, for anarchists, the model of the factory can never be the model for a revolutionary organisation any more than Lenin's vision of society as "one big workplace" could be our vision of socialism (see section H.3.1). Ultimately, the factory exists to reproduce hierarchical social relationships and class society just as much as it exists to produce goods.

It should be noted that Lenin's argument does not contradict his earlier arguments. The proletarian and intellectual have complementary jobs in the party. The proletariat is to give lessons in political discipline to the intellectuals as they have been through the process of factory (i.e. hierarchical) discipline. The role of the intellectuals as providers of "political consciousness" is the same and so they give political lessons to the workers.

Moreover, his vision of the vanguard party is basically the same as in What is to Be Done?. This can be seen from his comments that his opponent (the leading Menshevik Martov) "wants to lump together organised and unorganised elements in the Party, those who submit to direction and those who do not, the advanced and the incorrigibly backward." He stressed that the "division of labour under the direction of a centre evokes from him [the intellectual] a tragicomical outcry against people being transformed into 'wheels and cogs'" [Op. Cit., p. 21 and p. 24] Thus there is the same division of labour as in the capitalist factory, with the boss ("the centre") having the power to direct the workers (who "submit to direction"). Thus we have a "revolutionary" party organised in a capitalist manner, with the same "division of labour" between order givers and order takers.

H.5.3 Why does vanguardism imply party power?

As we discussed in section H.5.1, anarchists argue that the assumptions of vanguardism leads to party rule over the working class. Needless to say, followers of Lenin disagree that the idea that vanguardism results in such an outcome. For example, Chris Harman of the British Socialist Workers Party argues the opposite case in his essay "Party and Class." However, his own argument suggests the elitist conclusions we have draw from Lenin's.

Harman argues that there are two ways to look at the revolutionary party, the Leninist way and the traditional social-democratic way (as represented by the likes of Trotsky and Rosa Luxemburg in 1903-5). "The latter," he argues, "was thought of as a party of the whole [working] class . . . All the tendencies within the class had to be represented within it. Any split within it was to be conceived of as a split within the class. Centralisation, although recognised as necessary, was feared as a centralisation over and against the spontaneous activity of the class. Yet it was precisely in this kind of party that the 'autocratic' tendencies warned against by Luxemburg were to develop most. For within it the confusion of member and sympathiser, the massive apparatus needed to hold together a mass of only half-politicised members in a series of social activities, led to a toning down of political debate, a lack of political seriousness, which in turn reduced the ability of the members to make independent political evaluations and increased the need for apparatus-induced involvement." [Party and Class, p. 32]

Thus, the lumping together into one organisation all those who consider themselves as "socialist" and agree with the party's aims creates in a mass which results in "autocratic" tendencies within the party organisation. As such, it is important to remember that "the Party, as the vanguard of the working class, must not be confused with the entire class." [Op. Cit., p. 22] For this reason, the party must be organised in a specific manner which reflect his Leninist assumptions:

"The alternative [to the vanguard party] is the 'marsh' -- where elements motivated by scientific precision are so mixed up with those who are irremediably confused as to prevent any decisive action, effectively allowing the most backward to lead." [Op. Cit., p. 30]

The problem for Harman is now how to explain how the proletariat can become the ruling class if this is true. He argues that "the party is not the embryo of the workers' state -- the workers' council is. The working class as a whole will be involved in the organisations that constitute the state, the most backward as well as the most progressive elements." As such, the "function of the party is not to be the state." [Op. Cit., p. 33] Thus, the implication is that the working class will take an active part in the decision making process during the revolution (although the level of this "involvement" is unspecified, probably for good reasons as we explain). If this is the case, then the problem of the mass party reappears, but in a new form (we must also note that this problem must have also appearing in 1917, when the Bolshevik party opened its doors to become a mass party).

As the "organisations that constitute the state" are made up of the working class "as a whole," then, obviously, they cannot be expected to wield power (i.e. directly manage the revolution from below). If they did, then the party would be "mixed up" with the "irremediably confused" and so could not lead (as we discuss in section H.5.5, Lenin links "opportunism" to "primitive" democracy, i.e. self-management, within the party). Hence the need for party power. Which, of course, explains Lenin's 1920 comments that an organisation embracing the whole working class cannot exercise the "dictatorship of the proletariat" and that a "vanguard" is required to do so (see section H.1.2 for details). Of course, Harman does not explain how the "irremediably confused" are able to judge that the party is the best representative of its interests. Surely if someone is competent enough to pick their ruler, they must also be competent enough to manage their own affairs directly? Equally, if the "irremediably confused" vote against the party once it is in power, what happens? Will the party submit to the "leadership" of what it considers "the most backward"? If the Bolsheviks are anything to go by, the answer has to be no.

Ironically, he argues that it "is worth noting that in Russia a real victory of the apparatus over the party required precisely the bringing into the party hundreds of thousands of 'sympathisers,' a dilution of the 'party' by the 'class.' . . . The Leninist party does not suffer from this tendency to bureaucratic control precisely because it restricts its membership to those willing to be serious and disciplined enough to take political and theoretical issues as their starting point, and to subordinate all their activities to those." [Op. Cit., p. 33] Yet, in order to have a socialist revolution, the working class as a whole must participate in the process and that implies self-management. Thus the decision making organisations will be based on the party being "mixed up" with the "irremediably confused" as if they were part of a non-Leninist party.

>From Harman's own assumptions, this by necessity results in an "autocratic" regime within the new "workers' state." This was implicitly recognised by the Bolsheviks when they stressed that the function of the party was to become the government, the head of the state. Lenin and Trotsky continually stressed this fact, urging that the party "assume power," that the Bolsheviks "can and must take state power into their own hands." Indeed, "take over full state power alone." [Lenin, Selected Works, vol. 2, p. 329, p. 328 and p. 352] Thus, while the working class "as a whole" will be "involved in the organisations that constitute the state," the party (in practice, its leadership) will hold power (see section H.3.8 for a further discussion of this Bolshevik position). And for Trotsky, this substitution of the party for the class was inevitable:

"We have more than once been accused of having substituted for the dictatorship of the Soviets the dictatorship of our party. Yet it can be said with complete justice that the dictatorship of the Soviets became possible only by means of the dictatorship of the party. It is thanks to the clarity of its theoretical vision and its strong revolutionary organisation that the party has afforded to the Soviets the possibility of becoming transformed from shapeless parliaments of labour into the apparatus of the supremacy of labour. In this 'substitution' of the power of the party for the power of the working class there is nothing accidental, and in reality there is no substitution at all. The Communists express the fundamental interests of the working class. It is quite natural that, in the period in which history brings up those interests . . . the Communists have become the recognised representatives of the working class as a whole." [Terrorism and Communism, p. 109]

He notes that within the state, "the last word belongs to the Central Committee of the party." [Op. Cit., p. 107] In 1937, he repeats this argument, explicitly linking the "objective necessity" of the "revolutionary dictatorship of a proletarian party" to the "heterogeneity of the revolutionary class, the necessity for a selected vanguard in order to assure the victory." Stressed the "dictatorship of a party," he argued that "[a]bstractly speaking, it would be very well if the party dictatorship could be replaced by the 'dictatorship' of the whole toiling people without any party, but this presupposes such a high level of political development among the masses that it can never be achieved under capitalist conditions." [Writings 1936-37, pp. 513-4]

This means that given Harman's own assumptions, autocratic rule by the party is inevitable. Ironically, he argues that "to be a 'vanguard' is not the same as to substitute one's own desires, or policies or interests, for those of the class." He stresses that an "organisation that is concerned with participating in the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism by the working class cannot conceive of substituting itself for the organs of the direct rule of that class." [Op. Cit., p. 33 and p. 34] However, the logic of his argument suggests otherwise. Simply put, his arguments against a broad party organisation are also applicable to self-management during the class struggle and revolution. The rank and file party members are "mixed up" in the class. This leads to party members becoming subject to bourgeois influences. This necessitates the power of the higher bodies over the lower (see section H.5.5). The highest party organ, the central committee, must rule over the party machine, which in turn rules over the party members, who, in turn, rule over the workers. This logical chain was, ironically enough, recognised by Trotsky in 1904 in his polemic against Lenin. He argued:

"The organisation of the party substitutes itself for the party as a whole; then the central committee substitutes itself for the organisation; and finally the 'dictator' substitutes himself for the central committee." [quoted by Harman, Op. Cit., p. 22]

Obviously once in power in 1920 this substitution was less of a concern for him than in 1904! Which, however, does not deny the insight Trotsky showed in 1904 about the dangers inherent in the Bolshevik assumptions on working class spontaneity and how revolutionary ideas develop. Dangers which he, ironically, helped provide empirical evidence for.

This false picture of the party (and its role) explains the progression of the Bolshevik party after 1917. As the soviets organised all workers, we have the problem that the party (with its "scientific" knowledge) is swamped by the class. The task of the party is to "persuade, not coerce these [workers] into accepting its lead" and, as Lenin made clear, for it to take political power. [Harman, Op. Cit., p. 34] Once in power, the decisions of the party are in constant danger of being overthrown by the working class, which necessitates a state run with "iron discipline" (and the necessary means of coercion) by the party. With the disempowering of the mass organisations by the party, the party itself becomes a substitute for popular democracy as being a party member is the only way to influence policy. As the party grows, the influx of new members "dilutes" the organisation, necessitating a similar growth of centralised power at the top of the organisation. This eliminates the substitute for proletarian democracy which had developed within the party (which explains the banning of factions within the Bolshevik party in 1921). Slowly but surely, power concentrates into fewer and fewer hands, which, ironically enough, necessitates a bureaucracy to feed the party leaders information and execute its will. Isolated from all, the party inevitably degenerates and Stalinism results.

We are sure that many Trotskyists will object to our analysis, arguing that we ignore the problems facing the Russian Revolution in our discussion. Harman argues that it was "not the form of the party that produces party as opposed to soviet rule, but the decimation of the working class" that occurred during the Russian Revolution. [Op. Cit., p. 37] This is false. As noted, Lenin was always explicit that about the fact that the Bolshevik's sought party rule ("full state power") and that their rule was working class rule. As such, we have the first, most basic, substitution of party power for workers power. Secondly, as we discuss in section 6 of the appendix on "What happened during the Russian Revolution?", the Bolshevik party had been gerrymandering and disbanding soviets before the start of the Civil War, so proving that it cannot be held accountable for this process of substitution. Thirdly, Leninists are meant to know that civil war is inevitable during a revolution. To blame the inevitable for the degeneration of the revolution is hardly convincing (particularly as the degeneration started before the civil war broke out).

Unsurprisingly, anarchists reject the underlying basis of this progression, the idea that the working class, by its own efforts, is incapable of developing beyond a "trade union consciousness." The actions of the working class itself condemned these attitudes as outdated and simply wrong long before Lenin's infamous comments were put on paper. In every struggle, the working class has created its own organisations to co-ordinate its struggle (to use Trotsky's analogy, the steam creates its own piston and constantly has). In the process of struggle, the working class changes its perspectives. This process is uneven in both quantity and quality, but it does happen. As such, anarchists do not think that all working class people will, at the same time, spontaneously become anarchists. If they did, we would be in an anarchist society today!

As we argued in sections J.3 and H.2.10, anarchists acknowledge that political development within the working class is uneven. The difference between anarchism and Leninism is how we see socialist ideas developing. In every class struggle there is a radical minority which takes the lead and many of this miinority develop revolutionary conclusions from their experiences. As such, members of the working class develop their own revolutionary theory and it does not need bourgeois intellectuals to inject it into them.

Anarchists go on to argue that this minority (along with any members of other classes who have broken with their background and become libertarians) should organise and work together. The role of this revolutionary organisation is to co-ordinate revolutionary activity, discuss and revise ideas and help others draw the same conclusions as they have from their own, and others, experiences. The aim of such a group is, by word and deed, to assist the working class in its struggles and to draw out and clarify the libertarian aspects of this struggle. It seeks to abolish the rigid division between leaders and led which is the hallmark of class society by drawing the vast majority of the working class into social struggle and revolutionary politics by encouraging their direct management of the class struggle. Only this participation and the political discussion it generates will allow revolutionary ideas to become widespread.

In other words, anarchists argue that precisely because of political differences ("unevenness") we need the fullest possible democracy and freedom to discuss issues and reach agreements. Only by discussion and self-activity can the political perspectives of those in struggle develop and change. In other words, the fact Bolshevism uses to justify its support for party power is the strongest argument against it.

Our differences with vanguardism could not be more clear.

H.5.4 Did Lenin abandon vanguardism?

As discussed in section H.5.1, vanguardism rests on the premise that the working class cannot emancipate itself. As such, the ideas of Lenin as expounded in What is to be Done? contradicts the key idea of Marx that the emancipation of the working class is the task of the working class itself. Thus the paradox of Leninism. On the one hand, it subscribes to an ideology allegedly based on working class self-liberation. On the other, the founder of that school wrote an obviously influential work whose premise not only logically implies that they cannot, it also provides the perfect rationale for party dictatorship over the working class (and as the history of Leninism in power showed, this underlying premise was much stronger than any democratic-sounding rhetoric -- see "What happened during the Russian Revolution?").

It is for this reason that many Leninists are somewhat embarrassed by Lenin's argument in What is to be Done?. Hence we see Chris Harman writing that "the real theoretical basis for his [Lenin's] argument on the party is not that the working class is incapable on its own of coming to theoretical socialist consciousness . . . The real basis for his argument is that the level of consciousness in the working class is never uniform." [Party and Class, pp. 25-6] In other words, Harman changes the focus of the question away from the point explicitly and repeatedly stated by Lenin that the working class was incapable on its own of coming to theoretical socialist consciousness and that he was simply repeating Marxist orthodoxy when he did.

Harman bases his revision on Lenin's later comments regarding his book, namely that he sought to "straighten matters out" by "pull[ing] in the other direction" to the "extreme" which the "economists" had went to. He repeated this in 1907 (see below). While Lenin may have been right to attack the "economists," his argument that socialist consciousness comes to the working class only "from without" is not a case of going too far in the other direction; it is wrong. Simply put, you do not attack ideas you disagree with arguing an equally false set of ideas. This suggests that Harman's attempt to downplay Lenin's elitist position is flawed. Simply put, the "real theoretical basis" of the argument was precisely the issue Lenin himself raised, namely the incapacity of the working class to achieve socialist consciousness by itself. It is probably the elitist conclusions of this argument which drives Harman to try and change the focus to another issue, namely the political unevenness within the working class.

Some go to even more extreme lengths, denying that Lenin even held such a position. For example, Hal Draper argues at length that Lenin did not, in fact, hold the opinions he actually expressed in his book! While Draper covers many aspects of what he calls the "Myth of Lenin's 'Concept of The Party,'" in his essay of the same name, we will concentrate on the key idea, namely that socialist ideas are developed outside the class struggle by the radical intelligentsia and introduced into the working class from without. Here, as argued in section H.5.1, is the root of the anti-socialist basis of Leninism.

So what does Draper say? On the one hand, he denies that Lenin held this theory (he states that it is a "virtually non-existent theory" and "non-existent after WITBD"). He argues that those who hold the position that Lenin actually meant what he said in his book "never quote anything other than WITBD," and states that this is a "curious fact" (a fact we will disprove shortly). Draper argues as follows: "Did Lenin put this theory forward even in WITBD? Not exactly." He then notes that Lenin "had just read this theory in the most prestigious theoretical organ of Marxism of the whole international socialist movement" and it had been "put forward in an important article by the leading Marxist authority," Karl Kautsky. Draper notes that "Lenin first paraphrased Kautsky" and then "quoted a long passage from Kautsky's article."

This much, of course, is well known by anyone who has read Lenin's book. By paraphrasing and quoting Kautsky as he does, Lenin is showing his agreement with Kautsky's argument. Indeed, Lenin states before quoting Kautsky that his comments are "profoundly true and important" [Essential Works of Lenin, p. 79] As such, by explicitly and obviously agreeing with Kautsky, it can be said that it also becomes Lenin's theory as well! Over time, particularly after Kautsky had been labelled a "renegade" by Lenin, Kautsky's star waned and Lenin's rose. Little wonder the argument became associated with Lenin rather than the discredited Kautsky. Draper then speculates that "it is curious . . . that no one has sought to prove that by launching this theory . . . Kautsky was laying the basis for the demon of totalitarianism." A simply reason exists for this, namely the fact that Kautsky, unlike Lenin, was never the head of a one-party dictatorship and justified this system politically. Indeed, Kautsky attacked the Bolsheviks for this, which caused Lenin to label him a "renegade." Kautsky, in this sense, can be considered as being inconsistent with his political assumptions, unlike Lenin who took his assumptions to their logical conclusions.

How, after showing the obvious fact that "the crucial 'Leninist' theory was really Kautsky's," he then wonders "[d]id Lenin, in WITBD, adopt Kautsky's theory?" He answers his own question with an astounding "Again, not exactly"! Clearly, quoting approvingly of a theory and stating it is "profoundly true" does not, in fact, make you a supporter of it! What evidence does Draper present for his amazing answer? Well, Draper argued that Lenin "tried to get maximum mileage out of it against the right wing; this was the point of his quoting it. If it did something for Kautsky's polemic, he no doubt figured that it would do something for his." Or, to present a more simple and obvious explanation, Lenin agreed with Kautsky's "profoundly true" argument!

Aware of this possibility, Draper tries to combat it. "Certainly," he argues, "this young man Lenin was not (yet) so brash as to attack his 'pope' or correct him overtly. But there was obviously a feeling of discomfort. While showing some modesty and attempting to avoid the appearance of a head-on criticism, the fact is that Lenin inserted two longish footnotes rejecting (or if you wish, amending) precisely what was worst about the Kautsky theory on the role of the proletariat." So, here we have Lenin quoting Kautsky to prove his own argument (and noting that Kautsky's words were "profoundly true and important"!) but "feeling discomfort" over what he has just approvingly quoted! Incredible!

So how does Lenin "amend" Kautsky's "profoundly true and important" argument? In two ways, according to Draper. Firstly, in a footnote which "was appended right after the Kautsky passage" Lenin quoted. Draper argued that it "was specifically formulated to undermine and weaken the theoretical content of Kautsky's position. It began: 'This does not mean, of course, that the workers have no part in creating such an ideology.' But this was exactly what Kautsky did mean and say. In the guise of offering a caution, Lenin was proposing a modified view. 'They [the workers] take part, however,' Lenin's footnote continued, 'not as workers, but as socialist theoreticians, as Proudhons and Weitlings; in other words, they take part only when they are able . . .' In short, Lenin was reminding the reader that Kautsky's sweeping statements were not even 100% true historically; he pointed to exceptions." Yes, Lenin did point to exceptions in order to refute objections to Kautsky's argument before they were raised! It is clear that Lenin is not refuting Kautsky. He is agreeing with him and raising possible counter-examples in order to refute potential objections based on them. Thus Proudhon adds to socialist ideology in so far as he is a "socialist theoretician" and not a worker! How clear can you be? As Lenin continues, people like Proudhon "take part only to the extent that they are able, more or less, to acquire the knowledge of their age and advance that knowledge." In other words, insofar as they learn from the "vehicles of science." Neither Kautsky or Lenin denied that it was possible for workers to acquire such knowledge and pass it on. However this does not mean that they thought workers, as part of their daily life and struggle as workers, could develop "socialist theory." Thus Lenin's footnote reiterates Kautsky's argument rather than, as Draper hopes, refutes it.

Draper turns to another footnote, which he notes "was not directly tied to the Kautsky article, but discussed the 'spontaneity of the socialist idea. 'It is often said,' Lenin began, 'that the working class spontaneously gravitates towards socialism. This is perfectly true in the sense that socialist theory reveals the causes of the misery of the working class ... and for that reason the workers are able to assimilate it so easily,' but he reminded that this process itself was not subordinated to mere spontaneity. 'The working class spontaneously gravitates towards socialism; nevertheless, ... bourgeois ideology spontaneously imposes itself upon the working class to a still greater degree.'" Draper argues that this "was obviously written to modify and recast the Kautsky theory, without coming out and saying that the Master was wrong." So, here we have Lenin approvingly quoting Kautsky in the main text while, at the same time, providing a footnote to show that, in fact, he did not agree with what he has just quoted! Truly amazing -- and easily refuted. After all, the footnote stresses that workers appreciate socialist theory "provided, however, that this theory does not step aside for spontaneity and provided it subordinates spontaneity to itself." In other words, workers "assimilate" socialist theory only when socialist theory does not adjust itself to the "spontaneous" forces at work in the class struggle. Thus, rather than refuting Kautsky by the backdoor, Lenin in this footnote still agrees with him. Socialism does not develop, as Kautsky stressed, from the class struggle but rather has to be injected into it. This means, by necessity, the theory "subordinates spontaneity to itself."

Draper argues that this "modification" simply meant that there "are several things that happen 'spontaneously,' and what will win out is not decided only by spontaneity" but as can be seen, this is not the case. Only when "spontaneity" is subordinated to the theory (i.e. the party) can socialism be won, a totally different position. As such, when Draper asserts that "[a]ll that was clear at this point was that Lenin was justifiably dissatisfied with the formulation of Kautsky's theory," he is simply expressing wishful thinking. This footnote, like the first one, continues the argument developed by Lenin in the main text and in no way is in contradiction to it. As is obvious.

Draper argues that the key problem is that critics of Lenin "run two different questions together: (a) What was, historically, the initial role of intellectuals in the beginnings of the socialist movement, and (b) what is - and above all, what should be - the role of bourgeois intellectuals in a working-class party today." He argues that Kautsky did not believe that "if it can be shown that intellectuals historically played a certain initiatory role, they must and should continue to play the same role now and forever. It does not follow; as the working class matured, it tended to throw off leading strings." However, this is unconvincing. After all, if socialist consciousness cannot be generated by the working class by its own struggles then this is applicable now and in the future. Thus workers who join the socialist movement will be repeating the party ideology, as developed by intellectuals in the past. If they do develop new theory, it would be, as Lenin stressed, "not as workers, but as socialist theoreticians" and so socialist consciousness still does not derive from their own class experiences. This places the party in a privileged position vis-ö-vis the working class and so the elitism remains.

Ironically, Draper agrees with Kautsky and Lenin as regards the claim that socialism does not develop out of the class struggle. As he put it, "[a]s a matter of fact, in the International of 1902 no one really had any doubts about the historical facts concerning the beginnings of the movement." The question is, "[b]ut what followed from those facts?" To which he argues that Marx and Engels "concluded, from the same facts and subsequent experiences, that the movement had to be sternly warned against the influence of bourgeois intellectuals inside the party." (We wonder if Marx and Engels included themselves in the list of "bourgeois intellectuals" the workers had to be "sternly warned" about?) Thus, amusingly enough, Draper argues that Marx, Engels, Kautsky and Lenin all held to the "same facts" that socialist consciousness developed outside the experiences of the working classes!

Draper, after rewriting history somewhat in his laborious and hardly convincing arguments, states that it "is a curious fact that no one has ever found this alleged theory anywhere else in Lenin's voluminous writings, not before and not after [What is to be Done?]. It never appeared in Lenin again. No Leninologist has ever quoted such a theory from any other place in Lenin." However, as this theory was the orthodox Marxist position, Lenin had no real need to reiterate this argument continuously. After all, he had quoted the acknowledged leader of Marxism on the subject explicitly to show the orthodoxy of his argument and the "non-Marxist" base of those he argued against. Once the debate had been won and orthodox Marxism triumphant, why repeat the argument again? As we will see below, this was exactly the position Lenin did take in 1907 when he wrote an introduction to a book which contained What is to Be Done?.

In contradiction to Draper's claim, Lenin did return to this matter. In October 1905 he wrote an a short article in praise of an article by Stalin on this very subject. Stalin had sought to explain Lenin's ideas to the Georgian Social-Democracy and, like Lenin, had sought to root the argument in Marxist orthodoxy (partly to justify the argument, partly to expose the Menshevik opposition as being "non-Marxists"). Stalin argues along similar lines to Lenin:

"the question now is: who works out, who is able to work out this socialist consciousness (i.e. scientific socialism)? Kautsky says, and I repeat his idea, that the masses of proletarians, as long as they remain proletarians, have neither the time nor the opportunity to work out socialist consciousness . . . The vehicles of science are the intellectuals . . . who have both the time and opportunity to put themselves in the van of science and workout socialist consciousness. Clearly, socialist consciousness is worked out by a few Social-Democratic intellectuals who posses the time and opportunity to do so." [Collected Works, vol. 1, p. 164]

Stalin stresses the Marxist orthodoxy by stating Social-Democracy "comes in and introduces socialist consciousness into the working class movement. This is what Kautsky has in mind when he says 'socialist consciousness is something introduced into the proletarian class struggle from without.'" [Op. Cit., pp. 164-5] That Stalin is simply repeating Lenin's and Kautsky's arguments is clear, as is the fact it was considered the orthodox position within social-democracy.

If Draper is right, then Lenin would have taken the opportunity to attack Stalin's article and express the alternative viewpoint Draper is convinced he held. However, Lenin put pen to paper to praise Stalin's work, noting "the splendid way in which the problem of the celebrated 'introduction of a consciousness from without' had been posed." Lenin explicitly agrees with Stalin's summary of his argument. He argues that "social being determines consciousness . . . Socialist consciousness corresponds to the position of the proletariat" and then quotes Stalin: "'Who can and does evolve this consciousness (scientific socialism)?'" and answers (again approvingly quoting Stalin) that "its 'evolution' is a matter for a few Social-Democratic intellectuals who posses the necessary means and time.'" Lenin does argue that Social-Democracy meets "an instinctive urge towards socialism" when it "comes to the proletariat with the message of socialism," but this does not counter the main argument that the working class cannot develop socialist consciousness by it own efforts and the, by necessity, elitist and hierarchical politics that flow from this position. [Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 9, p. 388]

That Lenin did not reject his early formulations can also be seen from in his introduction to the pamphlet "Twelve Years" which contained What is to be Done?. Rather than explaining the false nature of that work's more infamous arguments, Lenin in fact defended them. For example, as regards the question of professional revolutionaries, he argued that the statements of his opponents now "look ridiculous" as "today the idea of an organisation of professional revolutionaries has already scored a complete victory," a victory which "would have been impossible if this idea had not been pushed to the forefront at the time." He noted that his work had "vanquished Economism . . . and finally created this organisation." On the question of socialist consciousness, he simply reiterates the Marxist orthodoxy of his position, noting that its "formulation of the relationship between spontaneity and political consciousness was agreed upon by all the Iskra editors . . . Consequently, there could be no question of any difference in principle between the draft Party programme and What is to be Done? on this issue." So while Lenin argues that he had "straighten out what had been twisted by the Economists," he did not correct his early arguments. [Collected Works, vol. 13, p. 101, p. 102 and p. 107]

Looking at Lenin's arguments at the Communist International on the question of the party we see an obvious return to the ideas of What is to be Done?. Here was have a similar legal/illegal duality, strict centralism, strong hierarchy and the vision of the party as the "head" of the working class (i.e. its consciousness). In Left-Wing Communism, Lenin mocks those who reject the idea that dictatorship by the party is the same as that of the class.

Ultimately, the whole rationale for the kind of wishful thinking that Draper inflicts on us is flawed. As noted above, you do not combat what you think is an incorrect position with one which you consider as also being wrong or do not agree with! You counter what you consider as an incorrect position with one you consider correct and agree with. As Lenin, in WITBD, explicitly did. This means that later attempts by his followers to downplay the ideas raised in Lenin's book are unconvincing. Moreover, as he was simply repeating Social-Democratic orthodoxy it seems doubly unconvincing.

Clearly, Draper is wrong. Lenin did, as indicated above, actually mean what he said in What is to be Done?. The fact that Lenin quoted Kautsky simply shows that this position was the orthodox Social-Democratic one, held by the mainstream of the party. Given that Leninism was (and still is) a "radical" offshoot of this movement, this should come as no surprise. However, Draper's comments remind us how religious many forms of Marxism are. After all, why do we need facts when we have the true faith?

H.5.5 What is "democratic centralism"?

As noted above, anarchists oppose vanguardism for three reasons, one of which is the way it recommends how revolutionaries should organise to influence the class struggle.

So how is a "vanguard" party organised? To quote the Communist International's 1920 resolution on the role of the Communist Party in the revolution, the party must have a "centralised political apparatus" and "must be organised on the basis of iron proletarian centralism." This, of course, suggests a top-down structure internally, which the resolution explicitly calls for. In its words, "Communist cells of every kind must be subordinate to one another as precisely as possible in a strict hierarchy." [Proceedings and Documents of the Second Congress 1920, vol. 1, p. 193, p. 198 and p. 199] Therefore, the vanguard party is organised in a centralised, top-down way. However, this is not all, as well as being "centralised," the party is also meant to be democratic, hence the expression "democratic centralism." On this the resolution states:

"The Communist Party must be organised on the basis of democratic centralism. The most important principle of democratic centralism is election of the higher party organs by the lowest, the fact that all instructions by a superior body are unconditionally and necessarily binding on lower ones, and existence of a strong central party leadership whose authority over all leading party comrades in the period between one party congress and the next is universally accepted." [Op. Cit., p. 198]

For Lenin, speaking in the same year, democratic centralism meant "only that representatives from the localities meet and elect a responsible body which must then govern . . . Democratic centralism consists in the Congress checking on the Central Committee, removing it and electing a new one." [quoted by Robert Service, The Bolshevik Party in Revolution, p. 131] Thus, "democratic centralism" is inherently top-down, although the "higher" party organs are, in principle, elected by the "lower." Without this, of course, there would be no "democratic" aspect to the party. The real question is whether such democracy is effective, a topic we will return to. However, the key point is that the central committee is the active element, the one whose decisions are implemented and so the focus of the structure is in the "centralism" rather than the "democratic" part of the formula.

As we noted in section H.2.14, the Communist Party was expected to have a dual structure, one legal and the other illegal. The resolution states that "[i]n countries where the bourgeoisie . . . is still in power, the Communist parties must learn to combine legal and illegal activity in a planned way. However, the legal work must be placed under the actual control of the illegal party at all times." [Proceedings and Documents of the Second Congress 1920, vol. 1, p. 198-9] It goes without saying that the illegal structure is the real power in the party and that it cannot be expected to be as democratic as the legal party, which in turn would be less that democratic as the illegal would have the real power within the organisation.

All this has clear parallels with Lenin's infamous work, What is to be done?. In that work Lenin argues for "a powerful and strictly secret organisation, which concentrates in its hands all the threads of secret activities, an organisation which of necessity must be a centralised organisation." This call for centralisation is not totally dependent on secrecy, though. As he notes, "specialisation necessarily presupposes centralisation, and in its turn imperatively calls for it." Such a centralised organisation would need leaders and Lenin argues that "no movement can be durable without a stable organisation of leaders to maintain continuity." As such, "the organisation must consist chiefly of persons engaged in revolutionary activities as a profession." Thus, we have a centralised organisation which is managed by specialists, by "professional revolutionaries." [Essential Works of Lenin, p. 158, p. 153, p. 147 and p. 148]

This does not mean that these "professional revolutionaries" all come from the bourgeoisie or petit bourgeoisie. According to Lenin:

"A workingman agitator who is at all talented and 'promising' must not be left to work eleven hours a day in a factory. We must arrange that he be maintained by the Party, that he may in due time go underground." [Op. Cit., p. 155]

Thus the full time professional revolutionaries are drawn from all classes into the party apparatus. However, in practice the majority of such full-timers were/are middle class. Trotsky notes that "just as in the Bolshevik committees, so at the [1905] Congress itself, there were almost no workingmen. The intellectuals predominated." [Stalin, vol. 1, p. 101] This did not change, even after the influx of working class members in 1917 the "incidence of middle-class activists increases at the highest echelons of the hierarchy of executive committees." [Robert Service, The Bolshevik Party in Revolution, p. 47] An ex-worker was a rare sight in the Bolshevik Central Committee, an actual worker non-existent. However, regardless of their original class background what unites the full-timers is not their origin but rather their current relationship with the working class, one of separation and hierarchy.

The organisational structure of this system was made clear at around the same time as What is to be Done?, with Lenin arguing that the factory group (or cell) of the party "must consist of a small number of revolutionaries, receiving direct from the [central] committee orders and power to conduct the whole social-democratic work in the factory. All members of the factory committee must regard themselves as agents of the [central] committee, bound to submit to all its directions, bound to observe all 'laws and customs' of this 'army in the field' in which they have entered and which they cannot leave without permission of the commander." [quoted by E.H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, vol. 1, p. 33] The similarities to the structure proposed by Lenin and agreed to by the Comintern in 1920 is obvious. Thus we have a highly centralised party, one run by "professional revolutionaries" from the top down (as we noted in section H.3.3 Lenin stressed that the organisational principle of Marxism was from top down).

It will be objected that Lenin was discussing the means of party building under Tsarism and advocated wider democracy under legality. However, given that in 1920 he universalised the Bolshevik experience and urged the creation of a dual party structure (based on legal and illegal structures), his comments on centralisation are applicable to vanguardism in general. Moreover, in 1902 he based his argument on experiences drawn from democratic capitalist regimes. As he argued, "no revolutionary organisation has ever practised broad democracy, nor could it, however much it desired to do so." This was not considered as just applicable in Russia under the Tsar as Lenin then goes on to quote the Webb's "book on trade unionism" in order to clarify what he calls "the confusion of ideas concerning the meaning of democracy." He notes that "in the first period of existence in their unions, the British workers thought it was an indispensable sign of democracy for all members to do all the work of managing the unions." This involved "all questions [being] decided by the votes of all the members" and all "official duties" being "fulfilled by all the members in turn." He dismisses "such a conception of democracy" as "absurd" and "historical experience" made them "understand the necessity for representative institutions" and "full-time professional officials." [Essential Works of Lenin, p. 161 and pp. 162-3]

Needless to say, Lenin links this to Kautsky, who "shows the need for professional journalists, parliamentarians, etc., for the Social-Democratic leadership of the proletarian class struggle" and who "attacks the 'socialism of anarchists and litterateurs' who . . . proclaim the principle that laws should be passed directly by the whole people, completely failing to understand that in modern society this principle can have only a relative application." [Op. Cit., p. 163] The universal nature of his dismissal of self-management within the revolutionary organisation in favour of representative forms is thus stressed.

Significantly, Lenin states that this "'primitive' conception of democracy" exists in two groups, the "masses of the students and workers" and the "Economists of the Bernstein persuasion" (i.e. reformists). Thus the idea of directly democratic working class organisations is associated with opportunism. He was generous, noting that he "would not, of course, . . . condemn practical workers who have had too few opportunities for studying the theory and practice of real [sic!] democratic [sic!] organisation" but individuals "play[ing] a leading role" in the movement should be so condemned! [Op. Cit., p. 163] These people should know better! Thus "real" democratic organisation implies the restriction of democracy to that of electing leaders and any attempt to widen the input of ordinary members is simply an expression of workers who need educating from their "primitive" failings!

In summary, we have a model of a "revolutionary" party which is based on full-time "professional revolutionaries" in which the concept of direct democracy is replaced by a system of, at best, representative democracy. It is highly centralised, as befitting a specialised organisation. As noted in section H.3.3, the "organisational principle of revolutionary Social-Democracy" was "to proceed from the top downward" rather than "from the bottom upward." [Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 7, pp. 396-7] Rather than being only applicable in Tsarist Russia, Lenin drew on examples from advanced, democratic capitalist countries to justify his model in 1902 and in 1920 he advocated a similar hierarchical and top-down organisation with a dual secret and public organisation in the Communist International. The continuity of ideas is clear.