Vanguards, get lost
Maybe it’s because our offices are situated there and it’s done to annoy or provoke us but the street furniture in Clapham High Street in South-West London is frequently the object of posters and stickers adorned with a hammer and sickle saying ‘Join the Communists’. Following the internet links given reveals they come from the ‘Revolutionary Communist Party’ and the ‘Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist)’. Recently they have been joined by a third, ‘Communist Vanguard’, apparently a split from the ‘Revolutionary Communist Group’.
All these, and perhaps up to 53 other varieties, claim to stand for an oxymoron they call ‘Marxism-Leninism’ and use the hammer and sickle as their logo. How oxymoronic they are can be seen by comparing what they say with what Marx and Engels wrote in 1848 in the Communist Manifesto:
‘All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority’.
This is how ‘Communist Vanguard’ introduces itself:
‘Our main task is to forge the future Communist Party, the revolutionary vanguard of the working class and the only organisation capable of leading the fight to destroy capitalism. For a Marxist-Leninist organisation, building the Party is inseparable from organising the working class. Only the proletariat, as the gravedigger of capitalism, possesses both the objective interest and the collective power to carry out a revolutionary transformation of society. To guide this process, we aim to create communist cadres capable of weaponising their theoretical understanding of capitalism and scientific socialism, clarifying central political questions for the working-class movement, establishing roots in labour organisations, and developing the theoretical and practical foundations necessary for revolutionary transformation.’
Pure Leninism: workers, incapable of organising themselves to overthrow capitalism, need a vanguard and its cadres (‘a small group of trained people who form the basic unit of a military, political, or business organisation’) to lead and guide them in this.
So it’s ‘the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority’ (Marx) versus ‘the revolutionary vanguard … the only organisation capable of leading the working class … To guide this process … communist cadres…’ (Lenin).
The contrast could not be starker and explains why ‘Marxism-Leninism’ is as much an oxymoron as a ‘square circle’.
The hammer and sickle was the logo of the Bolshevik Party which seized power in Russia in November 1917. This was a typical historical minority movement and led not to socialism but to state capitalism with the section of the cadres who won the internecine struggle that followed Lenin’s death in 1924 emerging as the new, privileged ruling class.
Capitalism wasn’t overthrown in Russia in 1917. It couldn’t have been as, in the absence of a world socialist revolution, it was ripe only for the further development of capitalism. How economically backward Russia was then was reflected in the Bolsheviks’ logo of a hammer to beat metal and a sickle to cut wheat.
It is difficult to see why the rival vanguards think that an ideology and logo that emerged over a hundred years ago in an economically backward part of the world could be attractive for workers today living in an advanced capitalist economy. Both ideology and logo are completely irrelevant.
The vanguards evidently have a high opinion of themselves to appoint themselves the leaders of the working class. The workers need them like they need a hole in the head. The answer of the working class to this arrogant pretention is simple: get lost.