            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 asserted, 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, pp. 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). 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 organising 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 role 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).

   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. It 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 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. We show that such claims are false.

   Secondly, there is the question of organisational structure. Vanguard
   parties are based on the principle of "democratic centralism".
   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.

   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.

   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. 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 struggle,
     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 intelligentsia: it was in 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]

   So Lenin, it must be stressed, was not inventing anything new here. He
   was simply repeating the orthodox Marxist position and, as is obvious,
   wholeheartedly agreed with Kautsky's pronouncements (any attempt to
   claim that he did not or later rejected it is nonsense, as we prove in
   [1]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. Without the radical
   bourgeois to provide the working class with "socialist" ideas, a
   socialist movement, let alone society, is impossible. 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. 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 intelligentsia). 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 periodically 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).

   Libertarian socialist 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." [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 [2]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 discussed in [3]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 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. Yet again, we have an image of the class as unthinking brute
   force. As the Cohen-Bendit brothers argued, 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
   [4]section H.5.8. 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 argued, 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 for "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 taken 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 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?

   Lenin claimed that workers can only reach a "trade union consciousness"
   by their own efforts. Anarchists argue 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
   as well as revolutionary theories derived from such experiences.

   The category of "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 with 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!

   The history of Bolshevism also helps discredit Lenin's argument that
   the workers cannot develop socialist consciousness alone due to the
   power of bourgeois ideology. 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. If social being influences
   consciousness then 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. 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 tendency for the "professional" revolutionary to be subject to
   bourgeois influences can continually be seen from the history of the
   Bolshevik party. As Trotsky himself noted:

     "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 was repeating earlier comments on 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." [History of the Russian
   Revolution, vol. 3, p. 134] As we discuss in [5]section H.5.12, 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
   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 ensured that "the opportunism which their mentality produces had
   been, and is, bound to exist." [Collected Works, vol. 7, pp. 403-4]
   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:

     "For 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
     Marxism, the ideology of the proletariat trained by capitalism, has
     been and is teaching . . . 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
     very easily acquired by the proletariat just because of this factory
     'schooling.'" [Op. Cit., pp. 392-3]

   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 - healthy
   and positive self-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. Workers become revolutionary in so far
   as they reject the hierarchical discipline of the workplace and develop
   the self-discipline required to fight it.

   A key task of anarchism is to 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. 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 [6]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 ones. 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 the leading Menshevik Martov
   "lumps together in the party organised and unorganised elements, those
   who lend themselves 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 transforming people into 'cogs and
   wheels.'" [Op. Cit., p. 258 and p. 392] 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 [7]section H.5.1, anarchists argue that the
   assumptions of vanguardism lead to party rule over the working class.
   Needless to say, followers of Lenin disagree. 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 libertarians 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 to explain how the proletariat can become the
   ruling class if this were 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."
   The "function of the party is not to be the state." [Op. Cit., p. 33]
   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 [8]section H.5.5,
   Lenin linked "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
   [9]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, Harman 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] It would be churlish to note that, firstly, the party had
   already imposed its dictatorship on the working class by that time and,
   secondly, his own party is regularly attacked by its own dissidents for
   being bureaucratic (see [10]section H.5.11).

   Significantly, this substitution of the rule of the party for working
   class self-government and the party apparatus for the party membership
   does not happen by accident. In order to have a socialist revolution,
   the working class as a whole must participate in the process so 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. So 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, to "assume power", (see [11]section H.3.3). 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. 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 noted that within the state, "the last word belongs to the Central
   Committee of the party." [Op. Cit., p. 107] As we discuss in
   [12]section H.3.8, he held this position into the 1930s.

   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
   [13]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:

     "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 this substitution was less of a concern for
   him! Which, however, does not deny the insight Trotsky had previously
   showed 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 eliminated 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 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 [14]section H.6.1, the Bolshevik party had been
   gerrymandering and disbanding soviets before the start of the Civil
   War, so proving that the war 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. In the process of struggle,
   the working class changes its perspectives. This process is uneven in
   both quantity and quality, but it does happen. However, 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 argue in [15]section J.3, anarchists
   acknowledge that political development within the working class is
   uneven. The difference between anarchism and Leninism is how we see
   socialist ideas developing and how revolutionaries influence that
   process.

   In every class struggle there is a radical minority which takes the
   lead and many of this minority 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 spread, discuss and
   revise its 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 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?

   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? (WITBD) 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 shows, this underlying
   premise was much stronger than any democratic-sounding rhetoric).

   It is for this reason that many Leninists are somewhat embarrassed by
   Lenin's argument in that key text. Hence we see Chris Harman writing
   that "the real theoretical basis for [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 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.
   [Collected Works, vol. 6, p. 491] He repeated this in 1907, as we will
   discuss shortly. 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 by 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 argued 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 called 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 [16]section
   H.5.1, is the root of the anti-socialist basis of Leninism.

   So what did Draper say? On the one hand, he denied that Lenin held this
   theory (he states that it is a "virtually non-existent theory" and
   "non-existent after WITBD"). He argued that those who hold the position
   that Lenin actually meant what he said in his book "never quote
   anything other than WITBD," and stated that this is a "curious fact" (a
   fact we will disprove shortly). Draper argued as follows: "Did Lenin
   put this theory forward even in WITBD? Not exactly." He then noted 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 and so "Lenin first paraphrased Kautsky"
   before "quot[ing] 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] By explicitly 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 speculated 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
   these assumptions to their logical conclusions.

   How, after showing the obvious fact that "the crucial 'Leninist' theory
   was really Kautsky's," he then wondered: "Did Lenin, in WITBD, adopt
   Kautsky's theory?" He answered 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 tried to combat it. "Certainly," he
   argued, "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 was not refuting Kautsky. Thus Proudhon adds to socialist
   ideology in so far as he is a "socialist theoretician" and not a
   worker! How clear can you be? This can be seen from the rest of the
   sentence Draper truncates. Lenin continued by noting that 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." {

   Op. Cit.
   , p. 82f] 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 (sometimes even
   develop it). 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 reiterated Kautsky's argument
   rather than, as Draper hoped, refute it.

   Draper turns to another footnote, which he noted "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 argued 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.

   Lenin's footnote stressed, in a part Draper did not consider it wise to
   quote, that workers appreciate socialist theory "provided, however,
   that this theory does not step aside for spontaneity and provided it
   subordinates spontaneity to itself." [Op. Cit., p. 84f] 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. The workers adjust to socialist theory, they do not create
   it. Thus, rather than refuting Kautsky by the backdoor, Lenin in this
   footnote still agreed 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 party "subordinates spontaneity to
   itself."

   Draper argued 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 asserted that "[a]ll that was clear at this point was that
   Lenin was justifiably dissatisfied with the formulation of Kautsky's
   theory," he was simply expressing wishful thinking. This footnote, like
   the first one, continued the argument developed by Lenin in the main
   text and in no way is in contradiction to it. As is obvious.

   Draper as final evidence of his case asserted 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 [WITBD]. 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? This, as we will see, 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 argued 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 stressed 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 was 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 was right, then Lenin would have taken the opportunity to
   attack Stalin's article and express the alternative viewpoint Draper
   was convinced he held. Lenin, however, 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 agreed with Stalin's summary of his argument,
   writing that "social being determines consciousness . . . Socialist
   consciousness corresponds to the position of the proletariat" before
   quoting Stalin: "'Who can and does evolve this consciousness
   (scientific socialism)?'" He answers by again approvingly quoting
   Stalin: "its 'evolution' is a matter for a few Social-Democratic
   intellectuals who posses the necessary means and time.'" Lenin did
   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 reiterated 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 argued that his book "straightens out what had
   been twisted by the Economists," (who had "gone to one extreme") he did
   not correct his earlier 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 WITBD
   (see [17]section H.5.5). 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 (see [18]section H.3.3).

   For Draper, the key problem was 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 argued 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. 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--vis
   the working class and so the elitism remains.

   Somewhat ironically given how much Draper is at pains to distance his
   hero Lenin from claims of elitism, he himself agreed with the arguments
   of Kautsky and Lenin. For Draper socialism did not develop out of the
   class struggle: "As 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." This was true. Plekhanov, the father of
   Russian Marxism, made similar arguments to Kautsky's before Lenin put
   pen to paper. For Plekhanov, the socialist intelligentsia "will bring
   consciousness into the working class." It must "become the leader of
   the working class" and "explain to it its political and economic
   interests." This would "prepare them to play an independent role in the
   social life of Russia." [quoted by Neil Harding, Lenin's Political
   Thought, vol. 1, p. 50 and p. 51]

   As one expert notes, "Lenin's position . . . did not differ in any
   essentials" from those "Plekhanov had himself expressed." Its "basic
   theses were his own", namely that it is "clear from Plekhanov's writing
   that it was the intelligentsia which virtually created the working
   class movement in its conscious form. It brought it science,
   revolutionary theory and organisation." In summary, "Lenin's views of
   the Party . . . are not to be regarded as extraordinary, innovatory,
   perverse, essentially Jacobin or unorthodox. On the contrary" they were
   "the touchstone of orthodoxy" and so "what it [What is to be Done?]
   presented at the time" was "a restatement of the principles of Russian
   Marxist orthodoxy." By quoting Kautsky, Lenin also proved that he was
   simply repeating the general Marxist orthodoxy: "Those who dispute
   Lenin's conclusions on the genesis of socialist consciousness must it
   seems, also dispute Kautsky's claim to represent Social-Democratic
   orthodoxy." [Harding, Op. Cit., p. 170, p. 172, pp. 50-1, p. 187, p.
   188, p. 189 and p. 169]

   Moreover, Engels wrote some interesting words in the 1840s on this
   issue which places the subsequent development of Marxism into sharper
   light. He noted that "it is evident that the working-men's movement is
   divided into two sections, the Chartists and the Socialists. The
   Chartists are theoretically the more backward, the less developed, but
   they are genuine proletarians . . . The Socialists are more far-seeing
   . . . but proceeding originally from the bourgeoisie, are for this
   reason unable to amalgamate completely with the working class. The
   union of Socialism with Chartism . . . will be the next step . . .
   Then, only when this has been achieved, will the working class be the
   true intellectual leader of England." Thus socialist ideas have to be
   introduced into the proletariat, as they are "more backward" and cannot
   be expected to develop theory for themselves! In the same year, he
   expounded on what this "union" would entail, writing in an Owenite
   paper that "the union between the German philosophers . . . and the
   German working men . . . is all but accomplished. With the philosophers
   to think, and the working mean to fight for us, will any earthly power
   be strong enough to resist our progress?" [Collected Works, vol. 4, pp.
   526-7 and p. 236] This, of course, fits in with the Communist
   Manifesto's assertion that "a small section of the ruling class cuts
   itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class." Today, this "portion
   of the bourgeois ideologists" have "raised themselves to the level of
   comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole." [The
   Marx-Engels Reader, p. 481] This, needless to say, places "bourgeois
   ideologists" (like Marx, Engels, Kautsky and Lenin) in a privileged
   position within the movement and has distinctly vanguardist
   undercurrents.

   Seemingly unaware how this admission destroyed his case, Draper went on
   to ask: "But what followed from those facts?" To which he argued 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 argued that Marx, Engels, Kautsky and Lenin
   all held to the "same facts" that socialist consciousness developed
   outside the experiences of the working classes!

   Ultimately, the whole rationale for the kind of wishful thinking that
   Draper inflicted 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 was wrong. Lenin did, as indicated above, actually
   meant what he said in WITBD. The fact that Lenin quoted Kautsky simply
   shows, as Lenin intended, that this position was the orthodox Social
   Democratic one, held by the mainstream of the party (one with roots in
   Marx and Engels). 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 -
   why do we need facts when we have the true faith?

H.5.5 What is "democratic centralism"?

   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."
   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 [19]section H.2.14, the Communist Party was expected to
   have a dual structure, one legal and the other illegal. 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 than democratic as the illegal would have
   the real power within the organisation.

   All this has clear parallels with Lenin's What is to be done?, where he
   argued 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 noted, "specialisation necessarily presupposes
   centralisation, and in its turn imperatively calls for it." Such a
   centralised organisation would need leaders and Lenin argued 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." This does not mean that these 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."
   [Essential Works of Lenin, p. 158, p. 153, p. 147, p. 148 and 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 noted 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, Op. Cit., 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.

   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 noted
   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
   dismissed "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 linked 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." The universal nature
   of his dismissal of self-management within the revolutionary
   organisation in favour of representative forms is thus stressed.
   Significantly, Lenin stated 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
   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 [20]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.

H.5.6 Why do anarchists oppose "democratic centralism"?

   What to make of Lenin's suggested model of "democratic centralism"
   discussed in the [21]last section? It is, to use Cornelius
   Castoriadis's term, a "revolutionary party organised on a capitalist
   manner" and so in practice the "democratic centralist" party, while
   being centralised, will not be very democratic. In fact, the level of
   democracy would reflect that in a capitalist republic rather than a
   socialist society:

     "The dividing up of tasks, which is indispensable wherever there is
     a need for co-operation, becomes a real division of labour, the
     labour of giving orders being separate from that of carrying them
     out . . . this division between directors and executants tends to
     broaden and deepen by itself. The leaders specialise in their role
     and become indispensable while those who carry out orders become
     absorbed in their concrete tasks. Deprived of information, of the
     general view of the situation, and of the problems of organisation,
     arrested in their development by their lack of participation in the
     overall life of the Party, the organisation's rank-and-file
     militants less and less have the means or the possibility of having
     any control over those at the top.

     "This division of labour is supposed to be limited by 'democracy.'
     But democracy, which should mean that the majority rules, is reduced
     to meaning that the majority designates its rulers; copied in this
     way from the model of bourgeois parliamentary democracy, drained of
     any real meaning, it quickly becomes a veil thrown over the
     unlimited power of the rulers. The base does not run the
     organisation just because once a year it elects delegates who
     designate the central committee, no more than the people are
     sovereign in a parliamentary-type republic because they periodically
     elect deputies who designate the government.

     "Let us consider, for example, 'democratic centralism' as it is
     supposed to function in an ideal Leninist party. That the central
     committee is designated by a 'democratically elected' congress makes
     no difference since, once it is elected, it has complete (statutory)
     control over the body of the Party (and can dissolve the base
     organisations, kick out militants, etc.) or that, under such
     conditions, it can determine the composition of the next congress.
     The central committee could use its powers in an honourable way,
     these powers could be reduced; the members of the Party might enjoy
     'political rights' such as being able to form factions, etc.
     Fundamentally this would not change the situation, for the central
     committee would still remain the organ that defines the political
     line of the organisation and controls its application from top to
     bottom, that, in a word, has permanent monopoly on the job of
     leadership. The expression of opinions only has a limited value once
     the way the group functions prevents this opinion from forming on
     solid bases, i.e. permanent participation in the organisation's
     activities and in the solution of problems that arise. If the way
     the organisation is run makes the solution of general problems the
     specific task and permanent work of a separate category of
     militants, only their opinion will, or will appear, to count to the
     others."
     [Castoriadis, Social and Political Writings, vol. 2, pp. 204-5]

   Castoriadis' insight is important and strikes at the heart of the
   problem with vanguard parties. They simply reflect the capitalist
   society they claim to represent. As such, Lenin's argument against
   "primitive" democracy in the revolutionary and labour movements is
   significant. When he asserts that those who argue for direct democracy
   "completely" fail to "understand that in modern society this principle
   can have only a relative application," he is letting the cat out of the
   bag. [Lenin, Op. Cit., p. 163] After all, "modern society" is
   capitalism, a class society. In such a society, it is understandable
   that self-management should not be applied as it strikes at the heart
   of class society and how it operates. That Lenin can appeal to "modern
   society" without recognising its class basis says a lot. The question
   becomes, if such a "principle" is valid for a class system, is it
   applicable in a socialist society and in the movement aiming to create
   such a society? Can we postpone the application of our ideas until
   "after the revolution" or can the revolution only occur when we apply
   our socialist principles in resisting class society?

   In a nutshell, can the same set of organisational structures be used
   for the different ends? Can bourgeois structures be considered neutral
   or have they, in fact, evolved to ensure and protect minority rule?
   Ultimately, form and content are not independent of each other. Form
   and content adapt to fit each other and they cannot be divorced in
   reality. Thus, if the bourgeoisie embrace centralisation and
   representation they have done so because it fits perfectly with their
   specific form of class society. Neither centralisation and
   representation can undermine minority rule and, if they did, they would
   quickly be eliminated.

   Interestingly, both Bukharin and Trotsky acknowledged that fascism had
   appropriated Bolshevik ideas. The former demonstrated at the 12th
   Congress of the Communist Party in 1923 how Italian fascism had
   "adopted and applied in practice the experiences of the Russian
   revolution" in terms of their "methods of combat." In fact, "[i]f one
   regards them from the formal point of view, that is, from the point of
   view of the technique of their political methods, then one discovers in
   them a complete application of Bolshevik tactics. . . in the sense of
   the rapid concentration of forced [and] energetic action of a tightly
   structured military organisation." [quoted by R. Pipes, Russia Under
   the Bolshevik Regime, 1919-1924, p. 253] The latter, in his uncompleted
   biography on Stalin noted that "Mussolini stole from the Bolsheviks . .
   . Hitler imitated the Bolsheviks and Mussolini." [Stalin, vol. 2, p.
   243] The question arises as to whether the same tactics and structures
   serve both the needs of fascist reaction and socialist revolution? Now,
   if Bolshevism can serve as a model for fascism, it must contain
   structural and functional elements which are also common to fascism.
   After all, no one has detected a tendency of Hitler or Mussolini, in
   their crusade against democracy, the organised labour movement and the
   left, to imitate the organisational principles of anarchism.

   Surely we can expect decisive structural differences to exist between
   capitalism and socialism if these societies are to have different aims.
   Where one is centralised to facilitate minority rule, the other must be
   decentralised and federal to facilitate mass participation. Where one
   is top-down, the other must be from the bottom-up. If a "socialism"
   exists which uses bourgeois organisational elements then we should not
   be surprised if it turns out to be socialist in name only. The same
   applies to revolutionary organisations. As the anarchists of Trotwatch
   explain:

     "In reality, a Leninist Party simply reproduces and
     institutionalises existing capitalist power relations inside a
     supposedly 'revolutionary' organisation: between leaders and led;
     order givers and order takers; between specialists and the
     acquiescent and largely powerless party workers. And that elitist
     power relation is extended to include the relationship between the
     party and class." [Carry on Recruiting!, p. 41]

   If you have an organisation which celebrates centralisation, having an
   institutionalised "leadership" separate from the mass of members
   becomes inevitable. Thus the division of labour which exists in the
   capitalist workplace or state is created. Forms cannot and do not exist
   independently of people and so imply specific forms of social
   relationships within them. These social relationships shape those
   subject to them. Can we expect the same forms of authority to have
   different impacts simply because the organisation has "socialist" or
   "revolutionary" in its name? Of course not. It is for this reason that
   anarchists argue that only in a "libertarian socialist movement the
   workers learn about non-dominating forms of association through
   creating and experimenting with forms such as libertarian labour
   organisations, which put into practice, through struggle against
   exploitation, principles of equality and free association." [John
   Clark, The Anarchist Moment, p. 79]

   As noted above, a "democratic centralist" party requires that the
   "lower" party bodies (cells, branches, etc.) should be subordinate to
   the higher ones (e.g. the central committee). The higher bodies are
   elected at the (usually) annual conference. As it is impossible to
   mandate for future developments, the higher bodies therefore are given
   carte blanche to determine policy which is binding on the whole party
   (hence the "from top-down" principle). In between conferences, the job
   of full time (ideally elected, but not always) officers is to lead the
   party and carry out the policy decided by the central committee. At the
   next conference, the party membership can show its approval of the
   leadership by electing another. The problems with this scheme are
   numerous:

     "The first problem is the issue of hierarchy. Why should 'higher'
     party organs interpret party policy any more accurately than 'lower'
     ones? The pat answer is that the 'higher' bodies compromise the most
     capable and experienced members and are (from their lofty heights)
     in a better position to take an overall view on a given issue. In
     fact what may well happen is that, for example, central committee
     members may be more isolated from the outside world than mere branch
     members. This might ordinarily be the case because given the fact
     than many central committee members are full timers and therefore
     detached from more real issues such as making a living . . ." [ACF,
     Marxism and its Failures, p. 8]

   Equally, in order that the "higher" bodies can evaluate the situation
   they need effective information from the "lower" bodies. If the "lower"
   bodies are deemed incapable of formulating their own policies, how can
   they be wise enough, firstly, to select the right leaders and,
   secondly, determine the appropriate information to communicate to the
   "higher" bodies? Given the assumptions for centralised power in the
   party, can we not see that "democratic centralised" parties will be
   extremely inefficient in practice as information and knowledge is lost
   in the party machine and whatever decisions which are reached at the
   top are made in ignorance of the real situation on the ground? As we
   discuss in [22]section H.5.8, this is usually the fate of such parties.

   Within the party, as noted, the role of "professional revolutionaries"
   (or "full timers") is stressed. As Lenin argued, any worker which
   showed any talent must be removed from the workplace and become a party
   functionary. Is it surprising that the few Bolshevik cadres (i.e.
   professional revolutionaries) of working class origin soon lost real
   contact with the working class? Equally, what will their role within
   the party be? As we discuss in [23]section H.5.12, their role in the
   Bolshevik party was essentially conservative in nature and aimed to
   maintain their own position.

   That the anarchist critique of "democratic centralism" is valid, we
   need only point to the comments and analysis of numerous members (and
   often soon to be ex-members) of such parties. Thus we get a continual
   stream of articles discussing why specific parties are, in fact,
   "bureaucratic centralist" rather than "democratic centralist"
   and what is required to reform them. That every "democratic centralist"
   party in existence is not that democratic does not hinder their
   attempts to create one which is. In a way, the truly "democratic
   centralist" party is the Holy Grail of modern Leninism. As we discuss
   in [24]section H.5.10, their goal may be as mythical as that of the
   Arthurian legends.

H.5.7 Is the way revolutionaries organise important?

   As we discussed in the [25]last section, anarchists argue that the way
   revolutionaries organise today is important. However, according to some
   of Lenin's followers, the fact that the "revolutionary" party is
   organised in a non-revolutionary manner does not matter. In the words
   of Chris Harman, a leading member of the British Socialist Workers
   Party, "[e]xisting under capitalism, the revolutionary organisation
   [i.e. the vanguard party] will of necessity have a quite different
   structure to that of the workers' state that will arise in the process
   of overthrowing capitalism." [Party and Class, p. 34]

   However, in practice this distinction is impossible to make. If the
   party is organised in specific ways then it is so because this is
   conceived to be "efficient," "practical" and so on. Hence we find Lenin
   arguing against "backwardness in organisation" and that the "point at
   issue is whether our ideological struggle is to have forms of a higher
   type to clothe it, forms of Party organisation binding on all." Why
   would the "workers' state" be based on "backward" or "lower" kinds of
   organisational forms? If, as Lenin remarked, "the organisational
   principle of revolutionary Social-Democracy" was "to proceed from the
   top downward", why would the party, once in power, reject its
   "organisational principle" in favour of one it thinks is "opportunist,"
   "primitive" and so on? [Collected Works, vol. 7, p. 389, p. 388 and pp.
   396-7]

   Therefore, as the vanguard the party represents the level to which the
   working class is supposed to reach then its organisational principles
   must, similarly, be those which the class must reach. As such, Harman's
   comments are incredulous. How we organise today is hardly irrelevant,
   particularly if the revolutionary organisation in question seeks (to
   use Lenin's words) to "tak[e] full state power alone." [Op. Cit., vol.
   26, p. 94] These prejudices (and the political and organisational
   habits they generate) will influence the shaping of the "workers'
   state" by the party once it has taken power. This decisive influence of
   the party and its ideological as well as organisational assumptions can
   be seen when Trotsky argued in 1923 that "the party created the state
   apparatus and can rebuild it anew . . . from the party you get the
   state, but not the party from the state." [Leon Trotsky Speaks, p. 161]
   This is to be expected, after all the aim of the party is to take, hold
   and execute power. Given that the vanguard party is organised as it is
   to ensure effectiveness and efficiency, why should we assume that the
   ruling party will not seek to recreate these organisational principles
   once in power? As the Russian Revolution proves, this is the case (see
   [26]section H.6)

   To claim how we organise under capitalism is not important to a
   revolutionary movement is simply not true. The way revolutionaries
   organise have an impact both on themselves and how they will view the
   revolution developing. An ideological prejudice for centralisation and
   "top-down" organisation will not disappear once the revolution starts.
   Rather, it will influence the way the party acts within it and, if it
   aims to seize power, how it will exercise that power once it has.

   For these reasons anarchists stress the importance of building the new
   world in the shell of the old (see [27]section H.1.6). All
   organisations create social relationships which shape their
   memberships. As the members of these parties will be part of the
   revolutionary process, they will influence how that revolution will
   develop and any "transitional" institutions which are created. As the
   aim of such organisations is to facilitate the creation of socialism,
   the obvious implication is that the revolutionary organisation must,
   itself, reflect the society it is trying to create. Clearly, then, the
   idea that how we organise as revolutionaries today can be considered
   somehow independent of the revolutionary process and the nature of
   post-capitalist society and its institutions cannot be maintained
   (particularly if the aim of the "revolutionary" organisation is to
   seize power on behalf of the working class).

   As we argue elsewhere (see [28]section J.3) anarchists argue for
   revolutionary groups based on self-management, federalism and decision
   making from below. In other words, we apply within our organisations
   the same principles as those which the working class has evolved in the
   course of its own struggles. Autonomy is combined with federalism, so
   ensuring co-ordination of decisions and activities is achieved from
   below upwards by means of mandated and recallable delegates. Effective
   co-operation is achieved as it is informed by and reflects the needs on
   the ground. Simply put, working class organisation and discipline - as
   exemplified by the workers' council or strike committee - represents a
   completely different thing from capitalist organisation and discipline,
   of which Leninists are constantly asking for more (albeit draped with
   the Red Flag and labelled "revolutionary"). And as we discuss in the
   [29]next section, the Leninist model of top-down centralised parties is
   marked more by its failures than its successes, suggesting that not
   only is the vanguard model undesirable, it is also unnecessary.

H.5.8 Are vanguard parties effective?

   In a word, no. Vanguard parties have rarely been proven to be effective
   organs for fermenting revolutionary change which is, let us not forget,
   their stated purpose. Indeed, rather than being in the vanguard of
   social struggle, the Leninist parties are often the last to recognise,
   let alone understand, the initial stirrings of important social
   movements and events. It is only once these movements have exploded in
   the streets that the self-proclaimed "vanguards" notice them and decide
   they require the party's leadership.

   Part of this process are constant attempts to install their political
   program onto movements that they do not understand, movements that have
   proven to be successful using different tactics and methods of
   organisation. Rather than learn from the experiences of others, social
   movements are seen as raw material, as a source of new party members,
   to be used in order to advance the party rather than the autonomy and
   combativeness of the working class. This process was seen in the
   "anti-globalisation" or "anti-capitalist" movement at the end of the
   20th century. This started without the help of these self-appointed
   vanguards, who once it appeared spent a lot of time trying to catch up
   with the movement while criticising its proven organisational
   principles and tactics.

   The reasons for such behaviour are not too difficult to find. They lie
   in the organisational structure favoured by these parties and the
   mentality lying behind them. As anarchists have long argued, a
   centralised, top-down structure will simply be unresponsive to the
   needs of those in struggle. The inertia associated with the party
   hierarchy will ensure that it responds slowly to new developments and
   its centralised structure means that the leadership is isolated from
   what is happening on the ground and cannot respond appropriately. The
   underlying assumption of the vanguard party, namely that the party
   represents the interests of the working class, makes it unresponsive to
   new developments within the class struggle. As Lenin argued that
   spontaneous working class struggle tends to reformism, the leaders of a
   vanguard party automatically are suspicious of new developments which,
   by their very nature, rarely fit into previously agreed models of
   "proletarian" struggle. The example of Bolshevik hostility to the
   soviets spontaneously formed by workers during the 1905 Russian
   revolution is one of the best known examples of this tendency.

   Murray Bookchin is worth quoting at length on this subject:

     "The 'glorious party,' when there is one, almost invariably lags
     behind the events . . . In the beginning . . . it tends to have an
     inhibitory function, not a 'vanguard' role. Where it exercises
     influence, it tends to slow down the flow of events, not 'co-
     ordinate' the revolutionary forces. This is not accidental. The
     party is structured along hierarchical lines that reflect the very
     society it professes to oppose. Despite its theoretical pretensions,
     it is a bourgeois organism, a miniature state, with an apparatus and
     a cadre whose function it is to seize power, not dissolve power.
     Rooted in the pre-revolutionary period, it assimilates all the
     forms, techniques and mentality of bureaucracy. Its membership is
     schooled in obedience and in the preconceptions of a rigid dogma and
     is taught to revere the leadership. The party's leadership, in turn,
     is schooled in habits born of command, authority, manipulation and
     egomania. This situation is worsened when the party participates in
     parliamentary elections. In election campaigns, the vanguard party
     models itself completely on existing bourgeois forms and even
     acquires the paraphernalia of the electoral party. . .

     "As the party expands, the distance between the leadership and the
     ranks inevitably increases. Its leaders not only become
     'personages,' they lose contact with the living situation below. The
     local groups, which know their own immediate situation better than
     any remote leaders, are obliged to subordinate their insights to
     directives from above. The leadership, lacking any direct knowledge
     of local problems, responds sluggishly and prudently. Although it
     stakes out a claim to the 'larger view,' to greater 'theoretical
     competence,' the competence of the leadership tends to diminish as
     one ascends the hierarchy of command. The more one approaches the
     level where the real decisions are made, the more conservative is
     the nature of the decision-making process, the more bureaucratic and
     extraneous are the factors which come into play, the more
     considerations of prestige and retrenchment supplant creativity,
     imagination, and a disinterested dedication to revolutionary goals.

     "The party becomes less efficient from a revolutionary point of view
     the more it seeks efficiency by means of hierarchy, cadres and
     centralisation. Although everyone marches in step, the orders are
     usually wrong, especially when events begin to move rapidly and take
     unexpected turns - as they do in all revolutions. . .

     "On the other hand, this kind of party is extremely vulnerable in
     periods of repression. The bourgeoisie has only to grab its
     leadership to destroy virtually the entire movement. With its
     leaders in prison or in hiding, the party becomes paralysed; the
     obedient membership has no one to obey and tends to flounder.
     Demoralisation sets in rapidly. The party decomposes not only
     because of the repressive atmosphere but also because of its poverty
     of inner resources.

     "The foregoing account is not a series of hypothetical inferences,
     it is a composite sketch of all the mass Marxian parties of the past
     century - the Social Democrats, the Communists and the Trotskyist
     party of Ceylon (the only mass party of its kind). To claim that
     these parties failed to take their Marxian principles seriously
     merely conceals another question: why did this failure happen in the
     first place? The fact is, these parties were co-opted into bourgeois
     society because they were structured along bourgeois lines. The germ
     of treachery existed in them from birth."
     [Post-Scarcity Anarchism, pp. 123-6]

   The evidence Bookchin summarises suggests that vanguard parties are
   less than efficient in promoting revolutionary change. Sluggish,
   unresponsive, undemocratic, they simply cannot adjust to the dynamic
   nature of social struggle, never mind revolution. This is to be
   expected:

     "For the state centralisation is the appropriate form of
     organisation, since it aims at the greatest possible uniformity in
     social life for the maintenance of political and social equilibrium.
     But for a movement whose very existence depends on prompt action at
     any favourable moment and on the independent thought and action of
     its supporters, centralism could but be a curse by weakening its
     power of decision and systematically repressing all immediate
     action. If, for example, as was the case in Germany, every local
     strike had first to be approved by the Central, which was often
     hundreds of miles away and was not usually in a position to pass a
     correct judgement on the local conditions, one cannot wonder that
     the inertia of the apparatus of organisation renders a quick attack
     quite impossible, and there thus arises a state of affairs where the
     energetic and intellectually alert groups no longer serve as
     patterns for the less active, but are condemned by these to
     inactivity, inevitably bringing the whole movement to stagnation.
     Organisation is, after all, only a means to an end. When it becomes
     an end in itself, it kills the spirit and the vital initiative of
     its members and sets up that domination by mediocrity which is the
     characteristic of all bureaucracies." [Rudolf Rocker,
     Anarcho-Syndicalism, p. 61]

   As we discuss in [30]section H.5.12, the example of the Bolshevik party
   during the Russian Revolution amply proves Rocker's point. Rather than
   being a highly centralised, disciplined vanguard party, the Bolshevik
   party was marked by extensive autonomy throughout its ranks. Party
   discipline was regularly ignored, including by Lenin in his attempts to
   get the central party bureaucracy to catch up with the spontaneous
   revolutionary actions and ideas of the Russian working class. As
   Bookchin summarised, the "Bolshevik leadership was ordinarily extremely
   conservative, a trait that Lenin had to fight throughout 1917 - first
   in his efforts to reorient the Central Committee against the
   provisional government (the famous conflict over the 'April Theses'),
   later in driving the Central Committee toward insurrection in October.
   In both cases he threatened to resign from the Central Committee and
   bring his views to 'the lower ranks of the party.'" Once in power,
   however, "the Bolsheviks tended to centralise their party to the degree
   that they became isolated from the working class." [Op. Cit., pp. 126
   and p. 127]

   The "vanguard" model of organising is not only inefficient and
   ineffective from a revolutionary perspective, it generates bureaucratic
   and elitist tendencies which undermine any revolution unfortunate
   enough to be dominated by such a party. For these extremely practical
   and sensible reasons anarchists reject it wholeheartedly. As we discuss
   in the [31]next section, the only thing vanguard parties are effective
   at is to supplant the diversity produced and required by revolutionary
   movements with the drab conformity produced by centralisation and to
   replace popular power and freedom with party power and tyranny.

H.5.9 What are vanguard parties effective at?

   As we discussed the [32]last section, vanguard parties are not
   efficient as agents of revolutionary change. So, it may be asked, what
   are vanguard parties effective at? If they are harmful to revolutionary
   struggle, what are they good at? The answer to this is simple. No
   anarchist would deny that vanguard parties are extremely efficient and
   effective at certain things, most notably reproducing hierarchy and
   bourgeois values into so-called "revolutionary" organisations and
   movements. As Murray Bookchin put it, the party "is efficient in only
   one respect - in moulding society in its own hierarchical image if the
   revolution is successful. It recreates bureaucracy, centralisation and
   the state. It fosters the very social conditions which justify this
   kind of society. Hence, instead of 'withering away,' the state
   controlled by the 'glorious party' preserves the very conditions which
   'necessitate' the existence of a state - and a party to 'guard' it."
   [Post-Scarcity Anarchism, pp. 125-6]

   By being structured along hierarchical lines that reflect the very
   system that it professes to oppose, the vanguard party very
   "effectively" reproduces that system within both the current radical
   social movements and any revolutionary society that may be created.
   This means that once in power, it shapes society in its own image.
   Ironically, this tendency towards conservatism and bureaucracy was
   noted by Trotsky:

     "As often happens, a sharp cleavage developed between the classes in
     motion and the interests of the party machines. Even the Bolshevik
     Party cadres, who enjoyed the benefit of exceptional revolutionary
     training, were definitely inclined to disregard the masses and to
     identify their own special interests and the interests of the
     machine on the very day after the monarchy was overthrown. What,
     then, could be expected of these cadres when they became an
     all-powerful state bureaucracy?" [Stalin, vol. 1, p. 298]

   In such circumstances, it is unsurprising that urging party power and
   identifying it with working class power would have less than
   revolutionary results. Discussing the Bolsheviks in 1905 Trotsky points
   out this tendency existed from the start:

     "The habits peculiar to a political machine were already forming in
     the underground. The young revolutionary bureaucrat was already
     emerging as a type. The conditions of conspiracy, true enough,
     offered rather merge scope for such formalities of democracy as
     electiveness, accountability and control. Yet, undoubtedly the
     committeemen narrowed these limitations considerably more than
     necessity demanded and were far more intransigent and severe with
     the revolutionary workingmen than with themselves, preferring to
     domineer even on occasions that called for lending an attentive ear
     to the voice of the masses." [Op. Cit., p. 101]

   He quoted Krupskaya, a party member, on these party bureaucrats, the
   "committeemen." Krupskaya stated that "as a rule" they "did not
   recognise any party democracy" and "did not want any innovations. The
   'committeeman' did not desire, and did not know how to, adapt himself
   to rapidly changing conditions." [quoted by Trotsky, Op. Cit., p. 101]
   This conservatism played havoc in the party during 1917, incidentally.
   It would be no exaggeration to argue that the Russian revolution
   occurred in spite of, rather than because of, Bolshevik organisational
   principles (see [33]section H.5.12). These principles, however, came
   into their own once the party had seized power, ensuring the
   consolidation of bureaucratic rule by an elite.

   That a vanguard party helps to produces a bureaucratic regime once in
   power should not come as a surprise. If the party, to use Trotsky's
   expression, exhibits a "caste tendency of the committeemen" can we be
   surprised if once in power it reproduces such a tendency in the state
   it is now the master of? [Op. Cit., p. 102] And this "tendency" can be
   seen today in the multitude of Leninist sects that exist.

H.5.10 Why does "democratic centralism" produce "bureaucratic centralism"?

   In spite of the almost ritualistic assertions that vanguard parties are
   "the most democratic the world has seen," an army of ex-members,
   expelled dissidents and disgruntled members testify that they do not
   live up to the hype. They argue that most, if not all, "vanguard"
   parties are not "democratic centralist" but are, in fact, "bureaucratic
   centralist." Within the party, in other words, a bureaucratic clique
   controls it from the top-down with little democratic control, never
   mind participation. For anarchists, this is hardly surprising. The
   reasons why this continually happens are rooted in the nature of
   "democratic centralism" itself.

   Firstly, the assumption of "democratic centralism" is that the
   membership elect a leadership and give them the power to decide policy
   between conferences and congresses. This has a subtle impact on the
   membership, as it is assumed that the leadership has a special insight
   into social problems above and beyond that of anyone else, otherwise
   they would not have been elected to such an important position. Thus
   many in the membership come to believe that disagreements with the
   leadership's analysis, even before they had been clearly articulated,
   are liable to be wrong. Doubt dares not speak its name. Unquestioning
   belief in the party leadership has been an all to common recurring
   theme in many accounts of vanguard parties. The hierarchical structure
   of the party promotes a hierarchical mentality in its members.

   Conformity within such parties is also reinforced by the intense
   activism expected by members, particularly leading activists and
   full-time members. Paradoxically, the more deeply people participate in
   activism, the harder it becomes to reflect on what they are doing. The
   unrelenting pace often induces exhaustion and depression, while making
   it harder to "think your way out" - too many commitments have been made
   and too little time is left over from party activity for reflection.
   Moreover, high levels of activism prevent many, particularly the most
   committed, from having a personal life outside their role as party
   members. This high-speed political existence means that rival social
   networks atrophy through neglect, so ensuring that the party line is
   the only perspective which members get exposed to. Members tend to
   leave, typically, because of exhaustion, crisis, even despair rather
   than as the result of rational reflection and conscious decision.

   Secondly, given that vanguard parties are based on the belief that they
   are the guardians of "scientific socialism," this means that there is a
   tendency to squeeze all of social life into the confines of the party's
   ideology. Moreover, as the party's ideology is a "science" it is
   expected to explain everything (hence the tendency of Leninists to
   expound on every subject imaginable, regardless of whether the author
   knows enough about the subject to discuss it in an informed way). The
   view that the party's ideology explains everything eliminates the need
   for fresh or independent thought, precludes the possibility of
   critically appraising past practice or acknowledging mistakes, and
   removes the need to seek meaningful intellectual input outside the
   party's own ideological fortress. As Victor Serge, anarchist turned
   Bolshevik, admitted in his memoirs: "Bolshevik thinking is grounded in
   the possession of the truth. The Party is the repository of truth, and
   any form of thinking which differs from it is a dangerous or
   reactionary error. Here lies the spiritual source of its intolerance.
   The absolute conviction of its lofty mission assures it of a moral
   energy quite astonishing in its intensity - and, at the same time, a
   clerical mentality which is quick to become Inquisitorial." [Memoirs of
   a Revolutionary, p. 134]

   The intense level of activism means that members are bombarded with
   party propaganda, are in endless party meetings, or spend time reading
   party literature and so, by virtue of the fact that there is not enough
   time to read anything, members end up reading nothing but party
   publications. Most points of contact with the external world are
   eliminated or drastically curtailed. Indeed, such alternative sources
   of information and such thinking is regularly dismissed as being
   contaminated by bourgeois influences. This often goes so far as to
   label those who question any aspect of the party's analysis
   revisionists or deviationists, bending to the "pressures of
   capitalism," and are usually driven from the ranks as heretics. All
   this is almost always combined with contempt for all other
   organisations on the Left (indeed, the closer they are to the party's
   own ideological position the more likely they are to be the targets of
   abuse).

   Thirdly, the practice of "democratic centralism" also aids this process
   towards conformity. Based on the idea that the party must be a highly
   disciplined fighting force, the party is endowed with a powerful
   central committee and a rule that all members must publicly defend the
   agreed-upon positions of the party and the decisions of the central
   committee, whatever opinions they might hold to the contrary in
   private. Between conferences, the party's leading bodies usually have
   extensive authority to govern the party's affairs, including updating
   party doctrine and deciding the party's response to current political
   events.

   As unity is the key, there is a tendency to view any opposition as a
   potential threat. It is not at all clear when "full freedom to
   criticise" policy internally can be said to disturb the unity of a
   defined action. The norms of democratic centralism confer all power
   between conferences onto a central committee, allowing it to become the
   arbiter of when a dissident viewpoint is in danger of weakening unity.
   The evidence from numerous vanguard parties suggest that their
   leaderships usually view any dissent as precisely such a disruption and
   demand that dissidents cease their action or face expulsion from the
   party.

   It should also be borne in mind that Leninist parties also view
   themselves as vitally important to the success of any future
   revolution. This cannot help but reinforce the tendency to view dissent
   as something which automatically imperils the future of the planet and,
   therefore, something which must be combated at all costs. As Lenin
   stressed an a polemic directed to the international communist movement
   in 1920, "[w]hoever brings about even the slightest weakening of the
   iron discipline of the party of the proletariat (especially during its
   dictatorship) is actually aiding the bourgeoisie against the
   proletariat." [Collected Works, vol. 31, p. 45] As can be seen, Lenin
   stresses the importance of "iron discipline" at all times, not only
   during the revolution when "the party" is applying "its dictatorship"
   (see [34]section H.3.8 for more on this aspect of Leninism). This
   provides a justification of whatever measures are required to restore
   the illusion of unanimity, including the trampling underfoot of
   whatever rights the membership may have on paper and the imposition of
   any decisions the leadership considers as essential between
   conferences.

   Fourthly, and more subtly, it is well known that when people take a
   public position in defence of a proposition, there is a strong tendency
   for their private attitudes to shift so that they harmonise with their
   public behaviour. It is difficult to say one thing in public and hold
   to a set of private beliefs at variance with what is publicly
   expressed. In short, if people tell others that they support X (for
   whatever reason), they will slowly begin to change their own opinions
   and, indeed, internally come to support X. The more public such
   declarations have been, the more likely it is that such a shift will
   take place. This has been confirmed by empirical research (see R.
   Cialdini's Influence: Science and Practice). This suggests that if, in
   the name of democratic centralism, party members publicly uphold the
   party line, it becomes increasingly difficult to hold a private belief
   at variance with publicly expressed opinions. The evidence suggests
   that it is not possible to have a group of people presenting a
   conformist image to society at large while maintaining an inner party
   regime characterised by frank and full discussion. Conformity in public
   tends to produce conformity in private. So given what is now known of
   social influence, "democratic centralism" is almost certainly destined
   to prevent genuine internal discussion. This is sadly all too often
   confirmed in the internal regimes of vanguard parties, where debate is
   often narrowly focused on a few minor issues of emphasis rather than
   fundamental issues of policy and theory.

   It has already been noted (in [35]section H.5.5) that the
   organisational norms of democratic centralism imply a concentration of
   power at the top. There is abundant evidence that such a concentration
   has been a vital feature of every vanguard party and that such a
   concentration limits party democracy. An authoritarian inner party
   regime is maintained, which ensures that decision making is
   concentrated in elite hands. This regime gradually dismantles or
   ignores all formal controls on its activities. Members are excluded
   from participation in determining policy, calling leaders to account,
   or expressing dissent. This is usually combined with persistent
   assurances about the essentially democratic nature of the organisation,
   and the existence of exemplary democratic controls - on paper.
   Correlated with this inner authoritarianism is a growing tendency
   toward the abuse of power by the leaders, who act in arbitrary ways,
   accrue personal power and so on (as noted by Trotsky with regards to
   the Bolshevik party machine). Indeed, it is often the case that
   activities that would provoke outrage if engaged in by rank-and-file
   members are tolerated when their leaders do it. As one group of
   Scottish libertarians noted:

     "Further, in so far as our Bolshevik friends reject and defy
     capitalist and orthodox labourist conceptions, they also are as much
     'individualistic' as the anarchist. Is it not boasted, for example,
     that on many occasions Marx, Lenin and Trotsky were prepared to be
     in a minority of one - if they thought they were more correct than
     all others on the question at issue? In this, like Galileo, they
     were quite in order. Where they and their followers, obsessed by the
     importance of their own judgement go wrong, is in their tendency to
     refuse this inalienable right to other protagonists and fighters for
     the working class." [APCF, "Our Reply," Class War on the Home Front,
     p. 70]

   As in any hierarchical structure, the tendency is for those in power to
   encourage and promote those who agree with them. This means that
   members usually find their influence and position in the party
   dependent on their willingness to conform to the hierarchy and its
   leadership. Dissenters will rarely find their contribution valued and
   advancement is limited, which produces a strong tendency not to make
   waves. As Miasnikov, a working class Bolshevik dissident, argued in
   1921, "the regime within the party" meant that "if someone dares to
   have the courage of his convictions," they are called either a
   self-seeker or, worse, a counter-revolutionary, a Menshevik or an SR.
   Moreover, within the party, favouritism and corruption were rife. In
   Miasnikov's eyes a new type of Communist was emerging, the toadying
   careerist who "knows how to please his superiors." [quoted by Paul
   Avrich, Bolshevik Opposition to Lenin, p. 8 and p. 7] At the last party
   congress Lenin attended, Miasnikov was expelled. Only one delegate, V.
   V. Kosior, "argued that Lenin had taken the wrong approach to the
   question of dissent. If someone . . . had the courage to point out
   deficiencies in party work, he was marked down as an oppositionist,
   relieved of authority, placed under surveillance, and - a reference to
   Miasnikov - even expelled from the party." [Paul Avrich, Op. Cit., p.
   15] Serge noted about the same period that Lenin "proclaimed a purge of
   the Party, aimed at those revolutionaries who had come in from other
   parties - i.e. those who were not saturated with the Bolshevik
   mentality. This meant the establishment within the Party of a
   dictatorship of the old Bolsheviks, and the direction of disciplinary
   measures, not against the unprincipled careerists and conformist
   late-comers, but against those sections with a critical outlook." [Op.
   Cit., p. 135]

   This, of course, also applies to the party congress, on paper the
   sovereign body of the organisation. All too often resolutions at party
   conferences will either come from the leadership or be completely
   supportive of its position. If branches or members submit resolutions
   which are critical of the leadership, enormous pressure is exerted to
   ensure that they are withdrawn. Moreover, often delegates to the
   congress are not mandated by their branches, so ensuring that rank and
   file opinions are not raised, never mind discussed. Other, more drastic
   measures have been known to occur. Victor Serge saw what he termed the
   "Party steamroller" at work in early 1921 when "the voting [was] rigged
   for Lenin's and Zinoviev's 'majority'" in one of the districts of
   Petrograd. [Op. Cit., p.123]

   All to often, such parties have "elected" bodies which have, in
   practice, usurped the normal democratic rights of members and become
   increasingly removed from formal controls. All practical accountability
   of the leaders to the membership for their actions is eliminated.
   Usually this authoritarian structure is combined with militaristic
   sounding rhetoric and the argument that the "revolutionary" movement
   needs to be organised in a more centralised way than the current class
   system, with references to the state's forces of repression (notably
   the army). As Murray Bookchin argued, the Leninist "has always had a
   grudging admiration and respect for that most inhuman of all
   hierarchical institutions, the military." [Toward an Ecological
   Society, p. 254f]

   The modern day effectiveness of the vanguard party can be seen by the
   strange fact that many Leninists fail to join any of the existing
   parties due to their bureaucratic internal organisation and that many
   members are expelled (or leave in disgust) as a result of their failed
   attempts to make them more democratic. If vanguard parties are such
   positive organisations to be a member of, why do they have such big
   problems with member retention? Why are there so many vocal ex-members?
   Why are so many Leninists ex-members of vanguard parties, desperately
   trying to find an actual party which matches their own vision of
   democratic centralism rather than the bureaucratic centralism which
   seems the norm?

   Our account of the workings of vanguard parties explains, in part, why
   many anarchists and other libertarians voice concern about them and
   their underlying ideology. We do so because their practices are
   disruptive and alienate new activists, hindering the very goal
   (socialism/revolution) they claim to be aiming for. As anyone familiar
   with the numerous groupings and parties in the Leninist left will
   attest, the anarchist critique of vanguardism seems to be confirmed in
   reality while the Leninist defence seems sadly lacking (unless, of
   course, the person is a member of such a party and then their
   organisation is the exception to the rule!).

H.5.11 Can you provide an example of the negative nature of vanguard parties?

   Yes. Our theoretical critique of vanguardism we have presented in the
   last few sections is more than proved by the empirical evidence of such
   parties in operation today. Rarely do "vanguard"
   parties reach in practice the high hopes their supporters like to claim
   for them. Such parties are usually small, prone to splitting as well as
   leadership cults, and usually play a negative role in social struggle.
   A long line of ex-members complain that such parties are elitist,
   hierarchical and bureaucratic.

   Obviously we cannot hope to discuss all such parties. As such, we will
   take just one example, namely the arguments of one group of dissidents
   of the biggest British Leninist party, the Socialist Workers Party. It
   is worth quoting their account of the internal workings of the SWP at
   length:

     "The SWP is not democratic centralist but bureaucratic centralist.
     The leadership's control of the party is unchecked by the members.
     New perspectives are initiated exclusively by the central committee
     (CC), who then implement their perspective against all party
     opposition, implicit or explicit, legitimate or otherwise.

     "Once a new perspective is declared, a new cadre is selected from
     the top down. The CC select the organisers, who select the district
     and branch committees - any elections that take place are carried
     out on the basis of 'slates' so that it is virtually impossible for
     members to vote against the slate proposed by the leadership. Any
     members who have doubts or disagreements are written off as 'burnt
     out' and, depending on their reaction to this, may be marginalised
     within the party and even expelled.

     "These methods have been disastrous for the SWP in a number of ways:
     Each new perspective requires a new cadre (below the level of the
     CC), so the existing cadre are actively marginalised in the party.
     In this way, the SWP has failed to build a stable and experienced
     cadre capable of acting independently of the leadership. Successive
     layers of cadres have been driven into passivity, and even out of
     the revolutionary movement altogether. The result is the loss of
     hundreds of potential cadres. Instead of appraising the real, uneven
     development of individual cadres, the history of the party is
     written in terms of a star system (comrades currently favoured by
     the party) and a demonology (the 'renegades' who are brushed aside
     with each turn of the party). As a result of this systematic
     dissolution of the cadre, the CC grows ever more remote from the
     membership and increasingly bureaucratic in its methods. In recent
     years the national committee has been abolished (it obediently voted
     for its own dissolution, on the recommendation of the CC), to be
     replaced by party councils made up of those comrades active at any
     one time (i.e. those who already agree with current perspectives);
     district committees are appointed rather than elected; the CC
     monopolise all information concerning the party, so that it is
     impossible for members to know much about what happens in the party
     outside their own branch; the CC give a distorted account of events
     rather than admit their mistakes . . . history is rewritten to
     reinforce the prestige of the CC . . . The outcome is a party whose
     conferences have no democratic function, but serve only to orientate
     party activists to carry out perspectives drawn up before the
     delegates even set out from their branches. At every level of the
     party, strategy and tactics are presented from the top down, as
     pre-digested instructions for action. At every level, the comrades
     'below' are seen only as a passive mass to be shifted into action,
     rather than as a source of new initiatives . . .

     "The only exception is when a branch thinks up a new tactic to carry
     out the CC's perspective. In this case, the CC may take up this
     tactic and apply it across the party. In no way do rank and file
     members play an active role in determining the strategy and theory
     of the party - except in the negative sense that if they refuse to
     implement a perspective eventually even the CC notice, and will
     modify the line to suit. A political culture has been created in
     which the leadership outside of the CC consists almost solely of
     comrades loyal to the CC, willing to follow every turn of the
     perspective without criticism . . . Increasingly, the bureaucratic
     methods used by the CC to enforce their control over the political
     direction of the party have been extended to other areas of party
     life. In debates over questions of philosophy, culture and even
     anthropology an informal party 'line' emerged (i.e. concerning
     matters in which there can be no question of the party taking a
     'line'). Often behind these positions lay nothing more substantial
     than the opinions of this or that CC member, but adherence to the
     line quickly became a badge of party loyalty, disagreement became a
     stigma, and the effect was to close down the democracy of the party
     yet further by placing even questions of theory beyond debate. Many
     militants, especially working class militants with some experience
     of trade union democracy, etc., are often repelled by the
     undemocratic norms in the party and refuse to join, or keep their
     distance despite accepting our formal politics."
     [ISG, Discussion Document of Ex-SWP Comrades]

   The dissidents argue that a "democratic" party would involve the
   "[r]egular election of all party full-timers, branch and district
   leadership, conference delegates, etc. with the right of recall," which
   means that in the SWP appointment of full-timers, leaders and so on is
   the norm. They argue for the "right of branches to propose motions to
   the party conference" and for the "right for members to communicate
   horizontally in the party, to produce and distribute their own
   documents." They stress the need for "an independent Control Commission
   to review all disciplinary cases (independent of the leadership bodies
   that exercise discipline), and the right of any disciplined comrades to
   appeal directly to party conference." They argue that in a democratic
   party "no section of the party would have a monopoly of information"
   which indicates that the SWP's leadership is essentially secretive,
   withholding information from the party membership. Even more
   significantly, given our discussion on the influence of the party
   structure on post-revolutionary society in [36]section H.5.7, they
   argue that "[w]orst of all, the SWP are training a layer of
   revolutionaries to believe that the organisational norms of the SWP are
   a shining example of proletarian democracy, applicable to a future
   socialist society. Not surprisingly, many people are instinctively
   repelled by this idea."

   Some of these critics of specific Leninist parties do not give up hope
   and still look for a truly democratic centralist party rather than the
   bureaucratic centralist ones which seem so common. For example, our
   group of ex-SWP dissidents argue that "[a]nybody who has spent time
   involved in 'Leninist' organisations will have come across workers who
   agree with Marxist politics but refuse to join the party because they
   believe it to be undemocratic and authoritarian. Many draw the
   conclusion that Leninism itself is at fault, as every organisation that
   proclaims itself Leninist appears to follow the same pattern." [ISG,
   Lenin vs. the SWP: Bureaucratic Centralism Or Democratic Centralism?]
   This is a common refrain with Leninists - when reality says one thing
   and the theory another, it must be reality that is at fault. Yes, every
   Leninist organisation may be bureaucratic and authoritarian but it is
   not the theory's fault that those who apply it are not capable of
   actually doing so successfully. Such an application of scientific
   principles by the followers of "scientific socialism" is worthy of note
   - obviously the usual scientific method of generalising from facts to
   produce a theory is inapplicable when evaluating "scientific socialism"
   itself. However, rather than ponder the possibility that "democratic
   centralism" does not actually work and automatically generates the
   "bureaucratic centralism," they point to the example of the Russian
   revolution and the original Bolshevik party as proof of the validity of
   their hopes.

   Indeed, it would be no exaggeration to argue that the only reason
   people take the vanguard party organisational structure seriously is
   the apparent success of the Bolsheviks in the Russian revolution.
   However, as noted above, even the Bolshevik party was subject to
   bureaucratic tendencies and as we discuss in the [37]next section, the
   experience of the 1917 Russian Revolutions disprove the effectiveness
   of "vanguard" style parties. The Bolshevik party of 1917 was a totally
   different form of organisation than the ideal "democratic centralist"
   type argued for by Lenin in 1902 and 1920. As a model of revolutionary
   organisation, the "vanguardist"
   one has been proven false rather than confirmed by the experience of
   the Russian revolution. Insofar as the Bolshevik party was effective,
   it operated in a non-vanguardist way and insofar as it did operate in
   such a manner, it held back the struggle.

H.5.12 Surely the Russian Revolution proves that vanguard parties work?

   No, far from it. Looking at the history of vanguardism we are struck by
   its failures, not its successes. Indeed, the proponents of "democratic
   centralism" can point to only one apparent success of their model,
   namely the Russian Revolution. Strangely, though, we are warned by
   Leninists that failure to use the vanguard party will inevitably
   condemn future revolutions to failure:

     "The proletariat can take power only through its vanguard. . .
     Without the confidence of the class in the vanguard, without support
     of the vanguard by the class, there can be no talk of the conquest
     of power . . . The Soviets are the only organised form of the tie
     between the vanguard and the class. A revolutionary content can be
     given to this form only by the party. This is proved by the positive
     experience of the October Revolution and by the negative experience
     of other countries (Germany, Austria, finally, Spain). No one has
     either shown in practice or tried to explain articulately on paper
     how the proletariat can seize power without the political leadership
     of a party that knows what it wants." [Trotsky, Writings 1936-37, p.
     490]

   To anarchist ears, such claims seem out of place. After all, did the
   Russian Revolution actually result in socialism or even a viable form
   of soviet democracy? Far from it. Unless you picture revolution as
   simply the changing of the party in power, you have to acknowledge that
   while the Bolshevik party did take power in Russian in November 1917,
   the net effect of this was not the stated goals that justified that
   action. Thus, if we take the term "effective" to mean "an efficient
   means to achieve the desired goals" then vanguardism has not been
   proven to be effective, quite the reverse (assuming that your desired
   goal is a socialist society, rather than party power). Needless to say,
   Trotsky blames the failure of the Russian Revolution on "objective"
   factors rather than Bolshevik policies and practice, an argument we
   address in [38]section H.6 and will not do so here.

   So while Leninists make great claims for the effectiveness of their
   chosen kind of party, the hard facts of history are against their
   positive evaluation of vanguard parties. Ironically, even the Russian
   Revolution disproves the claims of Leninists. The fact is that the
   Bolshevik party in 1917 was very far from the "democratic centralist"
   organisation which supporters of vanguardism like to claim it is. As
   such, its success in 1917 lies more in its divergence from the
   principles of "democratic centralism" than in their application. The
   subsequent degeneration of the revolution and the party is marked by
   the increasing application of those principles in the life of the
   party.

   Thus, to refute the claims of the "effectiveness" and "efficiency" of
   vanguardism, we need to look at its one and only success, namely the
   Russian Revolution. As the Cohen-Bendit brothers argued, "far from
   leading the Russian Revolution forwards, the Bolsheviks were
   responsible for holding back the struggle of the masses between
   February and October 1917, and later for turning the revolution into a
   bureaucratic counter-revolution - in both cases because of the party's
   very nature, structure and ideology." Indeed, "[f]rom April to October,
   Lenin had to fight a constant battle to keep the Party leadership in
   tune with the masses." [Obsolete Communism, p. 183 and p. 187] It was
   only by continually violating its own "nature, structure and ideology"
   that the Bolshevik party played an important role in the revolution.
   Whenever the principles of "democratic centralism" were applied, the
   Bolshevik party played the role the Cohen-Bendit brothers subscribed to
   it (and once in power, the party's negative features came to the fore).

   Even Leninists acknowledge that, to quote Tony Cliff, throughout the
   history of Bolshevism, "a certain conservatism arose." Indeed, "[a]t
   practically all sharp turning points, Lenin had to rely on the lower
   strata of the party machine against the higher, or on the rank and file
   against the machine as a whole." [Lenin, vol. 2, p. 135] This fact,
   incidentally, refutes the basic assumptions of Lenin's party schema,
   namely that the broad party membership, like the working class, was
   subject to bourgeois influences so necessitating central leadership and
   control from above.

   Looking at both the 1905 and 1917 revolutions, we are struck by how
   often this "conservatism" arose and how often the higher bodies lagged
   behind the spontaneous actions of the masses and the party membership.
   Looking at the 1905 revolution, we discover a classic example of the
   inefficiency of "democratic centralism." Facing the rise of the
   soviets, councils of workers' delegates elected to co-ordinate strikes
   and other forms of struggle, the Bolsheviks did not know what to do.
   "The Petersburg Committee of the Bolsheviks," noted Trotsky, "was
   frightened at first by such an innovation as a non-partisan
   representation of the embattled masses, and could find nothing better
   to do than to present the Soviet with an ultimatum: immediately adopt a
   Social-Democratic program or disband. The Petersburg Soviet as a whole,
   including the contingent of Bolshevik workingmen as well ignored this
   ultimatum without batting an eyelash." [Stalin, vol. 1, p. 106] More
   than that, "[t]he party's Central Committee published the resolution on
   October 27, thereby making it the binding directive for all other
   Bolshevik organisations." [Oskar Anweiler, The Soviets, p. 77] It was
   only the return of Lenin which stopped the Bolshevik's open attacks
   against the Soviet. As we discuss in [39]section H.6.2, the rationale
   for these attacks is significant as they were based on arguing that the
   soviets could not reflect workers' interests because they were elected
   by the workers! The implications of this perspective came clear in
   1918, when the Bolsheviks gerrymandered and disbanded soviets to remain
   in power (see [40]section H.6.1). That the Bolshevik's position flowed
   naturally from Lenin's arguments in What is to be Done? is clear. Thus
   the underlying logic of Lenin's vanguardism ensured that the Bolsheviks
   played a negative role with regards the soviets which, combined with
   "democratic centralism" ensured that it was spread far and wide. Only
   by ignoring their own party's principles and staying in the Soviet did
   rank and file Bolsheviks play a positive role in the revolution. This
   divergence of top and bottom would be repeated in 1917.

   Given this, perhaps it is unsurprising that Leninists started to
   rewrite the history of the 1905 revolution. Victor Serge, an
   anti-Stalinist Leninist, asserted in the late 1920s that in 1905 the
   Petrograd Soviet was "led by Trotsky and inspired by the Bolsheviks."
   [Year One of the Russian Revolution, p. 36]. While the former claim is
   partially correct, the latter is not. As noted, the Bolsheviks were
   initially opposed the soviets and systematically worked to undermine
   them. Unsurprisingly, Trotsky at that time was a Menshevik, not a
   Bolshevik. After all, how could the most revolutionary party that ever
   existed have messed up so badly? How could democratic centralism faired
   so badly in practice? Best, then, to suggest that it did not and give
   the Bolsheviks a role better suited to the rhetoric of Bolshevism than
   its reality.

   Trotsky was no different. He, needless to say, denied the obvious
   implications of these events in 1905. While admitting that the
   Bolsheviks "adjusted themselves more slowly to the sweep of the
   movement" and that the Mensheviks "were preponderant in the Soviet," he
   tries to save vanguardism by asserting that "the general direction of
   the Soviet's policy proceeded in the main along Bolshevik lines." So,
   in spite of the lack of Bolshevik influence, in spite of the slowness
   in adjusting to the revolution, Bolshevism was, in fact, the leading
   set of ideas in the revolution! Ironically, a few pages later, he mocks
   the claims of Stalinists that Stalin had "isolated the Mensheviks from
   the masses" by noting that the "figures hardly bear [the claims] out."
   [Op. Cit., p. 112 and p. 117] Shame he did not apply this criteria to
   his own assertions.

   Of course, every party makes mistakes. The question is, how did the
   "most revolutionary party of all time" fare in 1917. Surely that
   revolution proves the validity of vanguardism and "democratic
   centralism"? After all, there was a successful revolution, the
   Bolshevik party did seize power. However, the apparent success of 1917
   was not due to the application of "democratic centralism," quite the
   reverse. While the myth of 1917 is that a highly efficient, democratic
   centralist vanguard party ensured the overthrow of the Provisional
   Government in November 1917 in favour of the Soviets (or so it seemed
   at the time) the facts are somewhat different. Rather, the Bolshevik
   party throughout 1917 was a fairly loose collection of local
   organisations (each more than willing to ignore central commands and
   express their autonomy), with much internal dissent and infighting and
   no discipline beyond what was created by common loyalty. The
   "democratic centralist" party, as desired by Lenin, was only created in
   the course of the Civil War and the tightening of the party
   dictatorship. In other words, the party became more like a "democratic
   centralist" one as the revolution degenerated. As such, the various
   followers of Lenin (Stalinists, Trotskyists and their multitude of
   offshoots) subscribe to a myth, which probably explains their lack of
   success in reproducing a similar organisation since. So assuming that
   the Bolsheviks did play an important role in the Russian revolution, it
   was because it was not the centralised, disciplined Bolshevik party of
   Leninist myth. Indeed, when the party did operate in a vanguardist
   manner, failure was soon to follow.

   This claim can be proven by looking at the history of the 1917
   revolution. The February revolution started with a spontaneous protests
   and strikes yet "the Petrograd organisation of the Bolsheviks opposed
   the calling of strikes precisely on the eve of the revolution which was
   destined to overthrow the Tsar. Fortunately, the workers ignored the
   Bolshevik 'directives' and went on strike anyway. In the events which
   followed, no one was more surprised by the revolution than the
   'revolutionary' parties, including the Bolsheviks." [Murray Bookchin,
   Post-Scarcity Anarchism, p. 123] Trotsky quoted one of the Bolshevik
   leaders at the time:

     "Absolutely no guiding initiative from the party centres was felt .
     . . the Petrograd Committee had been arrested and the representative
     of the Central Committee . . . was unable to give any directives for
     the coming day." [quoted by Trotsky, History of the Russian
     Revolution, vol. 1, p. 147]

   Not the best of starts. Of course rank and file Bolsheviks took part in
   the demonstrations, street fights and strikes and so violated the
   principles their party was meant to be based on. As the revolution
   progressed, so did the dual nature of the Bolshevik party (i.e. its
   practical divergence from "democratic centralism" in order to be
   effective and attempts to force it back into that schema which
   handicapped the revolution). However, during 1917, "democratic
   centralism" was ignored in order to ensure the Bolsheviks played any
   role at all in the revolution. As one historian of the party makes
   clear, in 1917 and until the outbreak of the Civil War, the party
   operated in ways that few modern "vanguard" parties would tolerate:

     "The committees were a law unto themselves when it came to accepting
     orders from above. Democratic centralism, as vague a principle of
     internal administration as there ever has been, was commonly held at
     least to enjoin lower executive bodies that they should obey the
     behests of all higher bodies in the organisational hierarchy. But
     town committees in practice had the devil's own job in imposing firm
     leadership . . . Insubordination was the rule of the day whenever
     lower party bodies thought questions of importance were at stake.

     "Suburb committees too faced difficulties in imposing discipline.
     Many a party cell saw fit to thumb its nose at higher authority and
     to pursue policies which it felt to be more suited to local
     circumstances or more desirable in general. No great secret was made
     of this. In fact, it was openly admitted that hardly a party
     committee existed which did not encounter problems in enforcing its
     will even upon individual activists."
     [Robert Service, The Bolshevik Party in Revolution 1917-1923, pp.
     51-2]

   So while Lenin's ideal model of a disciplined, centralised and top-down
   party had been expounded since 1902, the operation of the party never
   matched his desire. As Service notes, "a disciplined hierarchy of
   command stretching down from the regional committees to party cells"
   had "never existed in Bolshevik history." In the heady days of the
   revolution, when the party was flooded by new members, Bolshevik party
   life was the exact opposite of that usually considered (by both
   opponents and supporters of Bolshevism) as it normal mode of operation.
   "Anarchist attitudes to higher authority," he argues, "were the rule of
   the day" and "no Bolshevik leader in his right mind could have
   contemplated a regular insistence upon rigid standards of hierarchical
   control and discipline unless he had abandoned all hope of establishing
   a mass socialist party." This meant that "in the Russia of 1917 it was
   the easiest thing in the world for lower party bodies to rebut the
   demands and pleas by higher authority." He stresses that "[s]uburb and
   town committees . . . often refused to go along with official policies
   . . . they also . . . sometimes took it into their heads to engage in
   active obstruction." [Op. Cit., p. 80, p. 62 p. 56 and p. 60]

   This worked both ways, of course. Town committees did "snub their nose
   at lower-echelon viewpoints in the time before the next election. Try
   as hard as they might, suburb committees and ordinary cells could
   meanwhile do little to rectify matters beyond telling their own
   representative on their town committee to speak on their behalf. Or, if
   this too failed, they could resort to disruptive tactics by criticising
   it in public and refusing it all collaboration." [Op. Cit., pp. 52-3]
   Even by early 1918, the Bolshevik party bore little resemblance to the
   "democratic centralist" model desires by Lenin:

     "The image of a disciplined hierarchy of party committees was
     therefore but a thin, artificial veneer which was used by Bolshevik
     leaders to cover up the cracked surface of the real picture
     underneath. Cells and suburb committees saw no reason to kow-tow to
     town committees; nor did town committees feel under compulsion to
     show any greater respect to their provincial and regional committees
     than before." [Op. Cit., p. 74]

   It is this insubordination, this local autonomy and action in spite of
   central orders which explains the success of the Bolsheviks in 1917.
   Rather than a highly centralised and disciplined body of "professional"
   revolutionaries, the party saw a "significant change . . . within the
   membership of the party at local level . . . From the time of the
   February revolution requirements for party membership had been all but
   suspended, and now Bolshevik ranks swelled with impetuous recruits who
   knew next to nothing about Marxism and who were united by little more
   than overwhelming impatience for revolutionary action." [Alexander
   Rabinowitch, Prelude to Revolution, p. 41]

   This mass of new members (many of whom were peasants who had just
   recently joined the industrial workforce) had a radicalising effect on
   the party's policies and structures. As even Leninist commentators
   argue, it was this influx of members who allowed Lenin to gain support
   for his radical revision of party aims in April. However, in spite of
   this radicalisation of the party base, the party machine still was at
   odds with the desires of the party. As Trotsky acknowledged, the
   situation "called for resolute confrontation of the sluggish Party
   machine with masses and ideas in motion." He stressed that "the masses
   were incomparably more revolutionary than the Party, which in turn was
   more revolutionary than its committeemen." Ironically, given the role
   Trotsky usually gave the party, he admits that "[w]ithout Lenin, no one
   had known what to make of the unprecedented situation." [Stalin, vol.
   1, p. 301, p. 305 and p. 297]

   Which is significant in itself. The Bolshevik party is usually claimed
   as being the most "revolutionary" that ever existed, yet here is
   Trotsky admitting that its leading members did not have a clue what to
   do. He even argued that "[e]very time the Bolshevik leaders had to act
   without Lenin they fell into error, usually inclining to the Right."
   [Op. Cit., p. 299] This negative opinion of the Bolsheviks applied even
   to the "left Bolsheviks, especially the workers" whom we are informed
   "tried with all their force to break through this quarantine" created
   by the Bolshevik leaders policy "of waiting, of accommodation, and of
   actual retreat before the Compromisers" after the February revolution
   and before the arrival of Lenin. Trotsky argued that "they did not know
   how to refute the premise about the bourgeois character of the
   revolution and the danger of an isolation of the proletariat. They
   submitted, gritting their teeth, to the directions of their leaders."
   [History of the Russian Revolution, vol. 1, p. 273] It seems strange,
   to say the least, that without one person the whole of the party was
   reduced to such a level given that the aim of the "revolutionary" party
   was to develop the political awareness of its members.

   Lenin's arrival, according to Trotsky, allowed the influence of the
   more radical rank and file to defeat the conservatism of the party
   machine. By the end of April, Lenin had managed to win over the
   majority of the party leadership to his position. However, this "April
   conflict between Lenin and the general staff of the party was not the
   only one of its kind. Throughout the whole history of Bolshevism . . .
   all the leaders of the party at all the most important moments stood to
   the right of Lenin." [Op. Cit., p. 305] As such, if "democratic
   centralism" had worked as intended, the whole party would have been
   arguing for incorrect positions the bulk of its existence (assuming, of
   course, that Lenin was correct most of the time).

   For Trotsky, "Lenin exerted influence not so much as an individual but
   because he embodied the influence of the class on the Party and of the
   Party on its machine." Yet, this was the machine which Lenin had
   forged, which embodied his vision of how a "revolutionary" party should
   operate and was headed by him. To argue that the party machine was
   behind the party membership and the membership behind the class shows
   the bankruptcy of Lenin's organisational scheme. This "backwardness",
   moreover, indicates an independence of the party bureaucracy from the
   membership and the membership from the masses. As Lenin's constantly
   repeated aim was for the party to seize power (based on the dubious
   assumption that class power would only be expressed, indeed was
   identical to, party power) this independence held serious dangers,
   dangers which became apparent once this goal was achieved. This is
   confirmed when Trotsky asked the question "by what miracle did Lenin
   manage in a few short weeks to turn the Party's course into a new
   channel?" Significantly, he answers as follows: "Lenin's personal
   attributes and the objective situation." [Stalin, vol. 1, p. 299] No
   mention is made of the democratic features of the party organisation,
   which suggests that without Lenin the rank and file party members would
   not have been able to shift the weight of the party machine in their
   favour. Trotsky seemed close to admitting this:

     "As often happens, a sharp cleavage developed between the classes in
     motion and the interests of the party machines. Even the Bolshevik
     Party cadres, who enjoyed the benefit of exceptional revolutionary
     training, were definitely inclined to disregard the masses and to
     identify their own special interests and the interests of the
     machine on the very day after the monarchy was overthrown." [Op.
     Cit., vol. 1, p. 298]

   Thus the party machine, which embodied the principles of "democratic
   centralism" proved less than able to the task assigned it in practice.
   Without Lenin, it is doubtful that the party membership would have
   overcome the party machine:

     "Lenin was strong not only because he understood the laws of the
     class struggle but also because his ear was faultlessly attuned to
     the stirrings of the masses in motion. He represented not so much
     the Party machine as the vanguard of the proletariat. He was
     definitely convinced that thousands from among those workers who had
     borne the brunt of supporting the underground Party would now
     support him. The masses at the moment were more revolutionary than
     the Party, and the Party more revolutionary than its machine. As
     early as March the actual attitude of the workers and soldiers had
     in many cases become stormily apparent, and it was widely at
     variance with the instructions issued by all the parties, including
     the Bolsheviks." [Op. Cit., p. 299]

   Little wonder the local party groupings ignored the party machine,
   practising autonomy and initiative in the face of a party machine
   inclined to conservatism, inertia, bureaucracy and remoteness. This
   conflict between the party machine and the principles it was based on
   and the needs of the revolution and party membership was expressed
   continually throughout 1917:

     "In short, the success of the revolution called for action against
     the 'highest circles of the party,' who, from February to October,
     utterly failed to play the revolutionary role they ought to have
     taken in theory. The masses themselves made the revolution, with or
     even against the party - this much at least was clear to Trotsky the
     historian. But far from drawing the correct conclusion, Trotsky the
     theorist continued to argue that the masses are incapable of making
     a revolution without a leader." [Daniel & Gabriel Cohn-Bendit, Op.
     Cit., p. 188]

   Looking at the development of the revolution from April onwards, we are
   struck by the sluggishness of the party hierarchy. At every
   revolutionary upsurge, the party simply was not to the task of
   responding to the needs of masses and the local party groupings closest
   to them. The can be seen in June, July and October itself. At each
   turn, the rank and file groupings or Lenin had to constantly violate
   the principles of their own party in order to be effective.

   For example, when discussing the cancellation by the central committee
   of a demonstration planned for June 10th by the Petrograd Bolsheviks,
   the unresponsiveness of the party hierarchy can be seen. The "speeches
   by Lenin and Zinoviev [justifying their actions] by no means satisfied
   the Petersburg Committee. If anything, it appears that their
   explanations served to strengthen the feeling that at best the party
   leadership had acted irresponsibly and incompetently and was seriously
   out of touch with reality." Indeed, many "blamed the Central Committee
   for taking so long to respond to Military Organisation appeals for a
   demonstration." During the discussions in late June, 1917, on whether
   to take direct action against the Provisional Government there was a
   "wide gulf" between lower organs evaluations of the current situation
   and that of the Central Committee. [Rabinowitch, Op. Cit., p. 88, p. 92
   and p. 129] Indeed, among the delegates from the Bolshevik military
   groups, only Lashevich (an old Bolshevik) spoke in favour of the
   Central Committee position and he noted that "[f]requently it is
   impossible to make out where the Bolshevik ends and the Anarchist
   begins." [quoted by Rabinowitch, Op. Cit., p. 129]

   In the July days, the breach between the local party groups and the
   central committee increased. This spontaneous uprising was opposed to
   by the Bolshevik leadership, in spite of the leading role of their own
   militants (along with anarchists) in fermenting it. While calling on
   their own activists to restrain the masses, the party leadership was
   ignored by the rank and file membership who played an active role in
   the event. Sickened by being asked to play the role of "fireman", the
   party militants rejected party discipline in order to maintain their
   credibility with the working class. Rank and file activists, pointing
   to the snowballing of the movement, showed clear dissatisfaction with
   the Central Committee. One argued that it "was not aware of the latest
   developments when it made its decision to oppose the movement into the
   streets." Ultimately, the Central Committee appeal "for restraining the
   masses . . . was removed from" Pravda "and so the party's indecision
   was reflected by a large blank space on page one." [Rabinowitch, Op.
   Cit., p. 150, p. 159 and p. 175] Ultimately, the indecisive nature of
   the leadership can be explained by the fact it did not think it could
   seize state power for itself ("the state of popular consciousness . . .
   made impossible the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks in July."
   [Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution, vol. 2, p. 81]).

   The indecision of the party hierarchy did have an effect, of course.
   While the anarchists at Kronstadt looked at the demonstration as the
   start of an uprising, the Bolsheviks there were "wavering indecisively
   in the middle" between them and the Left-Social Revolutionaries who saw
   it as a means of applying pressure on the government. This was because
   they were "hamstrung by the indecision of the party Central Committee."
   [Rabinowitch, Op. Cit., p. 187] Little wonder so many Bolshevik party
   organisations developed and protected their own autonomy and ability to
   act!

   Significantly, one of the main Bolshevik groupings which helped
   organise and support the July uprising, the Military Organisation,
   started their own paper after the Central Committee had decreed after
   the failed revolt that neither it, nor the Petersburg Committee, should
   be allowed to have one. It "angrily insisted on what it considered its
   just prerogatives" and in "no uncertain terms it affirmed its right to
   publish an independent newspaper and formally protested what is
   referred to as 'a system of persecution and repression of an extremely
   peculiar character which had begun with the election of the new Central
   Committee.'" [Rabinowitch, Op. Cit., p. 227] The Central Committee
   backed down, undoubtedly due to the fact it could not enforce its
   decision.

   This was but one example of what the Cohn-Bendit brothers pointed to,
   namely that "five months after the Revolution and three months before
   the October uprising, the masses were still governing themselves, and
   the Bolshevik vanguard simply had to toe the line." [Op. Cit., p. 186]
   Within that vanguard, the central committee proved to be out of touch
   with the rank and file, who ignored it rather than break with their
   fellow workers.

   Even by October, the party machine still lagged behind the needs of the
   revolution. In fact, Lenin could only impose his view by going over the
   head of the Central Committee. According to Trotsky's account, "this
   time he [wa]s not satisfied with furious criticism" of the "ruinous
   Fabianism of the Petrograd leadership" and "by way of protest he
   resign[ed] from the Central Committee." [History of the Russian
   Revolution, vol. 3, p. 131] Trotsky quoted Lenin as follows:

     "I am compelled to request permission to withdraw from the Central
     Committee, which I hereby do, and leave myself freedom of agitation
     in the lower ranks of the party and at the party congress." [quoted
     by Trotsky, Op. Cit., p. 131]

   Thus the October revolution was precipitated by a blatant violation of
   the principles Lenin spent his life advocating. Indeed, if someone else
   other than Lenin had done this we are sure that Lenin, and his numerous
   followers, would have dismissed it as the action of a "petty-bourgeois
   intellectual" who cannot handle party "discipline." This is itself is
   significant, as is the fact that he decided to appeal to the "lower
   ranks" of the party - rather than being "democratic" the party machine
   effectively blocked communication and control from the bottom-up.
   Looking to the more radical party membership, he "could only impose his
   view by going over the head of his Central Committee." [Daniel and
   Gabriel Cohn-Bendit, Op. Cit., p. 187] He made sure to send his letter
   of protest to "the Petrograd and Moscow committees" and also made sure
   that "copies fell into the hands of the more reliable party workers of
   the district locals." By early October (and "over the heads of the
   Central Committee") he wrote "directly to the Petrograd and Moscow
   committees" calling for insurrection. He also "appealed to a Petrograd
   party conference to speak a firm word in favour of insurrection."
   [Trotsky, Op. Cit., p. 131 and p. 132]

   In October, Lenin had to fight what he called "a wavering" in the
   "upper circles of the party" which lead to a "sort of dread of the
   struggle for power, an inclination to replace this struggle with
   resolutions protests, and conferences." [quoted by Trotsky, Op. Cit.,
   p. 132] For Trotsky, this represented "almost a direct pitting of the
   party against the Central Committee," required because "it was a
   question of the fate of the revolution" and so "all other
   considerations fell away." On October 8th, when Lenin addressed the
   Bolshevik delegates of the forthcoming Northern Congress of Soviets on
   this subject, he did so "personally" as there "was no party decision"
   and the "higher institutions of the party had not yet expressed
   themselves." [Trotsky, Op. Cit., pp. 132-3 and p. 133] Ultimately, the
   Central Committee came round to Lenin's position but they did so under
   pressure of means at odds with the principles of the party.

   This divergence between the imagine and reality of the Bolsheviks
   explains their success. If the party had applied or had remained true
   to the principles of "democratic centralism" it is doubtful that it
   would have played an important role in the movement. As Alexander
   Rabinowitch argues, Bolshevik organisational unity and discipline is
   "vastly exaggerated" and, in fact, Bolshevik success in 1917 was down
   to "the party's internally relatively democratic, tolerant, and
   decentralised structure and method of operation, as well as its
   essentially open and mass character - in striking contrast to the
   traditional Leninist model." In 1917, he goes on, "subordinate party
   bodies like the Petersburg Committee and the Military Organisation were
   permitted considerable independence and initiative . . . Most
   importantly, these lower bodies were able to tailor their tactics and
   appeals to suit their own particular constituencies amid rapidly
   changing conditions. Vast numbers of new members were recruited into
   the party . . . The newcomers included tens of thousands of workers and
   soldiers . . . who knew little, if anything, about Marxism and cared
   nothing about party discipline." For example, while the slogan "All
   Power to the Soviets" was "officially withdrawn by the Sixth [Party]
   Congress in late July, this change did not take hold at the local
   level." [The Bolsheviks Come to Power, p. 311, p. 312 and p. 313]

   It is no exaggeration to argue that if any member of a current vanguard
   party acted as the Bolshevik rank and file did in 1917, they would
   quickly be expelled (this probably explains why no such party has been
   remotely successful since). However, this ferment from below was
   quickly undermined within the party with the start of the Civil War. It
   is from this period when "democratic centralism" was actually applied
   within the party and clarified as an organisational principle:

     "It was quite a turnabout since the anarchic days before the Civil
     War. The Central Committee had always advocated the virtues of
     obedience and co-operation; but the rank-and-filers of 1917 had
     cared little about such entreaties as they did about appeals made by
     other higher authorities. The wartime emergency now supplied an
     opportunity to expatiate on this theme at will." [Service, Op. Cit.,
     p. 91]

   Service stresses that "it appears quite remarkable how quickly the
   Bolsheviks, who for years had talked idly about a strict hierarchy of
   command inside the party, at last began to put ideas into practice."
   [Op. Cit., p. 96]

   In other words, the conversion of the Bolshevik party into a fully
   fledged "democratic centralist" party occurred during the degeneration
   of the Revolution. This was both a consequence of the rising
   authoritarianism within the party, state and society as well as one of
   its causes so it is quite ironic that the model used by modern day
   followers of Lenin is that of the party during the decline of the
   revolution, not its peak. This is not surprising. Once in power, the
   Bolshevik party imposed a state capitalist regime onto the Russian
   people. Can it be surprising that the party structure which it
   developed to aid this process was also based on bourgeois attitudes and
   organisation? The party model advocated by Lenin may not have been very
   effective during a revolution but it was exceedingly effective at
   promoting hierarchy and authority in the post-revolutionary regime. It
   simply replaced the old ruling elite with another, made up of members
   of the radical intelligentsia and the odd ex-worker or ex-peasant.

   This was due to the hierarchical and top-down nature of the party Lenin
   had created. While the party base was largely working class, the
   leadership was not. Full-time revolutionaries, they were either
   middle-class intellectuals or (occasionally) ex-workers and (even
   rarer) ex-peasants who had left their class to become part of the party
   machine. Even the delegates at the party congresses did not truly
   reflect class basis of the party membership. For example, the number of
   delegates was still dominated by white-collar or others (59.1% to
   40.9%) at the sixth party congress at the end of July 1917. [Cliff,
   Lenin, vol. 2, p. 160] So while the party gathered more working class
   members in 1917, it cannot be said that this was reflected in the party
   leadership which remained dominated by non-working class elements.
   Rather than being a genuine working class organisation, the Bolshevik
   party was a hierarchical group headed by non-working class elements
   whose working class base could not effectively control them even during
   the revolution in 1917. It was only effective because these newly
   joined and radicalised working class members ignored their own party
   structure and its defining ideology.

   After the revolution, the Bolsheviks saw their membership start to
   decrease. Significantly, "the decline in numbers which occurred from
   early 1918 onwards" started happening "contrary to what is usually
   assumed, some months before the Central Committee's decree in midsummer
   that the party should be purged of its 'undesirable' elements." These
   lost members reflected two things. Firstly, the general decline in the
   size of the industrial working class. This meant that the radicalised
   new elements from the countryside which had flocked to the Bolsheviks
   in 1917 returned home. Secondly, the lost of popular support due to the
   realities of the Bolshevik regime. This can be seen from the fact that
   while the Bolsheviks were losing members, the Left SRS almost doubled
   in size to 100,000 (the Mensheviks claimed to have a similar number).
   Rather than non-proletarians leaving, "[i]t is more probable by far
   that it was industrial workers who were leaving in droves. After all,
   it would have been strange if the growing unpopularity of Sovnarkom in
   factory milieu had been confined exclusively to non-Bolsheviks."
   Unsurprisingly, given its position in power, "[a]s the proportion of
   working-class members declined, so that of entrants from the
   middle-class rose; the steady drift towards a party in which industrial
   workers no longer numerically predominated was under way." By late 1918
   membership started to increase again but "[m]ost newcomers were not of
   working-class origin . . . the proportion of Bolsheviks of
   working-class origin fell from 57 per cent at the year's beginning to
   48 per cent at the end." It should be noted that it was not specified
   how many were classed as having working-class origin were still
   employed in working-class jobs. [Robert Service, Op. Cit., p. 70, pp.
   70-1 and p. 90] A new ruling elite was thus born, thanks to the way
   vanguard parties are structured and the application of vanguardist
   principles which had previously been ignored.

   In summary, the experience of the Russian Revolution does not, in fact,
   show the validity of the "vanguard" model. The Bolshevik party in 1917
   played a leading role in the revolution only insofar as its members
   violated its own organisational principles (Lenin included). Faced with
   a real revolution and an influx of more radical new members, the party
   had to practice anarchist ideas of autonomy, local initiative and the
   ignoring of central orders which had no bearing to reality on the
   ground. When the party did try to apply the top-down and hierarchical
   principles of "democratic centralism" it failed to adjust to the needs
   of the moment. Moreover, when these principles were finally applied
   they helped ensure the degeneration of the revolution. This was to be
   expected, given the nature of vanguardism and the Bolshevik vision of
   socialism.

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