Military Review English Edition November December 2016 | Page 120

Be Done?”9 In it, Lenin laid down a simple but profound
prescription for successful political activism that provided a broad outline explaining how to organize a revolutionary political movement together with explaining the
essential relationship of mass media to that movement
and how media should be used to further political ends.
This article has had enormous influence on political activism from his time to the present. In this monograph,
Lenin describes the two key principles he asserted were
required for fomenting revolution.

possible…. If we begin with the solid foundation of a strong organization of revolutionaries,
we can ensure the stability of the movement as
a whole and carry out the aims both of SocialDemocracy and of trade unions proper.10
One might ask, if Lenin were alive today, what
organizations might he recognize as the heirs of his
vanguard-party concept? Subsequent to Lenin’s day, one
can hardly think of a successful revolutionary or insurgency movement of any consequence in the twentieth or

The Vanguard Party
Lenin maintained that the first of two
Propaganda
Agitation
key steps for advancing a political objective
Universe
of
issues
people
was to establish a vanguard party—a core
could be thinking about
group of highly disciplined “professional”
activists (revolutionaries). The purpose of
this core element within a political party
was to work full time organizing and leadIssues of
ing the political effort. Such a vanguard
individual
party was essential, Lenin asserted, beMedia
concern,
cause—in contrast to the orthodox faith of
issues
influenced by
some dogmatic Marxists—he did not feel
face-to-face
the proletariat would have the capacity to
contact
be anything but a courageous yet hapless
mob unless carefully instructed, trained,
and then tightly disciplined by a leadership
organization. Without such a vanguard
party, he maintained, a political movement
Organization
would be led by amateurs and fail.
Among the principal responsibilities
of the vanguard party was to educate the
How the Vanguard Party channels
proletariat, instilling in them political
people to think about issues
and class consciousness. To do this, the
vanguard party had to assume the role of
(Graphic by Arin Burgess, Military Review)
instilling in the working class recognition
Figure 3. Party-Focused Issues
of the class struggle at the same time it
organized and expanded the movement
by enforcing rigid and ruthless party discipline among
twenty-first century that was not led by the equivalent
recruits for the revolutionary cause.
of a vanguard party. Examples include Benito Mussolini’s
On the other hand, the organization of the
Fascist Party in Italy, Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist
revolutionaries must consist first and foremost
Party in Germany, and Hugo Chavez’s Fifth Republic
of people who make revolutionary activity
Movement in Venezuela, to name just a small repretheir profession … In view of this common
sentation of such organizations. Elsewhere, Islamic
characteristic of the members of such an orgaradicals Sayyid Qutb and Abul Ala Maududi both
nization … Such an organization must perforce
posited that Islamic vanguard parties were necesnot be very extensive and must be as secret as
sary to lead the world’s lost and wayward Muslim
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November-December 2016  MILITARY REVIEW