Vanguardism

Ideology and Organization in Totalitarian Politics

Phillip W. Gray

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000754001
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Politische Ideologien

Providing an innovative conceptualization to extremist political movements founded upon "world-historic" populations and vanguard party organizations, Vanguardism sets out a new path in investigating the intellectual and historical influences that created extremist politics, the totalitarian movements and regimes of the twentieth century, and a framework for interpreting extremism in the present.

Expanding its view across the turbulent intellectual currents of the nineteenth century, Philip W. Gray illustrates how these ideas shaped the shared ideational and organizational structures that would develop into Leninism, Fascism, and Nazism in the early twentieth century. Moving beyond the Second World War, the book explicates how vanguardism did not vanish with the war's conclusion, but was modified throughout the period of national liberation movements and Western extremist groups over the ensuing decades. Concluding in the present with an eye to the future, Gray presents a framework for comprehending the extremist movement of today, and how organizational shifts can give us clues to the forms of totalitarian politics of tomorrow.

Original and provocative, Vanguardism will become essential reading for everyone looking to understand totalitarianism and extremist politics of our time.

1

Introduction

In a way, all revolution is reaction.

(Weber 1974: 35)

To remake the world requires a people – not “The People”, but a people.

This work begins with questions – questions that have bedeviled much greater minds in this century. When looking at some of the worst regimes and movements of the twentieth century, how is it that groups with such diametrically opposed ideologies and constituency-populations also evinced strong and uncanny similarities? Are these regimes and movements part of some larger dynamic, and thus possess similar traits? Are the similarities a popular illusion brought about by the nearness in time and place between these types of groups? If the similarities are real, do they reflect more fundamental correspondences, or are they but a “fluke” – a historical accident based more on mere contingency than on anything else?

This text intends to answer this question, or at least present a framework within which to analyze these questions more thoroughly. That framework is “vanguardism”, a term used here to indicate a certain form of political phenomena based upon an intermeshing of ideology and organizational form. On the ideological level, vanguardism is based upon an epistemology that holds that only some types of people – based on some traits – are capable of seeing the “truth” of historical and social dynamics. This population of the epistemologically privileged, in turn, will reshape the world into something new and better, based on their ability to perceive reality as well as on their own world-historic role in the dynamic of history itself. The ideology influences and shapes the creation of organization, but the party organization itself then shapes the ideology. On the organizational level, vanguardism takes the notion of epistemology and moves it to a practical party: all of those within the epistemologically-privileged population will not be similarly “advanced”. Rather, there will be an “advanced wing” within it, responsible for enlightening the advanced population to its “mission”, to mobilize the population for future action, to ensure orthodoxy to the “truth”, and – most important of all – to coordinate and activate the population when the “ripe” moment arrives for social revolution. It is this “advanced wing” of the “advanced population” that is the vanguard party, and its organizational form will influence and shape the ideology from which it arose.

It is this undergirding ideological/organizational infrastructure that is the basis of commonality between these various extremist groups and systems. Their differences are not superficial, however. The ideological/organizational infrastructure is the same, but the basis for their respective worldviews – the epistemologically-privileged population – varies considerably. It is these different “world-historic” populations – based on class, nation, race, or other qualities – that create the fundamental conflicts between them. These populations are not interchangeable: the population type that is viewed as “advanced” will shape the specific ideological and organizational structures of the vanguardist group beyond the basic infrastructure. Vanguardism focuses on social revolution, pushed forward by the specific epistemologically-privileged population and directed by its “advanced wing”, as bringing forward a new world, and, with it, a new humanity.

Vanguardism and Totalitarianism

One thing to note at the beginning is that this analysis of vanguardism is not simply an investigation of totalitarianism under a different name. The two phenomena are similar and overlap in many ways (theoretically and historically), but there are clear differences between the two. These differences are important to note, as a key debate in recent decades centers on whether “totalitarianism” itself is a meaningful concept. Various historians have questioned its utility (Gorlizki and Mommson 2009; also see Geyer and Fitzgerald 2009), while others see much of its use deriving from political contingencies of the Cold War or “neoconservative” ideology (Gleason 1995: 121–142, 190–209). For clarification’s sake, we will list three of them here. The first difference is definitional. Many of the more rigorous analyses of totalitarianism specifically focus on regimes, with the movements or organizations in the period before regime control investigated as precursors to the political systems arising later. As a definitional matter, this narrow focus is appropriate; while ordinary language may use the term in an elastic fashion, “totalitarianism” as a concept – whatever else it entails – presumes a political regime that can maintain and enforce such a system. The difficulty that arises in this narrow focus is in attempting to determine what was, or was not, a relevant precursor to an established totalitarian regime, and whether a regime is truly “totalitarian” it is taken on the terms used by precursor movements and leaders. This analysis of vanguardism, in contrast, views totalitarian regimes as a further point of vanguard party movements with continuity over time, founded upon the aim “to replace the totality of experience, motivations, mobilisation, and social cohesion found within traditional religions by their new, secular ideologies and Weltanschauung” (Gray 2014: 538). Viewed in this manner, an investigation of vanguardism need not limit itself to those movements that managed to gain political power, but instead view those organizations that did achieve success in comparison to the numerous parties that failed to achieve this end.

The second difference focuses on a reverse problem from the first – specifically, overly broad definitions of “totalitarianism” rather than narrow versions. Loose uses of “totalitarianism” as a term often appear more in popular and/or ordinary language and writing, but this issue can arise in academic work as well (see Wolin 2008). More broadly, one encounters the impression that extreme levels of political violence and oppression are ipso facto totalitarian, perhaps a reflection of what Adriana Caverero calls “horrorism” (2009). In using a focus upon vanguardism instead, one can make clearer distinctions between types of violent organizations, clarifying those that are vanguardist versus those groups or events – such as Augusto Pinochet’s regime in Chile, or the groups responsible for the Rwandan genocide – that, while highly violent, are of a different type.¹ Although the relationship between vanguard groups and extreme violence is not contingent or accidental, extreme violence itself is not evidence of vanguardism (as it is not evidence of totalitarianism in the narrower definitions).

Third, the analysis of totalitarianism in political theory and philosophy often touches on larger issues of politics in itself. Two major thinkers who exemplify this tendency are Hannah Arendt and Eric Voegelin, although certainly others could also be put in this list. In the case of Arendt, her examination of totalitarianism (1968) focuses upon the combination of forces in the nineteenth century of the rising “mass”, anti-Semitism, and imperialism in the creation of the Nazi regime specifically. While focused on this specific phenomenon, the categorization of thought she uses places her analysis well within her broader political philosophy (see Arendt 1958). For Voegelin, totalitarianism is the product of a larger “pneumo-pathology”, based upon the inability to accept the metaxy (“in-betweenness”) nature of humanity (Voegelin 1952; see also Voegelin 1967: 261–264). Voegelin notes instances of this desire to “immanetize” Paradise as far back in history as Joachim of Fiore of the twelfth century, but argues that this tendency accelerates in the modern era. Voegelin first described totalitarian movements as “political religions” before moving to the language of “Gnosticism” (see Heilke 1994; Wiser 1980). Both Arendt and Voegelin provide many insights, much more than can be hinted at in these brief summaries. The problem in this style of investigating totalitarianism, however, is its all-encompassing nature. Starting with an analysis of totalitarianism as a means of entry into the foundational elements of the political, be it in modernity or in general, is a perfectly acceptable – perhaps even laudable – endeavor.

But if we want to have a better understanding of these movements and regimes themselves, and how they viewed themselves, a better approach may be one that is limited: it is in this limited focus that an investigation of vanguardism is distinguished from these types of examinations of totalitarianism. As such, this analysis of vanguardism is more akin to the investigations of totalitarianism recently undertaken by Richard Shorten as well as David Ohana. Ohana’s argument centers on the late nineteenth century, noting that “in modern totalitarianism the innovations are ideological consciousness, party organizations, the mobilization of the masses and the use of new technology for unification and control” (Ohana 2009a: 11). His emphasis is on the rise of nihilism, be it directly from Nietzsche, or in derived forms from Sorel, the Futurist movement, or others. Similarly, Shorten’s recent work (2012) looks at a similar time period, emphasizing a tripartite set of influences on totalitarian regimes, which include scientism, utopianism, and revolutionary violence. One might certainly find broader conclusions about the political in this style of “narrow” investigation, but the primary aim remains the explication of a specific political phenomenon without necessarily making larger normative claims.²

The preceding discussion is not meant to deny any connection between vanguardism and totalitarianism. As noted earlier, it is not an accident that vanguard organizations create totalitarian regimes when in power, and indeed often have totalitarian-like elements within their internal organization even if they lack political power. For vanguard parties, their aim of reshaping the totality of experience, their belief in the epistemological supremacy of a specific population, their faith in the historical inevitability of victory, and their fixation on Enemy populations as attempting to subvert social revolution, provides ample incentives – organizational and ideological – to form totalitarian regimes. That vanguard organizations will be totalitarian in regimes under their control, however, is a separate issue from whether totalitarian regimes are inherently vanguardist. On this issue, this text (and its author) is agnostic; it may indeed be the case that vanguardism and totalitarianism are essentially linked, but it is also fully possible that totalitarianism can arise from numerous sources, with its vanguardist style being merely a historical accident of the early twentieth century. One can safely say that, although not all vanguard organizations succeed in bringing about totalitarian policies, their ideologies are inherently totalitarian; it would require a separate investigation to determine whether totalitarian systems are inherently vanguardist.

Finally, a note on terminology. For the most part, this work avoids the usage of “left” and “right” when discussing vanguard groups, except insofar as these labels play a significant role in the self-identification of these groups themselves. These directional terms for political ideology are intimately tied to time and place, which can lead to misunderstanding at the least regarding a specific vanguard organization’s ideology. While terms like “left-Nazi” or “right-Bolshevik” can make sense in discussions focused only on a particular time (Germany before the “Night of the Long Knives” and Russia in the interregnum before Stalin’s rise, respectively), such terminology will at best cause confusion in a work that looks across time and place. Similarly, the usage of “right/left” in the American context fits poorly with vanguardism: if being a “rightist” means an emphasis on the free market, then almost all vanguard groups were leftist; if being a “leftist” means an emphasis on greater direct democratic control of political office, then almost all vanguard organizations were rightist. Rather than engaging in a likely fruitless exercise of bringing consistency to such terminology, the use of it is minimal in this text. The usage of “left” becomes more significant for our purposes when discussing subaltern forms of vanguardism, as the self-identification as “left” plays a major role in alliance formation between otherwise disparate groups. Additionally, this text does not delineate some vanguardist groups as “revolutionary” and others “reactionary” for definitional reasons that are evident in the cases analyzed. By seeking radical social revolution and revision, all vanguardist groups are inherently revolutionary. In contrast, a reactionary group would seek to make society “the way it used to be”, usually in some imagined sense of a previous status quo; while some vanguardist groups do look to the past for inspiration or guidance, these organizations do not view themselves as merely making an attempt to recreate the past, but rather to make something radically new.

What Follows

Chapter 2 provides an overview of what “vanguardism” entails as a concept. After a brief discussion of the literature on vanguard parties, the chapter expands upon the six key elements within vanguardism. First is “category-based epistemology”, which provides the basis for understanding the social world and the centrality of a particular population, and implicitly leans toward elitist systems. The second element is the understanding of History, which bases itself upon specific dynamics and tends in a directional sense. Third is the notion of “science” based upon this view of History. The fourth element regards the totalism that derives from the first three elements. Fifth is the central importance of the Enemy category, in effect, the perceived antagonist in the “drama” of History. Sixth and finally, the organized vanguard party itself – its structure and relation to the previous five elements – is discussed.

Chapter 3 provides a “p...