Study Guide for Mandel’s Vanguard Parties

Study Guide for Mandel’s Vanguard Parties

originally posted by Socialist Action

reading: Vanguard Parties

additional reading: The Leninist Theory of Organization

1. What are the two ingredients needed in a socialist revolution?2. What is elementary class consciousness? Why is it important? What are its limitations?3. Why don’t workers rebel all of the time?4. What tasks does the vanguard party fulfill during low ebbs in the class struggle?

5. What is the political program of the vanguard, and where does it come from?

6. How is the concept of a “centralized” party political as opposed to being simply organizational?

7. In what ways does the vanguard party unify different struggles and experiences?

8. How does a vanguard organization become a vanguard party?

9. What are the different forms that the self-organization of the working class takes, and what stance does the vanguard party take towards them?

10. What was Marx’s favorite saying, and how is it relevant to the question of building a vanguard party?

12. What role does democracy play in a post-capitalist society?13. What role does democracy play in the vanguard party?