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"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 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"

THIS ARTICLE ATTEMPTS TO SHOW THAT THE CONCEPTS OF PLURALISM AND OF THE VANGUARD HAVE BEEN SYNTHESIZED IN NICARARGUAN THEORY AND PRACTICE IN A MANNER THAT DOES VIOLENCE TO NEITHER OF THEM. FURTHER, IT HOPES TO SHOW THAT SUCH A SYNTHESIS CAN YIELD VALUABLE THEORETICAL INSIGHTS WHICH CAN GO BEYOND THE PARTICULAR CONTEXT OF CONTEMPORARY NICARAGUA, THE DYNAMISM OF CONTEMPORARY NICARAGAUN LIFE IS PARTIALLY DERIVATIVE OF THE COMBNATION IN PRACTICE OF TWO APPARTENTLY CONDICTORY NOTIONS. THIS EXAMPLE DEMONSTRATES THAT A CREATIVE APPROACH TO THE COMBINATION OF OLD POLITICAL IDEAS CAN YIELD PRACTICAL REALITIES THAT GO BEYOND OLD EXPECTATIONS.

One of the major principles of the Nicaraguan constitution is that the state guarantees the existence of political pluralism (Article 5). One clear aspect of such pluralism is the maintenance of a multiparty system. Yet it is also clear that the FSLN as the vanguard party sees its function as guiding the revolution. In this article, the author's concern is to show that the concepts of pluralism and of the vanguard have been synthesized in Nicaraguan theory and practice in a manner that does violence to neither of them

Political, economic, and social policies of the FSLN government, including relations with Cuba; 7 articles. Partial contents: Pluralism and vanguardism in the Nicaraguan revolution, by Bruce E. Wright; The state of cultural democracy in Cuba and Nicaragua during the 1980s, by David Craven.

Introduction : minjung, history, and historical subjectivity -- The construction of minjung -- Anticommunism and North Korea -- Anti-Americanism and chuch'e sasang -- The undonggwŏn as a counterpublic sphere -- Between indeterminacy and radical critique : madanggŭk, ritual, and protest -- The alliance between labor and intellectuals -- "To be reborn as revolutionary workers" : Gramscian fusion and Leninist vanguardism -- The subject as the subjected : intellectuals and workers in labor literature -- Conclusion : the minjung movement as history

Democracy & socialism are not separate concepts; socialism is a development of democratic relations. However, it has long been common to identify Stalinism with socialism. Stalinism can be defined in terms of state ownership, merging party & state power & suspending social power, suspension of democracy within the party, & limitations on individual liberty. These policies are essentially counterrevolutionary. Stalinism was not the inevitable result of the October Revolution, nor was it due to the underdevelopment of Russia; rather, it derived from the inner limitations of Bolshevism, including vanguardism, a one-party system, & growing detachment from the international workers' movement. The Stalinist system continues to exist as a bureaucratized political society whose primary end is not emancipation of the Wc but consolidation & maintenance of power. Rejection of this system of existing socialism opens a possibility of its rehabilitation. W. H. Stoddard.

Pt. 1. Some thoughts on the origins of our current predicament. Manners, deference, and private property: or, elements for a general theory of hierarchy -- The very idea of consumption: desire, phantasms, and the aesthetics of destruction from medieval times to the present -- Turning modes of production inside-out: or, why capitalism is a transformation fo slavery (short version) -- Fetishism as social creativity: or, fetishes are gods in the process of construction -- pt. 2. Provisional autonomous zone: dilemmas of authority in rural Madagascar. Provisional autonomous zone: or, the ghost-state in Madagascar -- Dancing with corpses resonsidered: an interpretation of Famadihana (in Arivonimamo, Madigascar) -- Love magic and political morality in central Madagascar, 1875-1990 -- Oppression -- pt. 3. Direct action, direct democracy, and social theory. The twilight of vanguardism -- Social theory as science and utopia: or, does the prospect of a general sociological theory still mean anything in an age of globalization? -- There never was a west: or, democracy emerges from the spaces in between -- On the phenomenology of giant puppets: broken windows, imaginary jars of urine, and the cosmological role of the police in American culture

Machine generated contents note: ch. 1 Introduction: `Practical Critical Activity' and the Conception of Revolutionary Agency -- pt. I Globalizing Capital-in-Crisis -- ch. 2 The Altered Character of Capitals Crisis -- ch. 3 A Century of Lenin's Imperialism -- ch. 4 On Changes in the Proletariat with Capitalist Globalization and the Need for a Critique of Marx's Conception of the Proletariat -- ch. 5 The Impact of Capital-in-Crisis on Nature -- ch. 6 The Trajectory of Trade Unionism Under Capital's Unfolding Structural Crisis -- ch. 7 Capital's Offensive against Social Provision -- pt. II Impasse and Outmodedness: The Twilight of the Trade Unions -- ch. 8 The Organization of the Proletariat under Cyclical and Structural Forms of Capital's Crisis -- ch. 9 Labour's Growing Crisis of Organization -- pt. III Breaking Out of the `Bottleneck' of Historically Limited, Self-Subsistent Trade Union Organization -- ch. 10 Socialist Pluralism' and the Conception of the `Social Union' -- ch. 11 From Trade Unions Towards the Formation of `Social Unions'? -- ch. 12 The Social Union as Revolutionary Agency against the Capital Order -- pt. IV The Question of Revolutionary Agency in the Twentieth Century -- ch. 13 Lenin and the Question of Revolutionary Agency -- ch. 14 Trotsky's Transitional Programme, the `Bolshevist-Leninist' Approach to Trade Unionism and the Demise of the Sectarian Politics of the `Revolutionary Left' -- ch. 15 A Critique of `Vanguardism' and the `Party-Form' -- Appendices -- Appendix I Marx's Realms: Capital, Natural Necessity, True Realm of Freedom -- Appendix III The Broadcasting and Print Media: In the Ideological Service of Capital and its State Power -- Appendix III Whatever Happened to the `National Liberation Struggle'?