Education

Our Philosophy

Leadership

This vanguard-cadre party is a revolutionary political body dedicated to providing leadership for the working class in its overthrow of the historically retrogressive and oppressing incumbent classes. It is an elite front organization making up in skillful and disciplined leadership what it lacks in size. This leadership is embodied in party personnel, to be distributed and referred to in the grand narrative of struggle; its opening, climax, and denouement.

Partisan movements develop within existing social, political, or military organizations. Historically for the communists, this has been outlawed political parties, labor organizations, civic clubs, or disbanded military bodies. Traditional understanding of insurrectionary development states that senior leaders are not produced at all, but rather assimilated. However, present historical circumstances in the US have withheld from the communists sufficient institutions of sympathetic interest from which to draw. And thus, until such circumstances have been correct, it is intended that leaders be produced and inserted into sites of struggle ex post facto

The liberal idea of leadership seeks to simplify history, reductively compressing great cooperative achievements into the actions of a few great individuals, boiling down immense processes into simply the possession of a set of ideals, the magnitude of which, to them, determines success. The liberal is wrong—though their mode of thought in this regard remains prominent enough to merit dissection. History is not the product of great individuals, but of historical processes. And ethos, while an important element in the struggle, is not a criterion for the selection and promotion of party members. Instead, the competency of a member is measured by their potential to be an agent in the facilitation of the progress of history, or to be an agent in the fight against regression. The greater their understanding of the world’s condition, and the greater their understanding of how to efficiently carry out a part in its change, the greater their competency. Such is the standards held for the membership and such is the purpose of party education.

The cells which comprise the highest organ of working-class leadership are the cadre. Cadre are general leaders, but also specialize in specific skillsets that collectively coalesce into a single body, the party. The actions of cadre are the material manifestation of working-class interests. And, making up almost the entirety of the world’s population, the interests and skillsets needed to fight for these interests are as diverse as the people themselves. As a consequence, not all cadre are to be full-time functionaries in the traditional sense, but rather exist as a broad corps of non full-time activists with daily ties amongst their class. Such ties serve as roots in which to expand proletarian democracy and ideology within the working class.
 
A Vanguard Party must give great thought to what types of leaders compose it as well as the methodology of their development. With all the time, energy, and resources necessary to facilitate training, none must go to waste. The ideal candidate possesses three characteristics. First, absolute devotion to the cause of the working class, its allies, and loyalty to the Party tested in concrete struggle, chiefly in the form of dedicated time and energy. Second, the greatest empathy and closest possible contact with the masses, especially oppressed groups. Third, a proclivity for initiative, growth, and circumstantial adaptation.
 
Just as students will grow to possess flexibility and vision to evolve the application of Marxism-Leninism, the party, and methods of command, the Party too will grow. A stock of good leaders is fluid in many ways. The struggle forms and molds cadre; chosen points of struggle and expertise change over time, as do the areas of interest of cadre. And this is good. While party work can be tiresome and grueling, it seeds no alienation. Cadre are free to express and experiment with the work they choose to do—not only as an anti-capitalist principle, but for the innovative exploration such freedom fruits. Leadership stock does not only fluctuate in individual skillset, however. The search for a proper cadre policy means acknowledging that comrades who are outstanding Party leaders now, may one day take a backseat or give up the struggle for other business in their lives. While such a reality is unfortunate, the dynamic environment of personnel that results would see the party wither in its absence.

Training

Training is central to the success of partisan movements. Each area of work has a deep history and often numerous approaches and theories on how to best carry it out. To effectively prepare for the creation of an organized and conscious people, agents of the impecunious classes must understand and be capable of carrying out a plethora of duties in their chosen site of struggle. With the training regime, instructors and students collaborate to develop candidates and cadre to populate the party, its auxiliaries, and the working class through a synthesis of motivational and operational skill building, individual tailoring, and rapid assimilation of lessons learned.

The parameters in which training can be enacted are often imposed from without. This is especially so for the communists. Nevertheless, there exists a great many number of approaches an institution can take in order to operate in the highest possible manner within these limitations. Party educational strategy is multifaceted and uses the following four heuristics to accomplish this task,

  1. Liberatory Pedagogy. Students are not piggy-banks to be filled with material to memorize. Instructors and students are co-creators of knowledge and growth; they work together to develop both the student and instructor alike. Their development is to be achieved cooperatively.

     

  2. Small-group Training. Those joining a party using the Marxist-Leninist method simply do not arrive as newcomers; they already possess a set of beliefs that have inspired them to join the movement. Better yet, many come already possessing skillsets. Within small groups, preexisting foundations can be built upon and shared. Such a system is not only efficient, but serves to incorporate and subsidize different experiences into the ML method. Small groups are also more readily clandestine.

     

  3. Large Ideological Emphasis. Unlike labor under capitalism, Party work does not hold a member’s ability to live hostage. And so, inspiration is what keeps work getting done. Members are expected to wage a campaign of liberation against a numerically and strategically superior force possessing entrenched institutions of media, life, and violence. Party work is hard, tiring, and often disillusioning. Needless to say, feet get cold very quickly in the absence of strong convictions and justifications.

     

  4. Expedient Inculcation of Field Experience. Revolutionary momentum in the global north develops in a very different way than revolutionary archetypes. This different context comes with a new set of advantages to be exploited and a new set of disadvantages to be mitigated. And thus, a new stratagem must be discovered. An unceasing cycle of implementing what works and discarding what doesn’t will aid in this discovery.

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