Laclau and Mouffe: The Radical Democratic Imaginary

Lenin’s vanguard party theory
In these terms, Lenin took a very specific approach to coalition building, for he
insisted that the Social Democratic Party ought to play a vanguard role in leading
the anti-Tsarist struggle. The socialist theorists of the Second International were
confronted with the fact that many workers acted in ways that contradicted their
“authentic” interest in revolution. Following the lines of Marx’s own elitism (Marx
and Engels 1969:120), Kautsky argued that the workers had to be brought to
revolutionary consciousness by a force originating outside the class, namely a
bourgeois intelligentsia that possessed a scientific grasp of history (Kolakowski
1978:42–3, 53; Laclau and Mouffe 1985:19–20). Lenin was even more pessimistic;
he believed that the Western workers’ revolutionary potential was becoming
neutralized as they embraced trade unionist reformism within bourgeois institutions.
He concluded that if the workers were left to themselves, they would not only fail
to develop a socialist consciousness, they would naturally fall prey to bourgeois
trade-unionist ideas and to anti-revolutionary leadership. For Lenin, the
overwhelming power of bourgeois ideology was such that there were only two

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choices: either the Party had to intervene by any means necessary to direct the
workers towards proletarian consciousness, or the workers would be swept up by
reactionary bourgeois ideology. Lenin decided that the Party had to bring the
workers to their “authentic” consciousness, and that this required in turn an all-
out war against what he called the bourgeois tendencies that threatened to divert
the class from its true revolutionary calling (Lenin 1989:97–8, 106–7, 108–9;
Wright 1986:105, 108; Kolakowski 1978:386–7).
Lenin argued that the revolutionary Party therefore could not accept any
direction whatsoever from its grassroots worker membership. The Party had to
become a vanguard leadership that made political decisions based solely on
objective knowledge and scientific theory. Intellectuals who “correctly” understood
the Marxist laws of history were the true embodiment of proletarian consciousness,
regardless of their own class position, for their scientific theory was the only
legitimate guide for political decision-making (Kolakowski 1978:391). Lenin
optimistically predicted that the distinction between the Party intellectuals and
the workers would eventually disappear, but only after the workers had in fact
developed the revolutionary interests that the leadership had assigned to them in
advance. The Party could always claim that it alone had access to the true interests
of the workers, regardless of what the workers actually thought about the Party.
Far from entering into a dialogue, the Party leadership was allowed to regard the
workers as an “obstacle, an immature state to be overcome” (Kolakowski 1978:391).
Laclau and Mouffe conclude that the Leninist notion of a vanguardist leadership
“postulates a clear separation within the masses between the leading sectors and
those which are led” (1985:55).
Leninist theory also rules out plural perspectives. Where other Russian socialists
argued that without open debate, the socialist movement would become “ossified,”
Lenin insisted on the necessity of a single doctrine. Critics who questioned scientific
Marxism and the inevitability of the socialist revolution were dismissed by Lenin
as bourgeois thinkers (Lenin 1989:75, 90). Lenin held that the development of
multiple factions was “unhealthy, since in principle only one group could be in
possession of the truth at a given time” (Kolakowski 1978:392). Lenin launched a
full-scale attack on “factionalism” in 1921, arguing that the Party could not afford
to indulge in “the luxury of studying shades of opinion.” He further declared, “We
must make it quite clear that we cannot have arguments about deviation and that
we must put a stop to that” (Kolakowski 1978:514).
Lenin later reassessed his position on the trade union movement and admitted
that it could play a valuable role in the revolutionary struggle. He nevertheless
remained a harsh critic of trade union independence (Kolakowski 1978:513). Only
those political practices that were brought under the direction of the Party
leadership could further the revolutionary cause. Indeed, the road to revolution—
as interpreted by the Party—provides a moral compass for virtually every social
practice: “everything which serves or injures the Party’s aims is morally good or
bad respectively, and nothing else is morally good or bad” (Kolakowski 1978:
516). Art, literature, law, political institutions, democratic values, religious ideas

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and philosophies were evaluated solely in terms of their relationship to the class
struggle (Kolakowski 1978:383).
The Party imposed itself, from above, as the true center for all forms of anti-
Tsarist protest (Kolakowski 1978:388). As the workers’ movement constructed
new alliances with emerging social forces, these alliances were seen as “necessary
and yet transitory steps in pursuit of [the workers’] class objectives” (Laclau and
Mouffe 1985:56). Lenin strongly opposed Martov’s proposal that the Party remain
a loosely structured mass organization open to any individuals who “worked under
the guidance and direction” of a Party organization (Kolakowski 1978:393). For
Lenin, the development of the Party as a loosely-knit ensemble of highly
autonomous groups would be utterly counter-productive; the Party had to be built
in a completely top-down manner. Dismissing Martov’s model as “false
‘democracy,’” Lenin insisted that the Party ought to establish strict membership
rules and ought to maintain absolute control over all of its sub-organizations
(Kolakowski 1978:394).
There is some disagreement on the extent to which Leninism laid the
foundation for Stalinist authoritarianism. Kolakowski claims that “there is
absolutely nothing in the worst excesses of the worst years of Stalinism that
cannot be justified on Leninist principles, if only it can be shown that Soviet
power was increased thereby” (Kolakowski 1978:516). Blackburn remarks that
many militants were attracted to Lenin’s cult of Party organization and discipline
in the context of the Tsarist “incoherent autocracy.” They judged the Bolsheviks’
ruthless methods for seizing power against the background of brutal historical
conditions, including the carnage of the First World War, the harsh conditions
that the war created for the masses, and the urgent problems of massive famine,
epidemics, civil war and foreign invasion (Blackburn 1991:189–90). In any event,
many of the first steps towards Stalinism—the fusion of the Party and state, the
lawless suppression of pluralism in civil society, the ban on opposition within
the Party, the manipulation of elections and usurpation of the Soviets, the
deployment of militaristic strategies to safeguard the regime and the displacement
of small-scale production by central management—all took place in the first
few years of the revolution.
Blackburn insists that Lenin himself did grasp, perhaps even more than Marx,
the complex character of politics and economics, and that he did argue in some
specific moments that political organizing must be to some extent autonomous.
Lenin allowed for a degree of self-determination for Finland and the Baltic states,
while some aspects of worker self-management, the autonomy of educational
institutions and a free press survived well into the mid-1920s. However, by the
time that Lenin began to express explicit warnings about the excessive authority
of the new Soviet bureaucracy, it was far too late (Blackburn 1991:189–90,195).
Where Lenin demanded total loyalty on the part of the Party member, Stalin
extended that principle to every citizen. Lenin’s ideal of a disciplined Party
became Stalin’s ideal of a disciplined society, and suppression of dissent within
the Party was expanded into a full-scale campaign of terror against actual,

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potential and imagined seats of opposition throughout the Soviet Union
(Blackburn 1991:196).
The Communist regimes that were established under Stalinist rule differed in
many respects, but they all shared two basic features: an economy dominated by
state ownership and control, and a political system in which the Communist Party
monopolized authority. Dissent was censored and those social forces that were not
controlled by the state/Party were repressed. The regimes also promoted a sort of
simulacra pluralism. A wide variety of institutions were established that appeared
to address a wide range of socio-cultural concerns, including women’s rights. These
institutions did not, however, promote the formation of a vibrant civil society
that nurtured oppositional discourse. The socio-cultural institutions actually
reinforced the regime’s totalitarian grip over the social at every turn, for they were
fully integrated into the state-Party system (Miliband 1991:7; Lefort 1986:290–
1).
The “scientific” approach to history and politics in the socialist tradition leads
to disastrous results. To the extent that socialist activists believe that their Marxist
principles constitute a science, they will ignore the importance of democratic
dialogue with others. For scientific Marxists, the success of the “correct” political
practice is guaranteed by “correct” theory, for theory is supposed to predict the
future course of history (Wright 1986:48). Either they will place a “quietist” trust
in the necessity of historical forces to deliver “the people” automatically from
false consciousness to their “authentic” interests, or they will embrace the
“vanguardist” assumption that the deviation of the exploited from their “authentic”
interests requires the disciplining intervention of a revolutionary leadership. Where
scientific Marxism does recognize that the worker does not automatically possess
a revolutionary consciousness, the worker is regarded as a revolutionary in
embryonic form, and the Party is considered as the only agent that can properly
bring that embryo to maturity (Kitching 1994:7–8).
The “scientific” approach to activism—that of a theoretically enlightened
elite bringing a deluded mass to its “authentic” consciousness in a top-down
manner—can also be found in the feminist, anti-racist, lesbian and gay, and
environmentalist traditions as well. The problem of vanguardism does not reside
exclusively in the socialist tradition; it emerges in all types of political activism.
If democratic activists consider their principles as a fallible and contextually-
specific position that owes its coherence to a historical horizon, rather than the
necessary corollary of an objective truth; and if they abandon foundationalist
categories such as “authentic” identities and objective interests, then they will
tend to value democratic dialogue, the exchange of activist wisdom between
movements, and mutually constitutive negotiations between the leaders and
the led. It should also be recognized that we can find many examples of
vanguardist leadership on the right as well. Right-wing religious fundamentalist
leaders in the United States, for example, do not hesitate to speak in the name
of the true “moral interests” of the American people and to dismiss their
democratic critics as the victims of a spiritual “false consciousness.”

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