Yeah, but vanguardism was part of an effort to divorce Communism (as articulated by Marx) from a key element of its theoretical foundation, in which it must be grounded in an advanced capitalism, some Communism without it is, just, well, Communism.
And that vanguardism opresses, and if given half a chance, slaughters those who don't get with the program. Here's the latest major US example: http://www2.epa.gov/carbon-pollution-standards/clean-power-p...
As a resident of a flyover state that's 80% powered by coal, I'm not looking forward to this this precipitous action that will cause my electric rates to "necessarily skyrocket"....
Vanguardism mostly distracted people with the (historically) brief ascendance of Leninism, which was most influential in states which lacked the prerequisites Marx identified for transition from capitalism to socialism on the way to acheiving the communist end state while the developed capitalist societies to which Marx's theories applied continued to change in the direction Marx predicted.
> And that vanguardism opresses, and if given half a chance, slaughters those who don't get with the program. Here's the latest major US example: http://www2.epa.gov/carbon-pollution-standards/clean-power-p....
I'm failing to see how:
(1) That has anything to do with "vanguardism", or
(2) that has anything to do with oppressing or slaughtering anyone.
(3) where the "necessarily skyrocket" quote comes from (its not from the linked page, doesn't seem to be from any linked documents, and doesn't seem accurate in any case, since there is nothing inherent in the proposed rule that requires any costs to be born by rate payers -- although, of course, state plans could result in that.)
Yeah, but capitalism also begins and ends with vanguardism (it's called Enclosure). So does almost every ideology in human history, since any organized program of change in any status quo (whether you like it or not) almost always has to be forced and enforced. Left alone, people just go back to doing what they've "always done", which is almost uniformly such utter crap[1] that the clever people keep coming up with programs to change it. Which reactionaries then complain about for the rest of time while enjoying the blessings.
[1] http://davidbrin.blogspot.co.il/2011/11/pining-for-feudalism...
But my point is not about vanguardism per se, but what vanguardism does in alignment with whatever ideology is relevant. With collectivism in its various forms it leads to extreme oppression up to and including mass slaughter as the vanguard tries to force people to align with a prescriptive, unnatural, i.e. fundamentally wrong ideology. A commonly accepted figure for the 20th Century is 100 million killed by their own socialist governments, I personally estimate (using very rough projections from those former worker's paradises where bodies have actually been counted at least somewhat) upwards of a quarter billion.
By contrast, the "ideology" of capitalism is much more aligned with human nature, it also sets up a system in which everyone is perforce required to minimally engage. Do some work, get paid some money, buy some stuff, repeat. People are strongly encouraged to do more of all of those, but there are e.g. no block or village committees that watch for layabouts and deny them the ration coupons necessary to get food.
(Appropriately, with the 25th anniversary of Tiananmen Square today, just before then my roommates were a couple of grad students from the PRC, and one of the things they told me was that Deng's economic reforms had negated the ability of these committees to casually kill people. With a free market in food getting on their wrong side meant you paid more to eat, but not automatic death by starvation.)
And of course my other point is one you implicitly agree with: pure, "scientific" Marxism does not and cannot exist.