The world of radical politics is a divided one. While there is agreement on systemic change as the means to achieve universal emancipation, much else is a topic of fervent argument. One such debate is on what kinds of people should lead radical movements: members of the working-class, or professionals trained and educated in revolutionary theory and practice? The course upon which this debate has unfolded has influenced the structure and composition of radical movements, and their ensuing success. This tension is at the root of other debates in radical political thought, and has influenced the development of schools such as the New Left and Trotskyism. Having looked at both sides of this debate, it is clear to me that there will always be the need for a professional vanguard in radical organizations, the extent of which depends on the society in which the movement finds itself. I hope this text clarifies the terms of the debate, and helps explain in what cases professionalization is more necessary than others.
Framing the Problem
Vladimir Lenin is the strongest proponent of the need for professionalization. In What is to be Done, he argues against the the so-called Economist members of the Russian Social Democratic Party — who advocated putting economic interests over political ones. He asserts that their approach of relying on the spontaneity of the working class in advancing radical change would lead to the failure of radical change, and would continue the status quo.
But why, the reader will ask, does the spontaneous movement, the movement along the line of least resistance, lead to the domination of bourgeois ideology? For the simple reason that bourgeois ideology is far older in origin than socialist ideology, that it is more fully developed, and that it has at its disposal immeasurably more means of dissemination. And the younger the socialist movement in any given country, the more vigorously it must struggle against all attempts to entrench non-socialist ideology, and the more resolutely the workers must be warned against the bad counsellors who shout against “overrating the conscious element”, etc. (p.24)
Because bourgeois ideology has been around for so long, it has become the default in the minds of the working class, thus limiting the reforms the working class can campaign for to those in the bourgeois imaginary. Lenin also pushes back against prioritizing economic issues over political ones, arguing that to do so would condemn the movement to working within the existing system, instead of trying to change its underlying structure, which rests on a political foundation. He advocated for advocating these issues by instead concentrating the work of the Party on raising the consciousness of the workers from the outside, using a small group of professional revolutionaries — a working-class vanguard — grounded in theory. Only this professional group, he argued, would be able to maintain the secrecy and rigour necessary to operate in Tsarist Russia, and overcome the ‘amateurism’ that led to previous revolts’ failures. Jo Freeman, in The Tyranny of Structurelessness, also favours recognizing professionalization. She points out how informal elites are inherent in every group setting — namely those that interact with each other outside of the confines of the group — and that formalizing elites through structure is a way of ensuring that there are rules around them and that they are not exclusionary. She argues that formalized, professionals groups are the most effective — pointing to the successes of feminist groups like NOW and WEAL, with unstructured groups “become the troops under the leadership of structured organizations”.
Karl Marx, in Civil War in France, takes the opposite view. In 1871, in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War, a group of revolutionary socialists took over France’s capital and established the Paris Commune based on progressive, radical principles. To Marx, the working-class structure of this government — consisting of workers councils that were directly elected, term-limited and revocable at any time — was highly effective, leading to low crime and administrating performed “modestly, conscientiously, and efficiently”. It marked a clean break from the previous government — which he described as a bourgeois “engine of class despotism” (23). A central part of the failings of this ancient régime could be found, Marx thought, in its cadres of professionals which he compared to a “parasite, feeding upon and clogging the free movement of society” (26). By using the existing knowledge of the workers, better outcomes could be created that led to a more just, well-run state free of the graft of its professionalized predecessor.
Others are critical of professionals as well. In 1960s America, James Boggs argued in The American Revolution that professionalized unions like the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) had become singularly focused on maintaining employment for its members along with their benefits. This made them dependent on the capitalist warfare economy, turning them into “partners with management” in an effort to ensure their self-preservation. Unions became thus unwilling to contend with broader issues of automation and the surplus population and fundamental changes in society it entailed, as addressing it head-on threatened the source of their power in the society. They became making them irrelevant — if not obstacles for — radical movements and broader struggles. In Women, Unions & the Work, Selma James similarly argued that unions were feckless, exclusionary creatures of capitalism. Their bureaucracies “structurally make a generalized struggle impossible”, by “fragmenting the class into those who have wages and those who don’t” and ignoring the wageless. They often oppose direct action and marginalize women from participation in them. She called for new organizations that harnessed the power and frustration of women outside of the union structure. For both these thinkers, unions thus devolve into exclusionary bureaucratic fiefdoms, captured by the elite professionals that run them.
Parsing critiques of professionalism
At first glance, these differences seem to be quick stark. Lenin is calling for radical movements to be put under the control of experienced professionals — while James and Boggs argue that institutions run by such professionals have been co-opted by capitalism. Upon closer inspection, some similarities emerge. Lenin too saw the “trade union consciousness” (p.17) that Boggs and James decry in their works as inadequate for revolutionary movements, and denounced the Economists as moving towards that model. His solution however, is for political groups to take the lead in radical spaces. Both those as well as unions are comprised of trained professionals grounded in theory; the difference here is that Lenin’s are political, not economic, in their focus. Lenin even declares trade unions — with the right circumstances — to be useful for radical movements.
Trade union organizations, not only can be of tremendous value in developing and consolidating the economic struggle, but can also become a very important auxiliary to political agitation and revolutionary organization.(p.74)
To Lenin, not only can they advance the economic struggles of the proletariat, but they have political value too. Overall however, all 3 thinkers here agree on their own, however, unions are not enough and are vulnerable to being co-opted by capitalism. Their singular focus on “the profound importance of the forward movement of the drab everyday struggle” as compared to a broader view of what society could be like under a new order, as well as an obsession with “the seductive idea of showing the world a new example of ”close and organic contact with the proletarian struggle” (p.72) at the expense of more concrete action — make them ineffective vehicles for radical struggle.
Despite their criticism of unions however, neither Boggs nor James critique professionalism itself, only how it has metastasized in the organizations of their analysis. James explicitly says that the fragmentation of the working class imposed by unions “occurs not because they are bureaucratized; this is why”. Union professionals choose specialized bureaucracy as a means of dividing the oppressed, not because that is what it inherent does. Boggs acknowledges how “during the [19]30s Marx’s perspectives were realized to an astonishing degree in the organization of the CIO” which helped established “the welfare state with many of the social benefits that Marx had advocated”. It is only over time that union leaders allowed their organizations to degrade into the reactionary groups Boggs condemned in the 1960s. This shows that bureaucratic professionalism is a neutral tool that leads to a variety of outcomes — some of which bring emancipation closer to realization. The flaws of professionals are not inherent, but are products of their environment.
Only Marx offers a blanket condemnation of professionalism, viewing it as an oppressing power (41). To understand the defects of this approach, it is important to look at what the alternatives to it are. The Paris Commune fell just over three months after its establishment, crushed by a professional, specialized French army. The working-class government abolished the Parisian branch of that army upon claiming power. For the Commune to have successfully defended itself, it would have had to ensure that those defending it were provided weapons of good caliber, trained regularly on those weapons and in other combat techniques, as well as create a system of coordinating forces across the city. In other words, there would need to be an army led by professionals.
The same principle can be applied to government, particularly in forms of government that eschew capitalism, as radicals do. As the purview of the state expands, the specialization and training inherent in professionalism is inevitable. Capitalism allows price to signal supply and demand, providing individuals and businesses the information on which to act independently to supply the goods and services needed in the marketplace. There is no need for of a professional governing class here, as the market does all of the necessary coordinating. Radical movements oppose capitalism for justifiable reasons — namely that it leads to valourization of labour, exploitation of the proletariat, and increasing societal inequity. The alternative to a price-based system however, Lenin argues in Imperialism, is one where workers may not be under the thumb of the capitalists, but where “a central committee of management […] will regulate [production] for the benefit of the whole of society, will put the means of production into suitable hands, and above all will take care that there be constant harmony between production and consumption”. These highly complicated tasks must be performed by professionalized labour trained in running these systems. Lenin is pointing to a basic reality that a system of production created by capitalism cannot be maintained without some alternative to capitalism. That alternative requires a professional class.
On a broader level, professionalization is the inevitable result of learning from experience. Every time a farmer plants a crop, he learns from the experience and applies those lessons the next time, usually resulting in a more bountiful harvest. Similarly, a radical movement comprised of “naturally working men” (Marx, 24) will, through the sheer act of performing the actions necessary to build a movement or governing a city — whether printing propaganda or adjudicating legal disputes — will become better at such activities than others, and will over time, become specialized in them. Complex tasks must be divided — a revolutionary cannot run a printing operation while raising the consciousness of the workers at the same time (or if they can, neither can be done well). Professionalization is simply the recognition of these facts, and a method of assigning the execution of tasks based on who has the best ability to perform them. Efforts to obstruct such natural specialization will lead to worse results. In other words, to amateurism.
Towards a better vanguard
Nevertheless, it is important to acknowledge, and respond, to the salient critiques brought up by James and Boggs. Both writers paint professionalized radical organizations as inadequate for the tasks of advancing radical struggle. While some — their focus on economic issues and feasibility — can be attributed to their trade union consciousness, there is no assurance that were these organizations political, they would be free of co-optation identified by the two thinkers. Elite capture — in which the ruling members of an institution use it to benefit themselves at the expense of its broader constituency — is prevalent in many political institutions. After Lenin’s successful capture of the Russian state, for instance, his successor Stalin used it as a vehicle to root out opposition to him, murdering thousands and repressing dissent. Many, such as humanist socialist E.P. Thompson criticized this version of the state and its “rigid bureaucratic structures” that stifled human creativity and prioritized non-human structures at the expense of real human needs. Is there a way of ensuring that professionals don’t fall to opportunism and turn radical movements into tools for advancing their interests?
Lenin himself answers this to a certain extent. In responding to the Economists’ claim that it is better to have a more decentralized, working-class organization, he argues that:
To concentrate all secret functions in the hands of as small a number of professional revolutionaries as possible does not mean that the latter will ”do the thinking for all“ and that the rank and file will not take an active part in the movement. On the contrary, the membership will promote increasing numbers of the professional revolutionaries from its ranks; for it will know that it is not enough for a few students and for a few working men waging the economic struggle to gather in order to form a ”committee“, but that it takes years to train oneself to be a professional revolutionary; and the rank and file will ”think“, not only of amateurish methods, but of such training. Centralisation of the secret functions of the organisation by no means implies centralisation of all the functions of the movement. (p.80)
Not only will professional revolutionaries be better at evading detection by the Tsarist gendarmes, but they will enable the organization as a whole to be more effective and recruit more members. They will also train members to join their ranks, exposing working-class people to theory and politics and reducing the hold trade union consciousness has over them. Professionalization will not only result in more effective movements, but more inclusive ones as well, and this inclusiveness is key to addressing the issues raised by James and Boggs. By continually adding new members to the vanguard — ideally from underrepresented groups like women — professional organizations would stay connected to broader struggles faced by the working class as a whole and be less prone to exclusionary practices. Jo Freeman provides other guiding principles in the Tyranny of Structurelessness, which she describes as “democratic structuring”. Her proposals include equal access to information, diffusion of information and delegation and distribution of specific authority. These rules point to the need for professionals to remain accountable to those that they serve. Finally, it is critical to reiterate that professionals cannot succumb to trade union consciousness, and continue to see the struggle primarily through a political lens. You can only compromise with capitalism for so long before being absorbed into it. Implementing the principles is easier said than done, of course, but the risks of them not being followed are outweighed by the indispensable role professionals play within radical movements.
Different levels of professionalization are needed for different circumstances. Lenin was operating in totalitarian Tsarist Russia, which is why was he so focused on the need of professionals to maintain secrecy. Broadly speaking, the more democratic a society is, the less radical movements need to be dominated by professionals. In societies where there is greater freedom of expression and assembly, as well as governmental accountability, there can thus be a lower level of professionalization — as grassroots radical groups focused on consciousness-raising can influence societal opinion, which pushes responsive governments in turn to act accordingly. Still — when it comes down to organizing direct action and political campaigns, there will always be a need for experienced and trained professionals, one that cannot be substituted by amateurs. Revolutionary professionals are the backbone of radical movements, and ensure their sustainability in the long run. As Lenin declared in What is to be Done, their “task is not to champion the degrading of the revolutionary to the level of an amateur, but to raise the amateurs to the level of revolutionaries” (p.81). Ensuring that the vanguard never loses sight of this focus will allow it to avoid the pitfalls that come with holding power, and will enable revolutionary professionals to continue their work in leading the struggle for universal emancipation.
To read more on this topic, here are the sources I used:
Boggs, James. 1963. American Revolution. NYU Press. https://libcom.org/book/export/html/42241.
E.P. Thompson. 1957. ‘Socialist Humanism’. The New Reasoner, 1957. https://www.marxists.org/archive/thompson-ep/1957/sochum.htm.
Jo Freeman. 1971. ‘The Tyranny of Stuctureless’. 1971. https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm.
Karl Marx. 1900. The Civil War in France. International library Publishing Company. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/civil_war_france.pdf.
Lenin, V. I. 1935. What Is to Be Done? Wellred Books. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/download/what-itd.pdf.
Selma James. 1973. ‘Selma James, “Women, the Unions and Work, Or…What Is Not To Be Done” | Caring Labor: An Archive’. Radical America 7 (4). https://caringlabor.wordpress.com/2010/08/14/selma-james-women-the-unions-and-work-or-what-is-not-to-be-done/.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2021. ‘Commune of Paris’. In Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/event/Commune-of-Paris-1871.
‘Timeline of the Paris Commune’. n.d. Marxists.Org. Accessed 18 April 2021. https://www.marxists.org/history/france/paris-commune/timeline.htm.
