This is a great comment! I appreciate you explaining your perspective so much, and it resonates with my own experience very strongly.

On your first point about the vanguard, I think of the vanguard as an emergent quality of the working class, such as “capitalism creates its own grave diggers.” Your example of the hydra is interesting, because Hercules defeated the Hydra with his nephew Iolas. When Herc would chop a head, Iolas would cauterize it with a torch. It makes me think about how this would work as a strategy against the vanguard. “Chopping a head” would mean killing or imprisoning a member, a leader. But how would the wound be cauterized? The only thing that would prevent the development of new heads would be the alleviation of social and economic hardships, which Capitalism can’t do. It can try to buy people off, but this wouldnt work with the vanguard by its very definition. Additionally, new heads are created not just by chopping, new ones are cropping up all the time, since members of the vanguard are created organically. Remember that Lenin’s brother was killed by the tsar. So there’s always a chance that when you cut off a head, that you can create a whole new Hydra, that is a new revolutionary social movement, in its place. I love this allegory though, I’ll probably use it to develop a perspective.

The second part of your response is something I thought about a lot. I’m an organizer and in many ways a leader in local work. But starting out, I was kind of wary of the term “organizer”. For one, I am notoriously disorganized. I’m not an intellectual by training, I don’t even have a college degree, while others are trained in polisci. Lots of people I organize with are lawyers. I’m not even in a union, just a dad who reads books. I struggle with anxiety, depression, and ADHD. Two years ago, after celebrating our movement’s success in winning abortion rights in our state, I suffered a severe and acute psychotic break, leading to a burn out that took me out of organizing for 8 months.

But since then ive developed a much different view of leadership. I am a cochair of a committee for my local DSA chapter, but I usually resist taking leadership positions. I consider myself a “middle layer” comrade. Orgs can have official leaders, and they can have new recruits, but can struggle to develop active mid-level comrades who are capable of more complicated analysis and organizing tasks. So all of the little annoying tasks fall on the leaders who have the most commitment and frankly love for the movement. This leads to leader burn out, that is, often we end up cutting off and cauterizing our own heads.

I’m a white, cis man in a straight relationship. I’m not visibly queer. I am the very definition of a problematic socioeconomic demographic. Ive seen guys like me who, in good faith, ignorantly but confidently step into leadership roles (in other orgs mostly), just to create serious problems in the orgs they wrongly believe they are qualified to lead.

I believe that it is my job to put others before myself and offer support to official leaders. My goal is to move people into official leadership positions which helps them develop as comrades, while creating an organizing basis for leadership. I am almost totally unconcerned with formality. My job isnt to create rules and provide leadership, my job is to produce analysis of objective conditions, organize around those conditions, and empower others to be leaders. I want people to know that I have their backs, so if they want to take on more, they don’t have to do it alone.

Basically, I just talk to people all the time. When I organize, I like to put the right people in the right room, discussing the right problems. And when they have it up and running, I like to walk away and work on something else. My biggest influence in this realm isnt Marx or Lenin, it is Lao Tse:

when the sage finishes her work, the people say, “we did it all on our own”

That is my definition of the vanguard, which explains why its hard to say if we are “in” it. The vanguard has some qualities that are distinct within the working class as a whole, but I think that if you peer into the working class to see the line between the mass and the vanguard, there is no discernable line. So must it be within ourselves.

Over time I have gotten better at things like managing appointments and keeping a calendar. I’m much better at organizing tasks and managing burn out. Most of my “work” involves having conversations with people about issues and their experiences, although I do write quite a bit. Rather than worrying about whether or not I am a “leader” I engage people in the work I care about, and in doing so, I develop an objective basis for leadership. That leadership can be taken on by myself or I can pass it on, using my own network to help others develop theirs.

For me, developing those leadership qualities did not come from adapting myself to some externally validated definition, but by just doing what I think is right, speaking up, encouraging others to do the same, and consciously working with others, in cadre whenever possible, to enact verifiable change. I go into every situation hoping to learn something new. I ask questions in order to listen and reflect on peoples answers, although the questions that I ask, I try to pose them in a way to help generate reflection and consideration on both our parts.

I think the factors that you describe that which discourage the generation of revolutionary consciousness in workers,.especially middle class workers, creates a sort of learned helplessness. Many of us are more or less constantly critical of ourselves and our ability to lead, others don’t have these obstacles but their experience only instructed them to reproduce top-down bourgeois models of leadership. Both of these attitudes are absolutely crucial to overcome. But the way to overcome them is to always be in contact with, and taking direction from, the people who are most affected by struggle against the capitalists. Different traditions have different ways of approaching this problem. But if we are to build the objective basis for revolution, it will be built out of the experiences of the toiling classes. The conditions for revolutionary change will be a reflection of the workers and our experiences, so that we see ourselves in the revolution and the revolution in ourselves. Therefore the vanguard party is like a conduit and amplifier. The vanguard takes what exists, organizes it in a sustainable way, and then delivers that energy back to the working class. When the masses feel (read: directly experience) their own power in the party, then and only then is it the vanguard. But as individuals, this means putting peoples experiences first, ahead of any other considerations. This last sentence is the fundamental insight of Marxism, it is what transforms theory and reflection into practice. Imo this requires a kind of radical humility in the face of developing conditions. In this case, our self doubt can actually make us better organizers and leaders. The moment that I was forced to accept my own shortcomings in my organizing, those shortcomings became like strengths. But it took time and patience.

Rather than eliminating supposedly negative qualities in order to become a leader, I just kept trying things, asking for help, reflecting on and developing my own perspectives through writing and talking to other people. It is this process that makes me a leader, the moment I stop it, I totally rule out the possibility of being a part of the vanguard.