Vanguard party
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Template:Communism A vanguard party is a political party at the forefront, or that wants to be at the forefront, of a mass action or movement. Leninist movements are examples of vanguard parties, as is the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir.
Writing in What is to be Done?, the political pamphlet first published in 1902, Vladimir Lenin explored the role of the "revolutionary vanguard" party. The pamphlet explores the way in which class consciousness is generated, and Lenin points out that the proletariat does not spontaneously arrive at revolutionary conclusions; he argues, instead, that
The workers can acquire political consciousness only from without, i.e., only outside of the economic struggle, outside of the sphere of relations between workers and employers. The sphere from which alone it is possible to obtain this knowledge is the sphere of relationships between all classes and the state and the government — the sphere of the interrelations between all classes. (Lenin, What is to be Done?)
Lenin argues that the role of the revolutionary vanguard is to nurture the appropriate awareness, and serve as the collective memory of the class - i.e., to help foster not only the class consciousness, but also the political direction, needed to foment proletarian revolution. However, the exact role of the vanguard party as outlined by Lenin is disputed by the modern communist movement.