The Avant-Garde and the Administrator

Vanguardism and managerialism/technocracy share numerous organizational traits as well as overlapping historical contexts that inspired, shaped, and modified each of these forms. The foundations for the legitimate claim to rulership in both of these types of organizational systems lies on a certain notion of knowledge: specifically, that leaders have a deeper understanding of reality itself, which justifies their positions of power over others. The origin of this understanding, however, differs significantly between the two. Vanguardism emphasizes the role of “category-based epistemology,” which “indicates that a specific mass population holds a uniquely important place in social/historical development, and this position gives the group privileged access to ‘truth’ as a result.”1 Membership in such a mass population conceives of its members as beings-who-can-know (at least potentially). Simplified, this means that “it is membership in the epistemologically-privileged category that gives one access to truth: what you know depends upon what you are.”2 Ontology (regardless of whether this ontology is viewed metaphysically, materialistically, structurally, or otherwise) has priority for legitimate leadership within vanguardism. With this element in mind, one can categorize vanguardism as sharing familial similarities with earlier perspectives, perhaps most notably with the various religions classified as Gnostic.3 While knowledge of reality's dynamics holds a central place in vanguardist legitimation, it is the ontological position of the mass population that permits the possibility of epistemological clarity.Managerialism—as a subtype of technocracy—seeks a different avenue towards legitimacy. In this system, understanding comes through seeking out knowledge, rather than knowledge acclimating to people based upon their own being. While some pregiven personal traits typically are still needed (intelligence, acuity, perhaps cunning, and others), it is seeking-knowledge-itself, rather than the being-who-can-know, that matters. But this seeking-knowledge-itself, within technocratic thinking, entails a specific notion of how knowledge is sought and gained: Those who can master the specific manner in which knowledge is acquired thereby also obtain the legitimate power to rule. Typically in this perspective, some specific style of knowledge or learning is what gives authority, with early examples including the focus on number and harmony among some Pythagoreans, elements within the work of Francis Bacon, the positivist conceptualizations of Saint-Simon and Auguste Comte, and perhaps even (from a certain perspective) the philosophical school of Plato. In contrast to vanguardism, technocratic legitimation (and its epistemology) does not depend upon the ontological foundation of a specifically-positioned group: indeed, often a major argument for technocratic leadership is its indifference to who someone is in contrast to what (and more to the point, how) they know. Knowledge—or, more specifically, mastery of the true “method” of gaining knowledge—is technocracy's central legitimating trait.In turning to the specifics of vanguardism and technocratic/managerial systems, it is necessary to keep these differences in mind, at least at an analytical level. When examining specific instances of these systems, particularly vanguardist systems after maintaining political power for some years, the practical lines between vanguardism and technocracy can blur significantly: Changes over the history of the Soviet Union provide the best examples. While explicitly vanguardist in its first stages under Lenin and Stalin, it moved in a more technocratic direction in some areas of society during its latter decades, as noted at the time by analyses of a “New Class” in Soviet society. 4 Keeping these organizational systems’ foundational legitimation characteristics analytically separated will prove useful when considering the substantial changes (and merger) observed in more recent times.As noted in the previous section, vanguardism's ideological-organizational form bases itself upon a specific, identifiable, mass population. As Gray notes, “The six key aspects of vanguardism are: (1) category-based epistemology; (2) the understanding of History; (3) the notion of ‘science’ based upon History; (4) an inherent sense of totality/totalism; (5) the Enemy category; and (6) the vanguard party organization itself.”5 Vanguardism views a mass population—be it an economic class, a national identity, a racial identity, or some other population—as having unique epistemological access to the dynamics of History, and likewise having a major role in “moving” History towards a radically new social structure. To direct this epistemologically-privileged population, the “avant-garde” or “most advanced wing” of the population organizes itself into a vanguard party; through this organization, the vanguard “pushes” History along towards social revolution.Vanguardist organizational forms do not arise spontaneously; in other words, vanguard systems do not develop slowly and organically like a traditional society (in the sense of norms, institutions, and practices developing over decades and centuries of practice and tradition within a population). By one means or another, a vanguardist system is imposed. 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