Vanguard of the Revolution: The Global Idea of the Communist Party

by A. James McAdams

The first comprehensive political history of the communist party

Vanguard of the Revolution is a sweeping history of one of the most significant political institutions of the modern world. The communist party was a revolutionary idea long before its supporters came to power. A. James McAdams argues that the rise and fall of communism can be understood only by taking into account the origins and evolution of this compelling idea. He shows how the leaders of parties in countries as diverse as the Soviet Union, China, Germany, Yugoslavia, Cuba, and North Korea adapted the original ideas of revolutionaries like Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin to profoundly different social and cultural settings. Vanguard of the Revolution is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand world communism and the captivating idea that gave it life.

Genres: History, Politics, China, Russia, Nonfiction, Russian History, World History

600 pages, Paperback

Published November 19, 2019

About the author

A. James McAdams is the William M. Scholl Professor of International Affairs and director of the Nanovic Institute for European Studies at the University of Notre Dame.

Reviews

[Cassandra Elaine · Rating 3 out of 5]

For a book written by an academic it is very easy to read. It presents like a story while also explaining the forces and ideas at work

I thought it provided a good general overview of the history of communism, with the focus on the institution and factions of the party showing the competing ideas at work - the party as a revolutionary idea vs a organisational structure. It shows how the party was utilised to concentrate power by charismatic leaders and then dismantled to prevent opposition coalitions and competing conceptions of socialism/communism. Then how these devastated parties tried and largely failed to rebuild after losing their support and legitimacy.

Reading it I felt like it was providing tantalising hints and clues of diffrent possible histories. Watching the factional battle and competing conceptions of the party and roads to socialism was fascinating .

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

A dense,turgid, often awkwardly written book, this is a birds’ eye view of the history of Communism, as viewed via the lens of the Communist Party itself. The book goes into great length about the organizational development of European and other Communist political parties. It is at its best when it describes the creation of Marxism-Leninism. McAdams explores the tension between the notion of an " elite" vanguard party that makes decisions as a collective entity, after careful debate - and the “ Great man at the helm” version of Socialist leadership. Almost all Communist parties that came to power evolved into personal dictatorships in the end. Somehow, McAdams never really quite explains why or how ( ignoring a lot of sociology, behavioral economic and group dynamic studies) this happened. Also, the actual structures of the parties themselves are never explained or fleshed out. Why, for example, was the Secretary of the Third Plenum or the Standing Committee Chair so powerful? Most galling is the misinterpretation of the Chinese Communist Party’s evolution and especially “ Marxism that has Chinese characteristics”. If you were to view the Xinghua University course on modern Chinese Communist doctrine (on line at EdEx for free), you would instantly realize just how powerful the Leninist historic anti- Imperialist perceptions are in China. To ignore the “ nationalist” character of both Mao and Deng’s actions is just -well, stupid. But that’ s somewhat explained by the authors’ own place in the world as a wealthy, white, American, left-leaning academic. This historical aspect that shaped Marxist doctrinal praxis probably never really even occurred to him. If ones’ grandparents had fought in the Boxer rebellion, watched the slaughter of the Tai Peng , fought the Japanese and the US backed KMT and lived in a 3500 year old agrarian, Confucian social culture impoverished by opium addiction foisted upon it by the British, one might perceive Marxist theory somewhat differently than a factory worker in Stuttgart in 1880. This book might have been a masterpiece, but instead was a bit of a disappointment.

[Christian Holub · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm continuing to educate myself about the history of socialism and revolution — both because this history is barely taught in the American education system, and because we are once again at a moment of civilizational rupture and I want to know how people in the past went about confronting the problems we're still struggling with today. The two axes of Marxism are theory and practice, and while I had been reading a lot about the theories of Marx & Lenin et al, this book gave me a welcome insight into the practice of communist rule throughout the 20th century. McAdams does a great job of showing how the idea of the Communist Party developed in response to the crises of the late 1800s and early 1900s, and then how different leaders in different countries adapted that idea to their own situations, sometimes with horrific consequences for their populations. If we're ever going to get out of this political mess we're in, we'll need to understand how and why people become attracted to radical ideas, and how those ideas can go wrong so that we don't repeat the same mistakes. McAdams' prose isn't particularly spicy, but the history is very useful. And not for nothing, this book's font is beautiful. Shouts out Garamond

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book tells the underpinnings of communist parties within states--i.e. the history of the party in major nations like Russia/USSR, Eastern Europe, China, Cuba, and the major communist parties of the west. It's an intellectual history of how the communists within those nations attempted to apply the major tenets of their belief system to governing. McAdams elaborates on how things like class struggle, the dictatorship of the proletariat, etc were realized within the governing structures of the states to which they belonged. This is the "global idea" referred to in the title. He makes it clear that communists were sincere about their beliefs and this became a lens on how they envisioned their hopes.

We see how intellectuals and politicians in each country modified their strategies to fit their local circumstances, and how their strategies changed over time. McAdams helps us see the intellectual commitments among communists and how they diverged from each other, too. For example, the tension between party leadership and government leaders in moving ahead, applying socialist ideals, and mollifying their countrymen to maintain legitimacy (when they weren't resorting to force or intimidation, obviously).

It's not possible to give 4.5 stars, so I did 5 rather than ding it more than I wanted to. There's not much information on communist parties in the developing world or how Marxism factored into the decolonization of the 20th century. While this may have been a deliberate choice by the author, it leaves a tantalizing gap that deserved more attention.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

McAdams provides a detailed history of the dysfunction and evil of the Communist parties and regimes around the world. Essentially it seems to be an analysis of which works worst, rule by a charismatic tyrant or rule by an incompetent party bureaucracy that has no ability to govern effectively. My only criticism is that it ends very abruptly. After hundreds of pages devoted to the several decades of complex development, the demise of Communism is given only a handful of pages. It simply seems to just wither away.

[Urey Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an exhaustively complete and learned examination of the ideas and thinking underlying Communism, and the permutations that Communist thinking has taken over the years, driven primarily by the principal practitioners along the way, from Marx and Engels to Lenin to Stalin and Mao and the various other Communist leaders, all of whom customized the ideology to fit their practices and needs. As such, it is not an easy read. The author offers little in the way of judgment regarding Communism beyond noting along the way that certain excesses occurred – the famine in Ukraine, the Cultural Revolution in China.

He also offers very interesting historical and personal revelations about the events and the notables comprising Communist history, mythology and evolution along the way, but this is first and foremost a history of the idea of Communism, and how it mutated and evolved as it spread across the world. For example, the true version of the events known now as the October Revolution in Petrograd are a far cry from the mythologized version that is a bedrock of Communist historical propaganda. These historical asides and delineation of events and personalities are not the primary focus of the book, alas. Nor is the book a critical evaluation of the flaws in the ideology or the inevitability of the abuses that the ideology causes. It is not an analysis of Communism and its effects upon the world. It is an academic evolutionary history of the very ideas of Communism, and how they changed and developed as they took effect in various cultures and political climes around the world. Comprehensive, impressively knowledgeable on the subject matter, and difficult to get through – in a reading sense.

[Kyle Nussbaum · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall very detailed and comprehensive view of Communism and the party from its inception to present day. The knowledge is thorough, in particular key moments and the impact it had on the various regimes in place. The evolution of communism these regimes implemented in their given countries and how nationalism played a role vs the worldwide party organization is quite a story. At times some of the book was hard to get through from a reading/flow perspective, but found the second half of the book personally more interesting and that helped.

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

A vague book that starts so from the title. It is, in fact, about the Communist Party in the Soviet Union. And McAdams is careful to gloss over the less canonical aspects. Or he just doesn't know beyond the official propaganda.

[Jordan Maloney · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fantastic read. I highly recommend this to anyone who is interested in the history of operational communism. This book is focused more on how various communist parties operated, rather than the theoretical considerations--or lack thereof--that undergirded them.