Hi obi
Are you sure about what you are saying? Vanguardism was contested from the start in the arguments against bolshevism. I don't want to pour over the literature. I started one quick search, and immediately got this. 3CLR James rejection of the vanguard is addressed here http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057%2F9781137284761_8#page-1
I bet you could come up with a broad list. I will simply say I am happier with anarchism, a la camus and the 1930s anarchists. I certainly endorse a socialist model, and take Hannah arendt as an ideal, especially in her critique of soviet totalitarianism in The Origins of Totalitarianism. Don't you agree with her politics there?
And more recently mouffe and laclau also express political views I agree with.
ken
Kenneth Harrow
Dept of English and Film Studies
http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/
From: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Rex Marinus <rexmarinus@hotmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Tuesday 30 January 2018 at 21:56
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force
Obi Nwakanma
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Farooq A. Kperogi <farooqkperogi@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2018 11:20 PM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force
Even when I used to be a doctrinaire Marxist, I also struggled with the praxis and moral propriety of vanguardism. As you said, a select elite few can't possibly embody and give expression to the aspirations of the masses of the people. Nevertheless, the masses, who are often diffident and fatalistic, need to be prodded to shake up the system. And there lies the tension in Marxian epistemology: the notion of an inexorable, deterministic imperative that will propel the masses to take their destiny into their own hands and the reality that the masses need a vanguard to raise their consciousness and to help them extirpate an oppressive system. This tensile epistemological stress is at the core of Laclau and Mouffe's notion of the "double void" in Marxist thought.
But wherever one stands in this debate, it would be escapist to imagine that a leaderless, self-propelled change is possible.
Farooq
Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Journalism & Emerging Media
School of Communication & Media
Social Science Building
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Kennesaw State University
Kennesaw, Georgia, USA 30144
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Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.com
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Author of Glocal English: The Changing Face and Forms of Nigerian English in a Global World
"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will
On Tue, Jan 30, 2018 at 4:37 PM, Kenneth Harrow <harrow@msu.edu> wrote:
Well, vanguardism is one approach—lenin over Trotsky, or over the socialists. Me, I favour socialists, or better still the anarchists of the 30s.
I always took it that the vanguardism of the communists was their worst mistake.
Mistake under stalin
mistake under mao
mistake corrected over and over by Gramsci, by Raymond Williams, by some other notion of consciousness besides that of the elite few who claim to know what the masses don't know
ken
Kenneth Harrow
Dept of English and Film Studies
http://www.english.msu.edu/people/faculty/kenneth-harrow/
From: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of "Farooq A. Kperogi" <farooqkperogi@gmail.com>
Reply-To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Date: Tuesday 30 January 2018 at 13:38
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Why Dangiwa Umar Should be theStandard-bearer of the Third Force
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