A-Infos (en) Spaine, Regeneracion - Rebuilding the Vanguard (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

If we start from what is before us-not from what we would like, nor from 
what the texts say, but from concrete experience-the panorama is 
recognizable: scattered activists, political spaces that think and 
develop, and at the same time a working class that resists as best it 
can, that occasionally enters into conflict, but without continuity or 
stable organization. It is not a total absence of movement, but neither 
is it a movement capable of sustaining itself, expanding, and 
recognizing itself as such. And yet, this is not a new problem. The 
recent history of the labor movement is marked by this same difficulty: 
the gap between the class's capacity for struggle and the capacity of 
its detachments to organize it in a lasting way .

Therefore, before answering what our tasks are, it's worth asking 
ourselves from what perspective we're thinking. Because, when faced with 
this situation and ask ourselves what to do, we immediately tend to 
consider: do we focus on building a stable organization within the 
immediate struggles of our class? Or do we prioritize building a 
vanguard organization capable of providing direction to that movement? 
Do we do both? And the question seems sensible. But precisely for that 
reason, we must pause: if we frame it as a choice between separate tasks 
that must be combined, we're already starting from the wrong perspective.

To address this issue, we need to take stock. This is the starting 
point. But the result of this exercise cannot consist of simply 
organizing tasks as if they were isolated compartments. The risk lies 
not only in taking refuge in the past or substituting analysis for 
practice, but in something deeper: unquestioningly adopting a fragmented 
way of seeing reality. And that is where empiricism comes in: when we 
treat as separate things that, in practice, only exist as moments in the 
same process. Without this rupture, all practice is condemned to operate 
within the very limits it seeks to transcend.

And the truth is that empiricism is at work when we accept, almost 
without realizing it, that on one hand there is the construction of the 
vanguard and on the other the evolution of the mass movement. However, 
if we look again more closely, what we find are not two parallel 
processes that intersect, but a single process that appears disjointed: 
detachments that develop without the capacity for real influence, and a 
class that moves without the capacity for continuity or generalization.

For this assessment to be effective and not remain superficial, it is 
essential to embrace the need for a deep theoretical foundation. This is 
not an academic luxury, but a practical requirement to break free from 
the paralyzing immediacy and empiricism. Theoretical training is the 
tool that allows us to transcend partial and immediate experience and 
connect current struggles with the historical development of our class.

It is within this framework that the historical assessment is fully 
articulated. Understanding reality cannot be limited to what is 
immediately before us; rather, it requires comprehending the entire 
process-the advances, setbacks, ruptures, and continuities-of the 
working class as a historical subject. Only by addressing this framework 
of totality can we construct a strategic reading of our present; 
otherwise, our reading of reality will be shortsighted, and our practice 
will be condemned to repeat past mistakes. Theoretical training and 
historical assessment are therefore essential to guide strategy and 
project a practice that not only resists but also transforms.

The problem, then, is not just what to do, but from what perspective we 
are thinking about what we do. Because when reality is perceived as 
fragmented, responses tend to be organized in a fragmented way as well . 
And that is where we need to break free from that mechanistic view to 
analyze the problem from the perspective of the whole. At that point, 
the balance ceases to be an exercise in erudition and becomes a guide 
for action: either we understand the disconnect between the vanguard and 
the masses as the expression of a single, disjointed process, or we will 
continue to reproduce the fragmentation in our own practice.

Hence, the most widespread response-though rarely fully articulated-is 
to accept this separation and try to manage it: building organization on 
the one hand, "being in the classroom" on the other, and intervening 
when possible. Here, too, it's worth pausing a bit longer. Because what 
exactly does "being in the classroom" mean? Is it enough to be in large 
spaces, to have a presence, to address more or less extensive groups? If 
intervention doesn't occur within the actual movement of the class-in 
its immediate conflicts, in its attempts to organize, in the concrete 
processes where the class negates and transcends the current state of 
affairs-then that presence remains superficial. And a superficial 
presence doesn't rebuild anything: it accompanies, observes, or 
comments, but it doesn't transform.

But even this isn't enough. Because it's not just about being present 
where the class is moving, but about how one intervenes in that 
movement. Without a practice capable of connecting these partial 
conflicts, of extracting a shared experience from them, and of 
projecting them beyond their immediate context, what remains is a 
succession of struggles that begin and end without leaving behind a more 
developed form of organization. And then the problem reappears in 
another form: on the one hand, an organization that reproduces itself 
without the capacity to articulate social force; on the other, struggles 
arise, but fail to connect, accumulate experience, or project themselves 
beyond the immediate. The separation between prioritizing the vanguard 
or a stable mass organization solves nothing: it only manages the impasse.

If the problem lies in how we are separating what in reality appears to 
be one, then the task cannot simply be to "balance" both parts, but 
rather to rethink them in terms of their relationship. Because the 
vanguard and the masses are not two distinct subjects that meet from the 
outside, but rather two dialectical moments in the same process of class 
organization . In other words, the vanguard is not constructed 
beforehand in order to intervene later; it only exists to the extent 
that it manages to organize, connect, and project the real movement of 
the class. And, conversely, this movement that we perceive as fragmented 
is not an absence of a subject: it is a still dispersed form of the 
class's own organization. Framed in this way, the problem ceases to be 
how to relate two separate things, and becomes how to develop a single 
process that today appears to us as divided.

Thinking of political organization and mass organization as two distinct 
objects forces an impossible operation: imagining a vanguard already 
constituted, closed in on itself, which would then come to relate to a 
class external to it. But then the question arises that dismantles the 
fiction: where does this vanguard come from, if not from the very class 
movement it seeks to organize? What other political material could 
nourish it, what other experience could shape it, if not the real, 
contradictory, and unequal struggle of the class itself? As soon as this 
question is taken to its logical conclusion, the separation collapses on 
its own. The vanguard does not precede mass organization as a finished 
subject; it emerges from it, condenses it, and returns it expanded. Nor 
does mass organization passively await external direction: in its very 
unfolding, it already produces embryos of consciousness, discipline, 
initiative, and program. To separate them is to treat as two things what 
only exists as a single process at different stages of development.

That's why the idea of "relating" the two is, fundamentally, a misstep. 
Because if they were truly two separate objects, the relationship 
between them would always have to be explained from the outside: 
mediation, connection, influence, direction. But that already 
presupposes what I was trying to demonstrate, namely, that there is one 
pole capable of organizing and another that must be organized. Reality, 
however, cannot be divided in this way. The vanguard only exists as the 
most concentrated moment of the class's self-organization, and mass 
organization only reaches its historical potential when that dispersed 
movement begins to take conscious form . They are not two entities that 
meet; they are two sides of the same coin, which only becomes real when 
the class begins to organize itself on a higher scale. That's why 
separation, not differentiation, clarifies nothing: on the contrary, it 
obscures the process, fragments it, and forces us to think as external 
to what we are in fact an active part of.

This also forces us to rethink how we understand each of these moments. 
Because the vanguard, if it is anything more than a self-definition, 
cannot be measured by its degree of internal coherence or its capacity 
for abstract thought. Its reality is played out on another terrain: in 
its ability to insert itself at the points where the class enters into 
contradiction, to intervene in the processes where that contradiction is 
organized, and to allow what appears as an isolated conflict to begin to 
be recognized as part of something broader. It is not, therefore, a 
matter of "being in the class" in a generic sense, but of being an 
active part of its real movement: there where the struggle takes place, 
where attempts are made to organize, where possibilities open and close. 
Outside of that terrain, what remains is a vanguard that asserts itself 
as such, but which cannot be verified in practice.

At the same time, this real movement of the class cannot be conceived as 
pure spontaneity that will, at some point, reach a higher form on its 
own. Historical experience shows the opposite: that struggles do arise, 
yes, and that they do become partially organized, also yes, but that 
they tend to become exhausted, isolated, or absorbed if they fail to 
connect with one another and acquire continuity. But this limitation 
cannot be overcome from the outside. It cannot be resolved by waiting 
for the right moment or by applying prefabricated schemes. It is 
resolved in the very development of these struggles, insofar as they 
incorporate elements that propel them forward: greater organization, 
greater collective awareness, and greater capacity for collective 
decision-making.

This is where the role of the vanguard comes into play, not as an 
external force directing the movement, but as an internal force 
propelling development toward a fundamentally political horizon. But let 
no one be mistaken: integrating the political organization into the 
class struggle is not about using the union as a mere conduit to feed 
the Party, nor is it about manipulating assemblies to impose a line 
dictated from the outside. That is not vanguardism; it is bureaucratic 
parasitism. In other words, the vanguard only acts as such when it 
manages to articulate the struggle around the emancipation of the 
working class.

Therefore, separating the construction of the vanguard from the 
construction of mass organizations is not just a mistake in approach: 
it's a way of blocking both. Because a vanguard that isn't built in this 
process is reduced to a self-reproducing structure, incapable of 
influencing the reality it seeks to transform. And, conversely, 
struggles that fail to articulate themselves beyond the immediate are 
condemned to start over again and again, without ever regaining real 
strength after each retreat. The consequence is well-known: on the one 
hand, an organization without roots; on the other, conflict without 
continuity. And between the two, a void that isn't filled with 
willpower, but with practice.

But if this is the problem, then so is any practice that reduces 
intervention to managing the immediate. Because the struggle for 
immediate conditions, in and of itself, does not automatically transform 
into political struggle . It can even become exhausted by its own 
repetition if it fails to overcome its isolation. The point, therefore, 
is not only to organize conflicts, but to organize them in such a way 
that they become accumulated experience, collective capacity, a broader 
understanding of the class's position within society as a whole. This is 
where theoretical elaboration ceases to be a separate moment and becomes 
an intrinsic necessity of practice: not as discourse added from the 
outside, but as a synthesis of what the struggles themselves contain in 
a dispersed form.

However, understanding this profound connection between our work and the 
life of the labor movement should not lead us to the old mistake of 
dissolving our specific organization into the union. The union brings 
together the exploited simply because they are exploited; our 
organization, on the other hand, brings together those who already have 
a conscious will to destroy the system. We need to maintain our strict 
ideological autonomy so as not to be swept along by the inertia of daily 
struggles, so as not to end up condemned to begging for a few more 
crumbs from the boss.

Our goal, the political horizon toward which we are pushing, is not a 
slightly less miserable agreement. It is the definitive expropriation of 
the means of production and the liquidation of the State with the 
consequent abolition of class society.

Believing that the union, through its mere quantitative growth and the 
inertia of the strike, will by itself solve the problem of political 
power and the liquidation of the State is a mirage that history has 
already charged us for in blood, in a paradigmatic way, after the days 
of May '37.

To chart the course toward that material goal, we anarchists need a 
clear revolutionary program. A program that is not limited to grand 
slogans, but that defines the steps, the demands for rupture, and the 
strategy of confrontation against capital.

But we know full well that revolution isn't decreed from an office and 
that a program is a dead letter if it lacks a method for taking root 
among the working class. We are not shepherds to guide a blind flock, 
nor is our program a list of orders for a passive mass. If the people 
don't emancipate themselves through their own strength and will, the 
revolution will be a farce.

Our ideas and our program only take shape when the militant becomes 
immersed in the struggles of their comrades. Our task is not to command, 
but to use our historical tools to forge a proletarian culture of combat 
in every strike, every assembly, and every conflict. And what are these 
tools? Direct action, so that the problems are solved by those directly 
affected, without delegating to politicians or bureaucrats; direct 
democracy and federalism, to structure the strength of the class from 
the ground up; and the constant practice of solidarity.

These practices are not the program itself, but tools through which we 
demonstrate in practice that workers are perfectly capable of managing 
production and social life without the need for masters.

It is precisely this practical requirement that determines the 
relationship between our detachment and the broader workers' movement. A 
specific organization isolated from the working class is sterile; but a 
mass devoid of revolutionary culture easily falls prey to reformists, 
opportunists, and bureaucrats. Only by walking together, with us being 
the leaven that ferments within the mass, will we pave the way.

If we accept this to the fullest extent, then there is one unavoidable 
consequence: we cannot wait. We cannot wait for the class struggle to 
"emerge" before intervening, nor for conditions to "ripen" so that the 
vanguard can find its place. But what exactly does waiting mean? In 
practice, it means postponing the task to an indeterminate future, as if 
the development of the conflict were a process external to our own activity.

However, the reality is different: material conditions are not an 
external fact that is merely observed, but something that is also 
produced . They are produced to the extent that there is intervention, 
organization, and sustained conflict.

And if this is the case, then the recomposition of the avant-garde 
cannot be conceived as a separate, preliminary phase, resolved on a 
theoretical level and then "applied" to reality. It necessarily unfolds 
on the very ground where these conditions emerge.

This forces us to be more specific. Because if we speak of a "real 
movement of the working class," where is it most clearly expressed 
today? Not in just any space, nor in any practice, but, yesterday as 
today, wherever the working class comes into direct contact with the 
material conditions of its exploitation and is compelled to organize. 
Where the bourgeoisie confronts, as such, those of us who sell our labor 
power. In this sense, the sphere of work, and in particular the trade 
union arena-understood in its broadest sense-appears as a privileged 
space and the unavoidable battleground for our intervention . Not 
because it exhausts the horizon of the struggle in itself, but because 
it concentrates contradictions that can be developed in a broader sense. 
It is there that exploitation becomes immediate and where the need for 
organization ceases to be a slogan and becomes a practical and tangible 
demand for the majority of our class .

But even here, it's important not to oversimplify. Simply "being in the 
union" isn't enough. If intervention is limited to reproducing existing 
inertia-delegation, passivity, powerless negotiation-what is reinforced 
is not the class's capacity, but its limitations. The point is something 
else entirely: to intervene in these spaces to push forward processes 
that go beyond the status quo. To foster forms of organization that 
engage the workforce as members of the working class, to promote 
collective decision-making, to sustain conflicts that allow for the 
accumulation of experience and trust. Ultimately, it's about 
transforming the union into a battering ram for class political 
struggle, not merely a tool for managing conflict.

And it is in this process that the vanguard reconstitutes itself. Not as 
a result of isolated internal development, but as the product of a 
practice that manages to articulate, even if partially and 
contradictorily, broader sectors of the class. Because the vanguard is 
not measured by what it claims about itself, but by what it is capable 
of bringing into being in reality: organization, struggle, continuity. 
Outside of this framework, all growth is merely apparent. Within it, 
even modest advances can have strategic significance. The question, 
then, ceases to be whether we are building a vanguard or building a 
movement, and becomes whether our practice is capable of concretely 
advancing the organization of the class as a whole.

Accepting this is not comfortable, because it shifts the center of 
gravity. It forces us to stop thinking of the avant-garde as a separate 
space that strengthens itself before intervening, and instead understand 
it as a function that only exists in its exercise. It also forces us to 
abandon waiting, to break with the idea that there is an "appropriate" 
moment that will arrive through the mechanical self-propulsion of 
capital's objective contradictions. That moment is not given: it is 
built . And it is built under adverse conditions, with partial advances, 
with errors, with setbacks. But either it is built, or it is not built 
at all.

Hence, the task admits of no postponements or shortcuts. Rebuilding the 
vanguard is nothing other than rebuilding, in practice, the class's 
capacity to organize, fight, and win conflicts through its own strength. 
It is not a problem to be solved before intervening, but rather during 
the intervention itself. It is not a phase, but a process. And in that 
process, every organized space, every sustained conflict, every advance 
in self-organization and collective consciousness is not a preliminary 
step: it is already part of the outcome.

Because, ultimately, the question isn't whether we intervene more or 
less, or whether we are more or less present. The question is what kind 
of capacity we are building. If the intervention succeeds in getting the 
class to organize itself, to accumulate experience, to broaden its 
horizons, and to begin recognizing itself as a collective subject 
confronting the entirety of the social order, then there is 
recomposition. If not, all effort tends to dissolve in the immediate. 
The vanguard, in that sense, is nothing other than that developing 
capacity. And for that very reason, it cannot exist apart from it: 
either it is built within the real movement of the class, as an active 
part of its transformation into a political subject, or it ceases to be 
the vanguard and becomes something else. Recomposing it is not a 
preliminary task. It is the process itself.

Either the vanguard exists within the actual movement of the class , 
pushing it forward and transforming itself with it, or it does not exist .

T. Morago

1 This article continues the strategic debate opened by T. Mora in 
"Anarchism and Vanguard" ( Libertarian Regeneration , March 2024). The 
development of our historical assessment and the analysis of capital as 
a whole will be addressed in future publications. Here, the aim is to 
ground the discussion in the material relationship between the specific 
organization and the working class as a whole. Addressing and resolving 
this tension in real conflicts is the necessary step to materialize any 
organizational recomposition.

2 This does not imply undervaluing organization in the sphere of social 
reproduction (housing, consumption, etc.), which is indispensable for 
the survival of our class in the face of secondary expropriation. 
However, the dilution of our forces on fronts disconnected from 
production generates sterile activism where the proletariat only offers 
an asymmetrical associative power. Priority intervention must target 
production and logistics (the supply chain), since it is there that the 
class wields structural power: the real capacity to disrupt the engine 
of capital, that incessant drive toward the self-valorization of value 
through the extraction of surplus value.

3 Despite this, the very development of capital exacerbates, strains, 
alleviates, and transforms the contradictions that decisively affect the 
state of the class struggle. The question, then, is how and in what 
direction we transform reality, given specific material conditions.

https://regeneracionlibertaria.org/2026/06/22/recomponer-la-vanguardia/
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