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The military as revolutionary vanguard: a critique
Abstract
The crisis of Nigerian ruling class politics in the wake of a collapsing oil economy has made sections of the Left pin their hopes to a left military intervention. This essay is a critique of such positions. It is particularly concerned with recent attempts to offer scientific justification for attributing a leading revolutionary role to the military. The essay also discusses the theoretical backing provided by soviet writers for such ‘military vanguardism’. Beckman argues that the left‐militarists fail to identify the social and political forces and conditions that can sustain such revolutionary military role. There is a neglect of class analysis and an incorrect identification of contradictions in society. There is an idealist understanding of the state and the basis of political power. There is a deficient grasp of the nature of imperialist domination and the extent to which antagonistic class relations have been firmly entrenched. Politically, Beckman argues, military vanguard theories divert attention from the primary task of building democratic political organisations capable of giving a democratic content and direction to the national revolutionary process. Not only are they diversionary, they pose a direct threat to that critical task. Despite protestations of the contrary, military vanguardism invites adventeurism, for which the left as a whole may have to pay dearly. The present disarray of the Ghanaian left and the suppression of democratic organisations in that country is a case in point.
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Bibliographic note
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