The Techno-Social Vanguard

Recent interest in the concept of the vanguard or vanguardism has shed new light on what was regarded until recently as a discredited concept.1 For the purposes of this article, we take vanguardism to mean a specific form of epistemologically privileged extremism promoted by a particular group through novel organizational means. Our particular focus here is upon what we term techno-social vanguardism. Our intention is to expand the notion of vanguardism by focusing upon technology as a social doctrine, and to understand it within the context of “disruptive” techno-capitalism.2We will proceed as follows. First, a brief discussion of terms. Second, a brief history of vanguardism that describes the emergence of a scientific elite as central to the Enlightenment project. Third, we highlight the centrality of individualism in American society as the foundational concept powering the emergence of a new techno-social vanguard. Fourth, we offer a description of the latter and consider its often conflicting cultural and economic commitments, that combine technology and individualism as this emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. Finally, we consider the latest iteration of this vanguard in the twenty-first century, and how its constituent elements continue to evolve, challenging both our understanding of vanguardism and politics.The Oxford English Dictionary definition of the term vanguard includes within its primary definition the following illustrative example: “A position at the forefront of new developments or ideas: the prototype was in the vanguard of technical development.” The secondary definition refers to the military origins of the term: “The foremost part of an advancing army or naval force.” The origin of the vanguard is most often traced to Lenin's 1902 book What Is to Be Done? There are, however, relevant precursors that provide precedent for a more expansive understanding of the term.3Edmund Burke noted the existence of a vanguard, though he did not use that term, in his critique of the French Revolution. He identified a new group of individuals that had emerged in society and wielded enormous influence: intellectuals. They craved novelty and influence and as they grew powerful in France, they formed “literary cabals,” influencing public opinion by controlling which opinions would be disseminated. They were innovative but were also prone to supporting orthodoxy and defending the views of people similar to themselves: “To this system of literary monopoly was joined an unremitting industry to block and discredit in every way, and by every means, all those who did not hold to their faction.”4 Not for the last time, the vanguard's influence over the means of communication was essential. These same intellectuals were dependent upon others for their financial survival. Their sponsors were disaffected members of the old aristocracy or the new money of financial speculation. In either case, what the intelligentsia all had in common was that they made “the poor” their concern, “thereby uniting ‘obnoxious wealth to restless and desperate poverty.’”5The quest for a utopian form of “pure democracy” meant that Burke's intellectual vanguard held views that were both extreme, epistemologically suspect, and transactional. As Hardin notes in a much-quoted paper on the subject, for the extremist, “one's belief in the truth of X might also depend on the rewards of counting it as true.”6 There was, in other words, a strategic element involved in the truth claims advanced by the vanguard, with “truth” used as leverage against opponents. This is quite different from being committed to evidence-based truth claims.The most important addition provided by a thinker like Lenin to the discussion of vanguards was organizational. The vanguard party's role, through education and activism, was to inspire the working class from without in order to counter the limited trade union consciousness that bourgeois ideology permitted. This vanguard's ideology was “scientific” because Marxism was a scientific ideology corresponding to an underlying objective material reality. Yet, it made possible intellectual agency with the vanguard acting on behalf of, rather than over, the proletariat. As Marcy notes, successful vanguard leaders offer the following: A sense breaking function, wherein the sensational message or messages being conveyed define and highlight status quo approaches as problematic (i.e., a provocative function); and,A sense giving function, wherein the sensational message or messages being conveyed define and highlight vanguard solutions as viable alternatives to the status quo (i.e., a credibility function).7Combined, these different elements—bad-faith epistemology, sensationalist/chiliastic messaging, and revolutionary organizational activity—were especially attractive to intellectuals, people who wished to engage in social and political change on behalf of oppressed populations for personal and political ends. The existence of the vanguard also permitted agency within a deterministic ideological system. Hence, “the vanguard form of organization creates a means by which the theorist can become an actor in History: now the theorist is not merely an ‘armchair’ revolutionary, but can be part of (and even lead) the ‘struggle.’”8 The vanguard was, in short, a new form of elite governance.Bernard Crick noted that in the ancient world it was the man of action, the hero, who took center stage.9 For the early Christians, it was the otherworldly man or saint. In the Middle Ages, it was the knight and priest who came to dominate the popular imagination. As the modern period came into being, the English produced the gentleman and businessman, the Americans their entrepreneur and innovators. The twentieth century produced the Nazi and the Superman; the Communist produced the party man. In our own time, Crick suggested, thanks to the influence of science and technology, it was the technologist qua engineer that wielded the most influence. In part, suggested Crick, this was due to “boredom with established truths” and a widespread frustration with politics.10 This could be detected in the speeches of revolutionaries, the reliance of political leaders upon technological solutions to social and political problems (“the white heat of technology”), and in the generally positive attitudes of the general public towards science and technology, not least because of changing patterns of consumption.By definition, technology was “the activity of applying scientific principles to the production of tools and goods,” but Crick argued that it had “become perverted into a social doctrine.”11 This doctrine suggested that all of the problems facing civilization could be reduced to technical ones and were therefore soluble if sufficient resources were made available. This was not science but scientism, a view that was detectable in the writings of nineteenth-century thinkers such as Henri de Saint-Simon among others.12 This proposed science of society would remove all diversity, uncertainty, differing interests, or limitations. What disturbed those committed to such a vision was conflict, disagreement, compromise, and muddle—in other words, the incompleteness out of which a polity was built.13This outlook had been common among intellectual elites during the Enlightenment. They equated the exercise of state power with its abuse, and contrasted tradition with scientific rationalism. Crucially, the latter was regarded as belonging to a higher order of truth claims. “The political secret of the Enlightenment lay in the fact that its concepts, analogous to the indirect assumption of power, were not seen as being political.”14To counter this trend, thinkers around the middle of the last century wrote eloquently about the need to retain a humanistic approach to politics that placed freedom at its center. Hannah Arendt in the United States, and Sir Isaiah Berlin and Michael Oakeshott in England, would all probably have agreed with Crick's statement that the application of a scientific methodology to political life exhibited a failure to understand the distinctiveness of political praxis and traditional knowledge.15 This view was not intended to discredit science and its extraordinary achievements; rather, it pointed to a category mistake: the application of technological reasoning to politics. When this occurred, argued Crick, it was a form of ideological thinking, something that was growing in influence and was shaping social and individual self-understanding. Indeed, it was increasingly crowding out other ways of thinking about what it meant to be human.16While it is possible to trace elements of techno-social vanguardism to Francis Bacon and his description of the ideal society in the New Atlantis, it is in the nineteenth century that a blend of technics, power, and spirituality reached its apotheosis.17 In the wake of the French Revolution's failure, Saint-Simon developed an approach to social and political reform that linked technology with eschatology. He was the first to invoke the vanguard metaphor to describe a scientific elite that would govern modern society and regarded it as inevitable that those inventors and entrepreneurs would invariably find themselves in a dominant position. This encouraged Saint-Simon to propose the deliberate exclusion of ‘the people’ from politics so that they might be better governed through the rational metrics of a technological elite.18Important, too, was Saint-Simon's commitment to commerce (le doux commerce) which would result in the transformation of political relationships—moving power from kings to the new commercial middle classes. If technology promised stability, commerce promised to bring peace and manners to society and to redirect political (warlike) ambition into “harmless” commercial ends.19 “Government” was a machine, which, once it had been designed correctly, could be left to “go by itself.”20There was a utopian element to Saint-Simon's vision, based on his insight into key trends: the growing power of corporations, the growing power of science and technology, the decline of the nation-state and rise of a and He even the decline of belief in society and the that would Saint-Simon with the of a new science of that would every of This which would need to be to a new scientific The new order of society would to the the the of and the The had for a science of society to the of the people and to out how to it to The result would be a social Enlightenment commitment to promised from the of but also twentieth century political like and the of by the of the to Berlin noted that similar individual through in the and were in the from the that all problems in be The of a rational society was by a belief in the of view of or the view of economic and case, a vanguard of thinkers promoted that were intended to the of society in more scientific and Berlin noted that is an to a society by applying science to the of problems not to not to what they to because they to because this might with a state of in which more of their might be if they is the and in the American New or the in in the of the and Communist In their the notion of a new which be an for the on towards an which they not be to has been over from Saint-Simon like and both made the for an technological vanguard. was interest in the first of the twentieth century in scientific into and in light of “The that the intellectuals of the first of the twentieth century were for was with a scientific and technological a rational social organization and a new of being to would be and would be and the science and the state was more and both that in 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modern their and their to individual and individual members of the society vanguards The members of a people who have a world without the involved in their own form of techno-social vanguardism their to their and the we will how individual and both have a part to in the techno-social vanguard. Yet, we it would be to to the definition of vanguardism with which we take vanguardism to mean a specific form of extremism promoted by a particular group through novel organizational means. In the we consider this definition of the vanguard within the context of the technological in which we of the were and people with of in the revolutionary of the was during this period that from being as a of to being as a of individual and The of the of the other in the world at at first and with from the to a to with to the new elite for were As notes, In the of the of was a epistemologically privileged working with a more revolutionary, within the United States, the revolutionary from economic to other being an with in the period of the with a more of or on to other of views of and a result of the cultural in the vanguardism and more The new vanguards a with other the vanguard upon particular of these were to with other as part of a of the or technology was made and the general was to enormous of and new to a in the underlying ideological that were For class and economic were important than social and cultural was an to the new technology, once it out of that made it The new technology the of and the the noted that for the a book was a of a particular of by the who A was not like that at A was designed to the and power of the relevant technology and to a without to its the was a and it was a that of was more important than this as something to be of tradition and the was it was as would have the for social and The promised to people from upon but the result was a of There was, a and and and understanding the of that that the of the was the to the the of the the emergence of the first social like and were In and were In by other such as and the had become the these different in reduced to the of individual technological the a that was of traditional of than and who were formed new vanguards in the for social this He the and than of The of and a that with social This was also the that of the most in for the first time, by the rise of social and the new this new a Not in the sense in which the term was by we that the in our provide new for ideological and There is that social use individuals or the was in the United to the of social to and ideological (i.e., through and those who consider themselves part of a elite also among the first to the new in against ideological and a that was common among the of the by These attitudes and have now to the and the concept of the vanguard important into the that it has Lenin the was a form of common to Marxism in its vanguardism a with vanguardism among and the who form part of “the of these elements were identified by in the was the in the United that so and to that individualism status and would result of were is this that and early American from Yet, and his in The we that is of a of techno-social vanguardism is here to and is to the of politics for the