Vanguardism is the belief that a political party, operating on the principles of Democratic Centralism (or something similar to it), is necessary to lead the working in a revolution to overthrow capitalism and institute a dictatorship "of the proletariat."
> After pausing to think this question over, my
> tentative response is that "Vanguardism" is something that exists only
> in the imaginations of "anti=vanguardists." What is 'a' vanguard? What
> is the oppsing "ism"? Do anti-vanguardists (whatever _that_ is) believe
> that some day everyone will wake up and say, on to the barricades
> simultaneously?
Now your'e just obscuring the issue. There's a big jump between the fact that different people have different beliefs and the notion that we need some glorious vanguard party to lead us to a utopian socialist wonderland. One does not imply the other.
> Why don't millions of people read lbo-talk?
Because it is extremely rare for millions of people to read any listerv.
> Also, "Marxism-Leninism" is shorthand for the ruling theories of the
> third international in the 1930s,
It is also used by many people to refer to the many forms of totalitarian Marxism that came out of the Russian Revolution (Bolshevism, Stalinism, Trotskyism, Maoism, etc.)