McAdams, A. James Vanguard of the Revolution: The Global Idea of the Communist Party (review)

Abstract

SEER, 96, 3, JULY 2018 588 never fully monolithic. Was everyone a true believer? His approach also makes the terror seem too automatic and minimizes the personal role of Stalin in the tragedy of the Old Bolsheviks. But such criticism should not trouble Yuri Slezkine, who has written a book for the ages, a Pamir, an instant classic. Department of History Richard G. Robbins University of New Mexico McAdams, A. James. Vanguard of the Revolution: The Global Idea of the Communist Party. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ and Oxford, 2017. xvii + 564 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Suggested readings. Index. $35.00:£27.95. This book is the first attempt to deal, comprehensively, with the Communist Party as a ‘global’ object of study. It is an ambitious attempt, for more than one reason. Firstly, this is a huge topic that spans almost 200 years of global history. Although the majority of this story takes place in the twentieth century, A. James McAdams traces the beginnings of the concept to Marx’s radical forerunners in early nineteenth-century Britain and France. Despite its inauspicious roots, McAdams points out that the idea of the Communist Party had produced at least ninety-five separate iterations by 1985, with 38 per cent of the world’s population living in states governed by Communist parties (p. 3). Secondly, not only has McAdams sought to condense the entire story into less than 600 pages, he has also attempted to render the often arcane ideological vicissitudes of this history of Communist thought accessible to the general reader. On both counts, this book is a commendable effort. To tell this story, McAdams straddles a line between intellectual, social and political history, although as the book moves forward the latter gains in emphasis. He begins with the establishment of the First International, charting the story of its birth amidst heated debates surrounding the issue of party organization and its relationship to activism. His argument here is one that is central to the entire book. Recounting the various shifts in Marx and Engel’s thinking in response to events, McAdams notes that the idea of the Communist Party was an inherently flexible one, with two ‘potentially contradicting agendas. […] One was based upon militant confrontation; the other emphasized organizational adaptation’ (p. 38). This flexibility, McAdams argues,allowedCommunistpartiestotakerootinavarietyofdifferentcontexts across time. He thus shows how the Communist Party in Russia grew out of the Russian populist tradition; how the German Communist Party (KPD) REVIEWS 589 emerged from leftist currents within the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the aftermath of the First World War; the war also provided the key background for the establishment of the interwar Hungarian Communist Party which would establish an ill-fated Soviet Republic in 1919. Although the Communist parties of Western Europe (and briefly, the United States) make frequent appearances throughout, McAdam’s focus is largely upon those parties which succeeded in gaining power and stayed there. He thus devotes much of his attention in the latter half of the book to the debates within the Soviet Communist Party in the interwar period, and the post-war era sees his attention turn to ruling parties in the Eastern Bloc, North Korea, China and Cuba. McAdams takes the inclusion of the word ‘global’ in the subtitle seriously, and thus the book progresses chronologically, analysing the respective fates of each party as an intertwined narrative. Local context is not ignored, however, for a central claim of the book is that it is the fluidity of the Communist Party ideal that allowed it to flourish in so many varying contexts, thus sprouting a ‘multiplicity of forms’ (p. 11). With his focus upon Communist parties in power, McAdams regrettably but understandably forsakes any mention of smaller Communist parties who either didn’t gain power or only did so fleetingly. Africa receives no attention, and we thus miss the story of how parties like the South African Communist Party or the Angolan Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola merged the ideals of Marxism with national liberation struggles. One glaring omission is Ho Chi Minh, a founding member of both the Vietnamese and French Communist parties. Vietnam doesn’t feature at all, despite the huge...