The Vanguard will always exist until Communism, even if you don’t formalize it. The Vanguard is simply the most politically advanced of the revolutionary class, in nearly all cases now the Proletariat. The Vanguard isn’t supposed to “dissolve” so much as “wither away,” ie as class antagonisms are worked out the “general” and “backwards” sections of the mass population increase in political awareness through the process of building Communism. The formalized Vanguard dies out of itself along with the class struggle much the same way as the State, not by intention but by erasing its foundations, as it must do so if we adopt a Marxian view of economics.

To not formalize the Vanguard in a party structure results in serious danger of informal and thus unaccountable structures becoming entrenched with informal power. A great essay on the subject is The Tyranny of Structurelessness, I highly recommend it. The necessity, therefore, is to formalize the Vanguard and set it up along the principles of Democratic Centralism and adherence to the Mass Line.

I won’t comment on Trotskyism or Permanent Revolution here, as I don’t think this discussion needs derailing, but I wanted to acknowledge it as I didn’t want you to think I ignored it.