I see a lot of communists talk about “serving the people” and how being dissatisfied with a political order somehow amounts to betraying “the people” in the abstract. Well, let me tell you what I think of “the people.”

People everywhere, whether in the Global South or the Global North, want imperial conditions. Ask basically anyone on any street, and unless they’re a committed socialist, they’ll probably tell you their ideal society looks like the Nordic countries, Switzerland, or some other wealthy place. People, by and large, are short-sighted and, understandably, self-interested. They don’t care about socialism. They care about their immediate material conditions, and given the opportunity, they’ll push for whatever gives them the best deal.

That’s why I think a vanguard party is necessary as the ideological and political arm for steering society toward socialism while keeping popular dissatisfaction from turning into outright revolt. Because “the people,” this noble abstraction that supposedly confers legitimacy, often care primarily about commodities, high real wages, and mobility. Give people the choice, and plenty would happily align themselves with the US if they thought it offered the quickest route to short-term prosperity and stability.

A vanguard party has to discipline those interests through coercion and selective appeasement while using the state to build an alternative system, one where popular will doesn’t just reproduce popular short-sightedness.

Otherwise, if your whole project is simply to “serve the people,” you’re probably better off being a social democrat.