This dissertation provides a book-length study of the concept of the ‘revolutionary vanguard.’ Associated with defunct Marxist-Leninist ideology, the claim to represent the ‘vanguard of the revolution’ is treated by contemporary political theorists as antithetical to the pluralism essential for representative democracy. By offering an original reconstruction of the communist ‘tradition’ of vanguardism, this dissertation challenges the assumption that such claims necessarily express unaccountable modes of leadership. It shows that, beyond the obvious association with the Marxist-Leninist party, communists described the political work of vanguardism in terms of a component considered essential to the proper functioning of representative democracy: the capacity for citizens to maintain a vigilance over the conduct of political office-holders. The dissertation’s three chapters engage with three key episodes in communist history: nineteenth-century France in the lead-up to the 1871 Paris commune; central and eastern Europe in the aftermath of the 1917 Russian revolution, and; China in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Taken together, these episodes constitute a way of engaging with the ‘defunct’ communist canon that brings out unexpected resources for a key concern of contemporary liberal democracies: how to establish and maintain popular oversight over unaccountable elites.