Revolution requires an organized vanguard party that forms before the crisis peaks

Evidence

The debate about whether a revolution was really on the cards in 1919- 20 can of course never be conclusively resolved one way or the other; but what is certain is that even if the ruling class could not go on in the old way, and the oppressed classes were not prepared to go on in the old way, the revolutionary vanguard party which was needed to lead the assault on the bourgeois State did not exist until after the revolutionary crisis was over. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 84

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the definitional requirement that a revolutionary opportunity only becomes revolution when an organized vanguard party exists to exploit it; the mere objective crisis is insufficient.