Good friend, I'll be spending all day with him tomorrow just the two of us.
He's smart and well-intentioned, but not necessarily politically coherent. He's been YouTube-brained and likes Rogan and the IDW dorks. I think he lost friends on the left through FB posting about Jordan Peterson a few years ago and maybe I'm one of his only remaining left friends.
I'm going to see if he is interested in joining a radlib bud and I in a couple of weeks to discuss State and Revolution, as the rad lib bud started reading it and likes it and wants to talk to me about it.
A democracy is only good as the people who participate. The material conditions of the society determine who participates, how intelligent they are, and their material interests. A vanguard is not some small oligarchic or technocratic governing body, but rather the body which raises the masses towards better thought and higher forms of struggle to prepare them for democracy and to lead them in their struggle towards it. I have no idea why one would identify as a monarchist when it is such an obviously flawed social system though.