Because I feel like I'm in one.
I believed in the necessity of a vanguard party for a long time, but...material conditions. If there were a well-defined leader—even of something like the protests in PDX—they would have already been imprisoned on trumped up charges or Fred Hampton'd. Likely the former at this time. Historical evidence suggests this is the case, as do present conditions. Based on how brutally we're seeing the police treat anonymous members of the antifascist resistance, it's getting really hard to imagine how it could be possible to have anything remotely resembling a leader, or even a party with a membership list and regular meetings.
I understand the implications the lack of a central organizing structure has on our ability to effectively resist the state, but because of how everything has played out so far it seems like this might...actually be working in our favor. At least, considering what's unfolded up to the present moment I have a hard time picturing it going better if we had defined leadership that the state was able to target right out of the gate.
There's also the fact that (at least I'm ready to concede this at this point) that the US in its entirety isn't going to undergo a socialist revolution backed by the masses, and that the most likely scenario heading in that direction is a balkanization with the emergence of something better as one of its fragments (most likely west coast/PNW). Such a something better would be more likely to (successfully) take the from of an autonomous region similar to Chiapas or Rojava, versus a traditional socialist state amidst a sea of late/post-war capitalism.
Finally, another thought regarding material conditions...who are the people out there at this very moment resisting the state? It's anarchists. No one, myself included, is effectively organizing any type of meaningful ML resistance to meet this moment, but there are folks out in the street fighting cops every single night. They are the ones doing the work, and all we can say about it is "hmm, sure looks like we are approaching revolutionary conditions". But...it's other folks doing the work, and we're sitting around hoping to cash in on it later.
I'm getting ready to jump ship.
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And do you think they'll just...let that happen? Have you been paying attention at all to what is happening when we simply go out and protest in PDX and SEA?
Do you think any government in history just "let that happen"? The same tactics used by the state today were used in Russia over 100 years ago, they were used in the US when there was a stronger left-wing presence here too. I think people just have to work with what they have. Join an organization I guess. And maybe the state having a field day with protestors on the ground is actually a sign that there needs to be more political organization, not less.
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My lazy answer to you would be Lenin's What is to be done. But I absolutely hated that book (ok, the trashing of other leftists is funny during the five first pages, but then it becomes so... tedious, and it completely drowns the interesting parts), so I'll try to do my best to explain what he says (and how it could translate to our society, although I am not American, bear with me). And if you already read that book and you disagree with me/him/my interpretation, I'd be very much interested in hearing why.
First of all, the repression in Tsarist Russia was harsher, or to be honest, the repression of any movement back in the days. They wouldn't be too concerned with firing on the crowd, killing protesters, torturing agitators etc. Didn't stop them from agitating, writing propaganda, etc.
Lenin says that the most important thing is to have one united propaganda outlet. He mentions a newspaper, because it was the most convenient for them at the time, but we can imagine better nowadays (at least in the core where the vast majority of people has access to the internet). Of course, the drawback is that in our days, it's very hard to catch people's attention, but he kinds of address it (although for a different reason), when he says that all local, smaller outlet should merge into one big enterprise. And we can see it even today: I know a few leftist podcasters, newsletters, e-zines, etc, and their publication rate is quite low. If all these people centralized and worked together, instead of having to get your info from many different sources that might or might have not published anything recently because overwhelmed / disenfranchised, you'd have one big organ, capable of communicating often, quickly, on any important point of the day, to educate and reach the masses.
At the same time, he also explains how there is the need of a strict hierarchical structure in which any given layer of the structure is only aware of the layer right above it, to have as much secrecy as possible (this could be helped nowadays with proper opsec procedures). An organization that allows professional revolutionaries to perfect their craft and go "full time". That sets the plan, infiltrates all stratas of society, etc. An organization that are able to help redirect the spontaneous energy of the masses when it can be done, also (and this is also why the propaganda outlet is very important, specially nowadays, so if there is such spontaneous movement, we can communicate quickly with it, and tell whoever of "us" on the ground to act, agitate, propagate...).
And the organization, the party, needs to theorize and practice which ones are the best ways of moving forward at scale, find the weaknesses / most pronounced and vivid contradictions of capitalism.
Actually, this might be how ML(M) and Anarchists might collaborate. Because there is no denying that on the ground, Anarchists accomplish a lot, but I think that combined with this "big plan" that ML/MLMs tend to have, the infrastructure & propaganda machines, lots could be accomplished