On Democratic Centralism: An issue with keeps raising its head

[Edith Lemsipberg]

The recent trails and problems of both the British SWP and internationally with the IMT has once again brought to the surface the theme of Democratic Centralism. But this issue is not confined to these organisations. In the past the CWI has also had problems around this theme, and perhaps another crisis is only waiting for history to roll out. But the same could be said of many other 'trotskyist' groupings.
In most cases (but not all) the concept of democratic centralism continues to be used by virtually all groups

Can we look at:

[1] Discussion has arisen around the meaning of the term
[2] The varying accusations of leaderships abusing the term
[3] The presence of bureaucratic centralism in practice
[4] Some discussion onthe actual operation of democratic centralism, such as the 'use of slates' as a means of electing leaderships:thumbup1:

For instance I paste below a section from Peter Taaffe's article on democratic centralism (post on Marxist.net). I think the attitude expressed is quiet dangerous. Refering to the person from the USFI. In a healthy organisation of active politico's you would expect differing opinions to be expressed. Precisely the absence would be worrying. I can't agree with Taaffe on this one.

"It seemed to us (see Report of USFI IEC in MB 15 [United Secretariat of the Fourth International (USFI) International Executive Committee(IEC) to which Peter Taaffe was invited]) that in our recent exchange with the comrades of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International they have something similar to the existence of 'permanent factions' in some of their national sections. One individual even commented to me in private discussion that he could live without factions for one of their world congresses, perhaps for two, but if a third world congress took place in succession without factions this alone would signify that the regime was "unhealthy"! The scepticism displayed by this individual is symptomatic largely of intellectuals of petit bourgeois origin, who prefer a debating society rather than an organisation seriously challenging for mass influence and ultimately for power."

[a] Here we have the old worn out abuse of "petit bourgeois" in order to undermine the other opinion
[b] The is an inaccurate mapping together of the 'permanent factions' (as a negative) with the general idea of oppositional groups developing. It seems to me from the quote that the USFI individual is aruging for the natural occurance of different opinions - which is most likely will be expressed as some fraction at congresses (which do not meet every year in any case).
In consequence the 'impression' is given that sustained opposition (or even some opposition) is in someway a negative.

[Pete Process]

I read an article by Phil Hearse called 'Militant What Went Wrong'. This seems to be talking about internal problems related to democratic centralism. The link is: ht on th elinks dot org dot au site but search for "Phil Hearse" and "then the title of the piece

Is what Hearse say true? Or is it his particular angle on the Militant organisation?

Here is a short extract:

"A very long document could be written outlining horror stories about the internal functioning of the SP and the behaviour of its leaders. But the important thing is not the quirks of personalities, but structures and norms of functioning that allow political ostracism and bullying to go unchallenged, and indeed to be accepted as normal. The central problem is a conception of leadership which sees it as the work of a couple of "philosopher kings" with a bevy of acolytes around them, rather than an attempt to construct a genuine team leadership, capable of mutual support and mutual criticism.
Constructing a team leadership in a revolutionary organisation means trying to integrate into a collective people with different skills, perspectives and emphases. It means that there will inevitably be secondary—and occasionally major—differences of opinion among members of the team. This is systematically avoided in the SP.
The executive committee for a long period was Taaffe, Walsh and the department heads. Now in some circumstances, department heads will be important people to integrate into a team leadership. But to do it solely that way means to construct a management committee rather than a political committee. The result is an executive of people many of whom are rewarded for selfless loyalty rather than put there for political reasons. The further result is that Taaffe, who chairs every meeting and summarises every point, and Walsh, will 999 times out of 1000 get their way on the EC. When there is not a unanimous vote on the EC, as happened with newspaper editor Nick Wrack over the name change and head of political education Margaret Creear on several issues, there is an explosion. "

[chegitz guevara]

http://kasamaproject.org/2008/03/02/rescuing-lenin-from-the-leninists/

Rescuing Lenin from the Leninists

by Chegitz Guevara


* * * * * *
I’ve mentioned several times that I think Mike E has touched on something fundamental across the left. There’s a yearning by many comrades for something different, something new. We’ve been doing the same damn thing for eight decades and we haven’t gotten different results. Our movement is withering away.


What I think many comrades are grasping at is that Leninism as we understand it is fundamentally flawed and what a few are discovering is that Leninism as Lenin practiced it is something entirely different than we understand.


Hal Draper’s little pamphlet, What They Did to ‘What is to Be Done?’ (http://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1990/myth/myth.htm) apparently went unnoticed and has been rediscovered only recently. Paul Le Blanc’s book, Lenin and the Revolutionary Party, didn’t make that much of an impact. Lars Lih’s new book, Rediscovering Lenin: ‘What is to Be Done?’ in Context (http://www.socialistdemocracy.org/RecentArticles/RecentReviewLeninRediscoveredPart1.html), (the link goes to the 1st part of a 6-part review) seems to be getting more notice. It has been a theme of Lou Proyect (http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/)’s writing for at least a decade and I still remember the email on the old Marxism email list when he said he’d discovered that what we think of as Leninism was first articulated by Zinoviev. Stalin, Trotsky, Mao, Castro, etc., all had the same conception of what Leninism was in practice despite disagreements on much else.


Did we all get it wrong? We must have. Lenin’s party had no where near the sectarian splitting, maneuvering, and expulsions that all the parties that bear his name have had. Lenin never practiced Leninism as we know it. He frequently attacked the Bolsheviks in the party press when he thought they’d made a mistake or got things wrong, or even in other papers if the party press wouldn’t publish his articles (imagine Revolution refusing to publish a piece by Avakian!). What Leninist group would allow that? The Bolsheviks only expelled one person, Bogdanov. And why? He stole money from the party for his workers school in Capri. Groups *joined* the Bolsheviks, they didn’t split away, Trotsky’s group, the Independent Mensheviks, etc. While this understanding and feeling to me seem to be widespread, an actual political articulation of it is not.


This is something the 9L addressed, but not openly, perhaps not even consciously. At lot of what is wrong with the RCP is wrong with so many other groups, many groups that consider themselves Leninist. This is why Mike’s critique of the RCP (http://mikeely.wordpress.com/9-letters/) could just as easily be a critique of the Sparts, WWP, the SEP, etc. Just change a few names (Robertson, Marcy, North), a little history, it’s done. These groups all have two things in common: one, they’re all cults, two, they all consider themselves Leninist groups. All, though, have the same source for their understanding of Lenin: Zinoviev’s pronouncements in the 1920s.


This, of course, is the beginnings of an idealist understanding of the crisis of Leninism, and not one upon which I wish to place too much emphasis. More important has been, of course, the completely isolation of the revolutionary movement from the working classes, so that our bad ideas could not be corrected in practice. The two influence each other, though. Our bad ideas keeps us isolated and our isolation keeps us from testing our ideas in practice.


The flip side, of course, is been groups like Solidarity and FRSO which have retreated completely from Leninism, throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Their theoretical error is the same, though, as the RCP’s and other groups. They have the same misunderstanding of Lenin. Instead of embracing it uncritically, they reject it uncritically. Both sets of groups aren’t completely wrong and do get something of Lenin right. The RCP has a disciplined, committed cadre. Solidarity seeks to bring revolutionary socialists together and to be part of the workers’ movement. If we could bring those aspects together, it would create a much healthier left, which would have a much better chance at being able to intervene positively in struggle.


Even with such an organization, it is no guarantee that we would succeed. Capitalism is ascendant and has recovered. The long slump of the 70s to 90s is over, and despite an incredible level of ineptitude in the administration and the recession it appears we are now in, capital is not in trouble. This is just one of its periodic hiccups. Even with the right line, the masses may not be ready to move. Avakian is correct on this point, though he states it as if it were the masses fault. Nor I do I agree his line is correct. I have read that Lenin’s organization shrank to 50 members at one point, and I wouldn’t argue that Lenin had the wrong line. One could even have the wrong line and succeed, look at Cambodia. Having the right line and the right organization, however, shifts odds in our direction.


I remain a committed Leninist. Mike E as well, I’m sure. Like Marx and Trotsky, I suspect Lenin would be no Leninist. In fact, I think he wrote a whole book on the subject, “Left-Wing Communism.” So how do we rescue Lenin from his followers? That is the task ahead of us.


your comrade,


chegitz guevara
SUN! SURF! SOCIALISM!

[vyborg]

Democratic centralism is essential for a bolshevik party but we must understand the connection between the general situation of the party and its internal regime. when the party is in disarray, when difficulties are very strong, splits are inevitable. Even Lenin was took by surprise by some of the splits that stroke the bolsheviks.

In these situation you fully understand the important of DC. Because even if splits will occurr, even if the party will suffer losses, DC allows it to retrench and regroup. without DC, that is with another internal regime, the defeat can become the end of the organization.

I think that when someone criticizes DC has the duty to propose what the alternative is.

It goes without saying that DC is only useful for revolutionary organizations and cannot be proposed for SD parties or unions

[Edith Lemsipberg]

Vyborg seems to have focused on democratic centralism being great because it saves an organisation when it is in crisis, and presumably other forms of party organisation do not.

A few questions around this:
[1] I note in your post on the slate system that you claim that organisational factors don't matter. This seems to contradict your post in this thread. I may of course have taken the wrong end. But you can explain.

[2] If we accept for the moment your claim that it 'saves the party at this time'; is this a sufficient reason for having the system - if in the meantime it creates other problems. Or are you claiming there are no problems with the implementation of democratic centralism.

[3] Your last line saying that democratic centralism is 'only useful for revolutionary organisations', how about explaining why

[A.R.Amistad]

Hal Draper on inner-party democracy and democratic centralism

Toward Party Democratization

Let us put demonology aside. It must be noted that, in the period inaugurated by the 1905 upheaval, as the situation in Russia changed and the pressure of the autocracy lightened, Lenin’s “concept of the party” changed drastically, in accord with the new circumstances – just as we would expect if his protestations were taken seriously.
Already in February 1905, in a draft resolution for the Third Party Congress, Lenin wrote: “Under conditions of political freedom, our Party can and will be built entirely on the elective principle. Under the autocracy this is impracticable for the collective thousands that make up the party.” [14] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1990/myth/myth.htm#n14) Writing in September 1905, he hailed the German party as “first in respect of organization, integrality and coherence” and pointed to its organizational decisions as “highly instructive to us Russians.”

Not so long ago organizational questions occupied a disproportionate place among current problems of Party life, and to some extent this holds true of the present as well. Since the Third Congress two organizational tendencies in the Party have become fully defined. One is toward consistent centralism and consistent extension of the democratic principle in Party organizations, not for the sake of demagogy or because it sounds good but in order to put this into effect as Social-Democracy’s free field of activity extends in Russia. The other tendency is toward diffusiveness of organization, “vagueness of organization” ... [15] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1990/myth/myth.htm#n15)
In November 1905 he stressed in an article that the socialist worker “knows there is no other road to socialism save the road through democracy, through political liberty. He therefore strives to achieve democratism completely and consistently in order to attain the ultimate goal – socialism.” [16] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1990/myth/myth.htm#n16) The same month he published an important essay, titled The Reorganization of the Party. In it he called for a new party congress in order to put the whole organization “on a new basis.”
This article went to the main point directly: “The conditions in which our Party is functioning are changing radically. Freedom of assembly, of association and the press has been captured.” [17] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1990/myth/myth.htm#n17) What followed? Lenin answered: “organize in a new way” ... “new methods” ... “a new line.”

We, the representatives of revolutionary Social-Democracy, the supporters of the “Majority” [Bolsheviks], have repeatedly said that complete democratization of the Party was impossible in conditions of secret work, and that in such conditions the “elective principle” was a mere phrase. And experience has confirmed our words. ... But we Bolsheviks have always recognized that in new conditions, when political liberties were acquired, it would be essential to adopt the elective principle. [18] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1990/myth/myth.htm#n18)
It must be kept in mind that the impracticality of open election of local leading committees under conspiratorial conditions was not a Bolshevik peculiarity; the secret police had made it as difficult for Mensheviks or S-Rs.

Our party [wrote Lenin] has stagnated while working underground ... The “underground” is breaking up. Forward, then, ... extend your bases, rally all the worker Social-Democrats round yourselves, incorporate them in the ranks of the Party organizations by hundreds and thousands. [19] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1990/myth/myth.htm#n19)
These were “new methods” only in Russia, of course; this was what bourgeois democratic regimes had possible in Western Europe before this. Lenin had always viewed the German Social-Democracy as a model of organization; now the Russian Social-Democrats could emulate it.

The decision of the Central Committee ... is a decisive step towards the full application of the democratic principle in Party organization. [20] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1990/myth/myth.htm#n20)
All comrades, he enjoined, must “devise new forms of organization” to take in an influx of workers, new forms that were “definitely much broader” than the old, “less rigid. more ‘free,’ more ‘loose.’” “With complete freedom of association and civil liberties for the people, we should, of course, have to found Social-Democratic unions ...” [21] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1990/myth/myth.htm#n21) “Each union, organization or group will immediately elect its bureau, or board, or directing committee ...” [22] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1990/myth/myth.htm#n22) Furthermore, he recommended, it was now possible to bring about party unity, Bolsheviks with Mensheviks, on the basis of a broad democratic vote of the rank and file, since this could not be organized under the new conditions. [23] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1990/myth/myth.htm#n23)
All of this sea-change had to be explained to Russian workers who had never faced such conditions before. We must not be afraid, Lenin argued, of “a sudden influx of large numbers of non-Social-Democrats into the Party.” [24] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1990/myth/myth.htm#n24)
Note this remark made almost in passing: “The working class is instinctively, spontaneously Social-Democratic, and more than ten years of work put in by Social-Democracy has done a great deal to transform this spontaneity into consciousness.” [25] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1990/myth/myth.htm#n25) It looks as if Lenin had forgotten even the existence of the Kautsky theory he had copied out and quoted in 1902!

The initiative of the workers themselves will now display itself on a scale that we, the underground and circle workers of yesterday, did not even dare dream of. [26] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1990/myth/myth.htm#n26)
He seized on the new conditions especially to advocate that mass recruitment of workers (possible for the first time) should swamp over the influence of intellectuals in the party work:

At the Third Congress of the Party I suggested that there be about eight workers to every two intellectuals in the Party committees. How obsolete that suggestion seems now! Now we must wish for the new Party organizations to have one Social-Democratic intellectual to several hundred Social-Democratic workers. [27] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1990/myth/myth.htm#n27)
The article concluded this way, with a typical Lenin reaction:

“We have ‘theorized’ for so long (sometimes – why not admit it? – to no use) in the unhealthy atmosphere of political exile, that it will really not be amiss if we now ‘bend the bow’ slightly, a little, just a little, ‘the other way’ and put practice a little more in the forefront.” [28] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1990/myth/myth.htm#n28)
So now the bow bent the other way – “slightly.”
The situation would now be quite clear even if Lenin never mentioned WITBD again. But in fact we can now turn to remarks by Lenin in which he reconsidered WITBD specifically, in the light of the new conditions and of these new concepts of party organization (new for Russia).
In November 1907 Lenin published a collection of old articles, called Twelve Years. Its aim was to review the thought and action of the movement over that period of time, a historical purpose. His preface to this collection was plainly addressed to the new audience generated by the revolutionary upheaval going on since 1905, an audience to whom the old disputes were now past history. Here he explained why WITBD had been included in the collection. Note in the first place that it required an explanation.
WITBD had been included (explains Lenin) because it “is frequently mentioned by the Mensheviks” and bourgeois-liberal writers; therefore he wanted to “draw the attention of the modern reader” to what was its “essential content.” His explanation began with a statement that might just as well be addressed to contemporary Leninologists:

The basic mistake made by those who now criticize WITBD is to treat the pamphlet apart from its connection with the concrete historical situation of a definite, and now long past, period in the development of our Party.
This applied, he said, to those “who, many years after the pamphlet appeared, wrote about its incorrect or exaggerated ideas on the subject of an organization of professional revolution-aries.” Such criticisms were wrong “to dismiss gains which, in their time, had to be fought for, but which have long ago been consolidated and have served their purpose.” [29] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1990/myth/myth.htm#n29)
It is obvious that the reference to “exaggerated ideas” is an admission of a degree of incorrectness, even if the confession simultaneously maintains that the incorrectness was pardonable. But that had already been the sense of the “bending the bow” remarks; it was not really even new.
WITBD had done its 1902 job, and should not be treated any more as if it were a current proposal; it had been by-passed. Lenin did not apologize for it or repudiate it; this was something different. He was pigeonholing it as of historical interest only. Socialists would not repudiate the First International either, but no one would dream of bringing it back to life.
It was a far cry from a permanent “concept of the party.”


The full text:http://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1990/myth/myth.htm

Hal Draper does a really good job of putting the Leninist concept of the party in understandable terms, even better than Lucaks.

[vyborg]

Vyborg seems to have focused on democratic centralism being great because it saves an organisation when it is in crisis, and presumably other forms of party organisation do not.

A few questions around this:
[1] I note in your post on the slate system that you claim that organisational factors don't matter. This seems to contradict your post in this thread. I may of course have taken the wrong end. But you can explain.

[2] If we accept for the moment your claim that it 'saves the party at this time'; is this a sufficient reason for having the system - if in the meantime it creates other problems. Or are you claiming there are no problems with the implementation of democratic centralism.

[3] Your last line saying that democratic centralism is 'only useful for revolutionary organisations', how about explaining why

I will try to explain.

1) I dont say organizational matter are irrelevant. Far from it. I say that they are subordinated to general social and political process. You must have the best organization you can but do not believe that this structure can isolate itself in a bad situation. The Lenin's party was the best ever, and still, has degenerated.

2) DC is always better than any other regime. I only gave an example. It allows the organization to adapt to improve to assess reality etc also during victories but its role is clearer in bad times.

3) what is it DC? stalinists reduced it to the need and duty of the leadership to have a single voice for the outside world. but also big companies and banks do it, so are we implying that General Motors, IKEA or HSBC are leninist organizations? DC is far more than to speak with a single voice when a decision is taken.

The marxist theory states that there is a strict connection between a political line and the organizational structure that embodies this political line. DC is only good for a bolshevik programme. Using DC in a union, for instance, would be madness.

Look at it concretely. I'm a shop steward of the CGIL, I've also national position in my sector union. If the CGIL applied DC this means I couldnt come out differenrly from the leadership during meetings, writing articles etc, something I always do...the same holds true for Rifondazione or any other reformist workers' party. So the marxists defend DC but only for marxist parties.