Democratic Centralism

[King of Frogs]

This is coming from a libertarian socialist with anarchist leanings. I am asking if anyone can give me a decent defence of the idea of Democratic Centralism, which seems to be a common feature of Leninists, Trotskyists and Maoists. I have been rather suspicious of the whole concept for a while now, but I am willing to have my mind changed.

[Jimmie Higgins]

This is coming from a libertarian socialist with anarchist leanings. I am asking if anyone can give me a decent defence of the idea of Democratic Centralism, which seems to be a common feature of Leninists, Trotskyists and Maoists. I have been rather suspicious of the whole concept for a while now, but I am willing to have my mind changed.

Democratic Centralism comes out of the idea that to be effective a revolutionary group needs to have both full involvement of the members (rather than passive involvement like in electoral parties where you check a box and are "in" and receive some mailers every 6 months) but then all members need to act together once the decision is made. Lenin described it as "freedom of discussion, unity of action."

The idea is controversial because groups in the past that called themselves democratic centralist in their decision making forgot the democratic "freedom of discussion" part.

In practice, accountability for the centralism aspect needs to be a big part. So the way decisions should be made in this model is to have open and free debate of all members, but then when a decision is made all members need to follow through, then after that there needs to be assessment of the effectiveness of that decision.

I believe it can be an effective way for a revolutionary party or group to operate because decisions can be more effectivly assessed and lessons learned if a collective decision is carried out. Within a group, if everyone is simply trying their own thing, then it is not possible to see if a decision was correct or not. If we are both in a group and I argue that we should fight the cops while you argue to occupy a building, then if we vote to occupy, but then I leave to fight the cops anyway, then there is no accountability and no way to know which decision would have been better. It's the same if there is a strike - if we all vote to strike, then we all need to not go to work, otherwise what's the point.