Value in electing certain leading (party) positions? [Demarchy discussion]

[Die Neue Zeit]

Is there any value at all in electing certain leading body positions and not randomly selecting them by technical qualifications?

Right now, if there is value, my opinion is that it is only for one position. Leading positions historically have been general secretaries (Marx and "official Communism" starting with Stalin), chairmen (the Maoist tradition), and co-chairmen (pre-war SPD, Die Linke). However, this position is one that has been revived only recently, not used in the "workers movement" globally since the General German Workers Association of the "future workers dictator" Ferdinand Lassalle, "democratic-centralist" Jean-Baptista von Schweitzer, and Wilhelm Hasenclever:

President.

The charismatic revival came courtesy of the Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela, when its founding congress elected Hugo Chavez as the President of the party, not just president of the executive committee.

In addition to discussing programmatic and other public policy issues, party congresses could decide each time whether to have a charismatic party President in the first place, and then elect the charismatic candidate. The party Presidency would be subject to recall or dissolution only by the congress. To give this "future workers dictator" some strongman's teeth (but not all teeth), the party Presidency might have to have simple-majority veto power, not over the executive organs as a whole but rather over the standing leadership clique in those organs (i.e., "those around him"). Ironically, this could boost the authority of that clique, if it's small enough.

A standing leadership clique comprised of a quintet (five officials) or a sextet (six officials) but not a septet, octet, or novenary like Stalin had in the post-war years - among whom would be the General Secretary and the Co-Chairmen - could work with the party President such that every standing leadership decision is passed by a two-thirds majority amongst the six or seven officials (whether including the party President or over the "strong" presidential veto).

Thoughts?



Source Discussion Threads and Posts

http://www.revleft.com/vb/does-venezuela-need-t141876/index2.html
http://www.revleft.com/vb/democracy-oligarchyi-t119643/index.html


Election was retained in the ancient democracies for millitary officers who were elected by the troops. It was regarded that in this case it was important to have a person with technical military skills.

There is a loose relationship between this and political party leadership. The danger of having election internally in a political party is that the elected leadership of the party is likely to agitate for the watering down of the principle of direct democracy in the party programme. Experience of the SPD in the 1890s or the german Greens in the 1990s seems to back this up.

Perhaps the solution is to have a mixed constitution for the leading body of the party, 2/3 by lot, 1/3 by election.


Could that not be fulfilled anyways by random selection? I'm absolutely certain that a demarchic process would have initial technical qualifications before being eligible to be selected (since we can't select someone who really is illiterate).

The only value I see in elections is for sentimental attitudes towards those put up for election - the very purpose of elections these days (persons, not policies or ideas).


This is because of the fact that you have to take into account the point that you want to concentrate your most experienced members in the leadership, because of their knowledge and capabilities.


What about a two-tier system? On the one level you have an National Committee that exists of representatives all across the country. This NC is appointed exclusively by lottery.

This NC then elects an Executive Committee, consisting of fulltimers, because you want the most capable people to be fulltimer. The EC is responsible to the NC. The NC has no emotional ties or loyalty to the EC (which happens for example in slate systems) and thus can perform its task better in representing the rank and file membership in the branches.

A good idea?


Random selection based on job slotting, the purest form of "slating from below," would make "elders" more replaceable, because the recalls and subsequent random selections would be based directly on the jobs and technical qualifications, and not mere likeability or membership ex officio in the executive body.

For example, recalling can occur directly or by discussing the job itself. In the case of the latter, if some local organization has shrunk to the point where the congress or committee decides the boss position isn't worth a voice on a higher executive body, the occupant may keep the job (or not), but not the executive body membership.

Again, random selection can be both democratic and technocratic. In being the latter as well as the former, you get rid of the "petty politics" / "personal politics" that is found in electoral politics.

[Dimentio]

I cannot speak for the pros and cons for any methodology, but I need to stress the importance of "leadership by goal" rather than "leadership by formal position". In short, the leaders should be accountable not only before their constituencies (in this case the members of the party) but before the goals stated in the party programme.

Ideally, a party leader should only be there for two purposes: as a balancing force to ensure that the party isn't hijacked or straying away from it's goals, and as a vote magnet to the party. Therefore, all party leaders need to fill at least two qualifications - they need to be aware of the party goals and find a way to reconcile the goals with reality in such a manner that the content of their goals aren't lost, and they need to be at least as popular as their party, and preferably more popular.

Then you could call the leader chairman, general secretary, president, voice pipe or whatever title there is. Content is more important than appearance (except for in elections).

[Victus Mortuum]

Election of individuals into any political power is never a valid solution. Period.

Candidates for elected office must advertise themselves.
Advertisements are never quite representative of the actual product (ads don't tend to accurately reflect candidates, but are what the ad-makers believe the voting population wants to see).
It takes money and 'likability' (the foundation of demagogues) to advertise oneself (and "special interest" groups that agree with you need money to advertise for you too, if not explicitly).
Money sways candidate's positions according to what the money wants by being the only source for advertising, the voters then pick from the candidates that money wanted most and that have the greatest 'likability'.

Candidate elections also necessarily create 'parties' within the group that the elections occur in, even if this organization is itself a party. This is because candidates come in policy-packages, and people begin to vote tactically based on the particular policy they are most interested in.

Candidate elections are the governing structure of the bourgeois, not the proletariat.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Advertisements are never quite representative of the actual product (ads don't tend to accurately reflect candidates, but are what the ad-makers believe the voting population wants to see).
It takes money and 'likability' (the foundation of demagogues) to advertise oneself (and "special interest" groups that agree with you need money to advertise for you too, if not explicitly).
Money sways candidate's positions according to what the money wants by being the only source for advertising, the voters then pick from the candidates that money wanted most and that have the greatest 'likability'.

Comrade, I'm not sure advertisements and money play that much of a role within left parties, but the closest case to what you're saying is none other than that of the election of Hugo Chavez himself as party President.

Likeability may or may not play a role within left parties. Case in point: the ratification of Die Linke's current co-chairs. The ratification of Gesine Lotzsch was an appreciation for her past service for the PDS in the Bundestag and having a thick skin for taking abuse from parliamentarians, but the ratification of Klaus Ernst's nomination came in spite of a clear lack of likeability.


Candidate elections also necessarily create 'parties' within the group that the elections occur in, even if this organization is itself a party. This is because candidates come in policy-packages, and people begin to vote tactically based on the particular policy they are most interested in.

Good point on policy packages, but isn't a political program also a policy package? ;) Major legislation put to plebiscite could also come in the form of policy packages.


Candidate elections are the governing structure of the bourgeois, not the proletariat.

Once upon a time candidate elections elected "the best" (aristoi). Nowadays they fail even in this regard.

[Kiev Communard]

In this regard, I think, the best course would be to reserve some non-electable positions on the board (temporarily, of course) for the persons having provided special services to the proletarian state (just as in case of appointed members of Upper House in many countries, but in more political sense), while all the other posts should be filled by lot among the people technically qualified to get the job (socioeconomic and technical councils), or among the delegates selected by the certain groups of proletarians (for strictly political offices;i.e. each 100,000 of demarchy's full citizens present their candidate to the suitable position, to be recalled when breaching his voters' mandate, and then what candidates are taking appropriate position is decided by the lot in accordance with alternation principle (similar to U.S. senators' by-elections, but according to the lottery), so that every delegate is represented in the course of his mandate (i.e., first one to be selected serves full year, then he steps down, and the new lot is taken among the other delegates not currently serving in the relevant body for the position he has previously occupied).

[Dimentio]

Ideally, I think, the head of state should not be a member of any party and neither should actively strive to openly flaunt his or her opinions too much, in order to become a sort of sacrosanct personality legitimising a social transformation. For example, if I was Chávez, I would hold speeches and all that, but not investing any political capital in reforms, instead using delegates in the general assembly as "kamikaze pilots" to get things done.

In reality, a "constitutional monarch"-kind president could achieve very much more than a president who is seen as involved in everyday politics. One example of such a leader with "superstar qualities" would be Adolf Hitler, who kept popularity ratings which were probably around 60-80% during most of his term, despite that most of his policies were deeply unpopular amongst the masses. That was because he avoided to associate himself with day-to-day government, and instead focused on creating a popular image of a framework of society, rather than involve him- or herself too much with the day-to-day government.

Oh yes, Hitler was one of the worst monsters of history and an individual who formed one of the most flawed - if not the most flawed - ideologies ever, but the important thing is that he succeeded in mobilising the German people behind a political programme which most of them would have found bizarre and outlandish under any other circumstances.

Therefore, if one wants to understand how a movement "on the fringe" could gain power, then one needs to study the rise of the Nazis.

[Die Neue Zeit]

In this regard, I think, the best course would be to reserve some non-electable positions on the board (temporarily, of course) for the persons having provided special services to the proletarian state (just as in case of appointed members of Upper House in many countries, but in more political sense), while all the other posts should be filled by lot among the people technically qualified to get the job (socioeconomic and technical councils), or among the delegates selected by the certain groups of proletarians (for strictly political offices;i.e. each 100,000 of demarchy's full citizens present their candidate to the suitable position, to be recalled when breaching his voters' mandate, and then what candidates are taking appropriate position is decided by the lot in accordance with alternation principle (similar to U.S. senators' by-elections, but according to the lottery), so that every delegate is represented in the course of his mandate (i.e., first one to be selected serves full year, then he steps down, and the new lot is taken among the other delegates not currently serving in the relevant body for the position he has previously occupied).

But how does this apply to internal party politics and organization? :confused:

Dimentio: Demogorgon said something similar about ceremonial heads-of-state in my old Politics thread on Venezuela. The problem with titular heads-of-state like Kalinin is that they aren't given the kind of media press given to real leaders.

[not your usual suspect]

I believe that demarchy (selection of the executive by lot) is a much better system than simple election. There are various methods that could be introduced (such as term limits, number of times a person can be elected and so on) that would reduce the potential for damage in an electoral system though. The biggest problem that I see in election is that it encourages a "professional" leadership, those who have the power, have the experience, and therefore should continue to be given the power. That's the attitude, but we shouldn't want a leadership that consists of the same people year after year. Demarchy allows new ideas to come up every time the group is selected. Personally I feel that even the term "leadership" is problematic, instead of leadership these groups should be giving advice, rather than orders, to be followed or not by the general population. And because these advice groups will be selected of a broad section of the general population, with expert advice themselves, the general population will likely listen to them. For those worried about reactionary elements, they would likely make up a small proportion of any group, if they were allowed in at all. As such they could not influence the group to bad advice (not decisions) anyway.
What if the people selected are afraid to think at all anyway? Part of it is culture, there needs to be culture of "no one should be afraid to speak up". But "professional" leaders make mistakes all the time anyway. As such, random "ordinary" people need not be afraid to make mistakes. Anyway, the general population can evaluate the advice from the group and feed back comments. There should be no danger of the gulag for an honest mistake.
I personally object to any single "president" or "general secretary" position as antithesis to the egalitarian ideals of socialism. And within a party, of what need is there for it? A party should only be making policy decisions after the general membership has agreed, and policy statements are not so urgent that they cannot wait until a larger group of the membership has had a say. Perhaps, with the mass communication technologies we have today, a wiki could be used to formulate policy statements.
(I'm not sure how much of my comment was on topic, but I think most of it is.)

:mellow:

[Die Neue Zeit]

I believe that demarchy (selection of the executive by lot) is a much better system than simple election. There are various methods that could be introduced (such as term limits, number of times a person can be elected and so on) that would reduce the potential for damage in an electoral system though. The biggest problem that I see in election is that it encourages a "professional" leadership, those who have the power, have the experience, and therefore should continue to be given the power.

So do I and everyone else who posted so far, and comrade Victus posted the strongest argument against even a single exception.


I personally object to any single "president" or "general secretary" position as antithesis to the egalitarian ideals of socialism. And within a party, of what need is there for it? A party should only be making policy decisions after the general membership has agreed, and policy statements are not so urgent that they cannot wait until a larger group of the membership has had a say. Perhaps, with the mass communication technologies we have today, a wiki could be used to formulate policy statements.
(I'm not sure how much of my comment was on topic, but I think most of it is.)

:mellow:

Re. policy statements, I agree, and even posted in another thread that mass communication should be utilized to minimize the role of party congresses in favour of party-wide referenda by the voting membership at large. However, even major policies have devils in the details, and that's where executive-administrative organs come in.

For example, I oppose workers councils except those formed within Party-Movements as purely Party organizations in the mold of the Paris Communal Council, replacing party committees and perhaps complemented not by party commissions, but by proper Bureaus (to add insult to injuring anti-bureaucracy fetishes on the left).

So, instead of the central committee, have a Central Workers Council of the party. Instead of the central auditing commission (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPSU_Central_Auditing_Commission), have a Central Audit Bureau of the party.

When I wrote in my OP that there could be a standing leadership clique comprised of a quintet (five officials) or a sextet (six officials) - but not a septet, octet, or novenary like Stalin had in the post-war years - I meant that it could form an Executive or Leadership Council above the aforementioned, larger Central Workers Council.

[Nolan]

I've never heard of demarchy but its interesting. It should be experimented with.

[Demogorgon]

I'm a bit more sceptical of demarchy than others here, though I do support it for certain positions. Generally I support a mix of election and sortition depending on the position. I suggested a "new bicameralism" for legislatures a while ago with one elected chamber and one chosen by sortition.

So on this basis I certainly feel there is value in electing certain positions.

[Jose Gracchus]

I think it needs to be accepted, the value of psychology in representative agent-selection and democratic policy-making and decision-making. The fact is the elective principle that bourgeois democratic society indoctrinates in you will have the be the basic framework by which left politics are originally expressed. The revolutionary movement will need to build transformative and more extensively and intensively democratic institutions within the shell of old institutions. It'd have to be a profoundly successful - in educational terms - movement to successfully create a hegemony of anti-republican values and beliefs in import these wholesale over liberal democratic methods.

Though introducing them within the organizations of struggle and interaction in embryo is a sound strategy. Ultimately, we're hopelessly clueless about practical empirical experience with them in a modern real-world case (hence the lapse by DNZ into classicist quasi-literary arguments), so experimentation and trial-and-error within institutions of struggle should be the basis of developing the extreme democracy which is the bread-and-butter of an authentically revolutionary society.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I'm a bit more sceptical of demarchy than others here, though I do support it for certain positions. Generally I support a mix of election and sortition depending on the position. I suggested a "new bicameralism" for legislatures a while ago with one elected chamber and one chosen by sortition.

So on this basis I certainly feel there is value in electing certain positions.

Could you please explain the case for an elected chamber?


The fact is the elective principle that bourgeois democratic society indoctrinates in you will have the be the basic framework by which left politics are originally expressed.

I already wrote this in the original Theory thread on Cockshott's article:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/democracy-oligarchyi-t119643/index.html?p=1578061#post1578061


My concern is the sample size and population size. If I remember my stats correctly:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070508205233AAgDMZW

The main problem is its applicability to grassroots primary party organizations (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1644067&postcount=40) (my examination of the CPSU's structure).


The revolutionary movement will need to build transformative and more extensively and intensively democratic institutions within the shell of old institutions. It'd have to be a profoundly successful - in educational terms - movement to successfully create a hegemony of anti-republican values and beliefs in import these wholesale over liberal democratic methods.

Though introducing them within the organizations of struggle and interaction in embryo is a sound strategy. Ultimately, we're hopelessly clueless about practical empirical experience with them in a modern real-world case (hence the lapse by DNZ into classicist quasi-literary arguments), so experimentation and trial-and-error within institutions of struggle should be the basis of developing the extreme democracy which is the bread-and-butter of an authentically revolutionary society.

Did I lapse into "classicist quasi-literary arguments" when examining the structure of the CPSU?




I personally object to any single "president" or "general secretary" position as antithesis to the egalitarian ideals of socialism. And within a party, of what need is there for it?

I forgot to reply to this first part, but an exchange between Dimentio and myself in the Managed Democracy thread might be useful:



Instead, a popular movement has to centre around a charismatic - preferably female - figure.

Being media-savvy isn't the same as being "charismatic." Yes, there are exceptions like Oskar Lafontaine, but the charismatic figure role can only go so far, unlike in developing countries.


Moreover, if we are going to mount anything today, it isn't enough with unions, but all kinds of political and non-political social movements need to be persuaded on the train, while focus should lie on an overtly emotional campaign with only a few slogans.

Since when did I advocate "links with the trade union movement"? Did you read my Politics thread on Anglo-Continental Labourism vs. Linke-ism? A workers-only voting membership policy is more than enough to start a "link with the working class."

Other than that, you're learning more and more the positive lessons of Ferdinand Lassalle. :)


The leadership must appear as less radical than they are, and utilise their first period in power to strengthen the organisation of their own supporters and build up alternative media channels.

Quebec Solidaire has been a total disappointment. Appearing less radical and appealing (again) to identity politics has also blinded them to the pressing need for radical reform (not just social revolution). I place Hyman Minsky and Rudolf Meidner as benchmarks for whether or not someone's advocating radical reform.


The leader also needs to be somewhat young and have a good appearance. She doesn't need to actually decide anything. The only purpose of leaders should really be to be more popular than their parties in order to attract extra votes.

Maybe, so long as the charismatic figures are kept on a very tight leash by the party bureaucracy.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I can't say that this idea appeals to me.

The actually position of President is something which is problematic to me, the naming denotes a certain hierarchy.

I have always thought that, rather than electing individual positions, the highest organs of a party would be elected on a list-based system, annually, and would take it in turn to perhaps have a 'spokesperson' or 'chair' role within that committee. This would seem to be a more organic, federal leadership, rather than having someone 'preside' over the entire party.

[graymouser]

Is there any value at all in electing certain leading body positions and not randomly selecting them by technical qualifications?
Yes, clearly and absolutely.

In a serious party there will be differences over position, direction etc - whether or not this is called "line." In the democratic convention (or congress, conference, whichever you like to call it) there will be minority and majority factions, with winners and losers on important political questions. It's important in the leadership bodies that these groups have proportional representation, so that ongoing discussions will be reflective of the whole party. Before its degeneration the US SWP would achieve this by electing leadership slates that included substantial minority membership. You couldn't get this kind of leadership with demarchy.

A democratic party regime is not the result of form but of content. The whole party must be seriously, institutionally committed to internal democracy and struggle against trends that undermine it. A demarchic system cannot replace that - no matter how well you think it does at avoiding entrenched leaderships, form alone cannot replace political content.

A further problem is that it does not take into account uneven political development of cadres. While it is an admirable ideal that any cadre should be able to be in the leadership, it frequently is simply not the real fact. A party that has highly developed members sidelined because they aren't winners of an ideological leadership lottery, and lets less capable members run the show, squanders whatever advantages it gains by avoiding entrenchment and bureaucracy.

[Dimentio]

Yes, we should avoid individuals who actually hold power. The preferable thing would be to have a leader which sort of "embodies" the spirit of the age, and could smile and wave. People could curse the actual policies all the day, but still love the leader because the leader is seen as being above the daily politics.

[Kotze]

It's important in the leadership bodies that these groups have proportional representation, so that ongoing discussions will be reflective of the whole party. (...) A further problem is that it does not take into account uneven political development of cadres.Random sampling is proportional, though it gets more fuzzy the smaller the sample is. Even with a small board filled with people like this it is a very proportional process when you look at its membership over several iterations. So if majority decisions of a small board selected like this are of the type that they don't make decisions that you can't undo (like binding long-term contracts), fuzziness is less of an issue; though when we look closely at the details, we always spot some unundoable consequences.

If the board is small, the selection can be augmented by quotas to ensure that there is always a mix of newbies/young people and established members/old people. If the board is big, this happens automatically.

[graymouser]

Random sampling is proportional, though it gets more fuzzy the smaller the sample is. Even with a small board filled with people like this it is a very proportional process when you look at its membership over several iterations. So if majority decisions of a small board selected like this are of the type that they don't make decisions that you can't undo (like binding long-term contracts), fuzziness is less of an issue; though when we look closely at the details, we always spot some unundoable consequences.

If the board is small, the selection can be augmented by quotas to ensure that there is always a mix of newbies/young people and established members/old people. If the board is big, this happens automatically.
This is a look at randomness with the thickest pair of rose-colored glasses that could be made. Random sampling tends to be proportional over theoretically infinite iterations. However, in any given iteration it tends to be just that, random. To pretend that it wouldn't have significant outlier representations - particularly if there was, say a 55% to 45% split between two viewpoints in a party - is simply incorrect.

But you miss the bigger point. A revolutionary party is not a coffee klatch, it is an instrument of class warfare. If it makes a tactical mistake and the revolution is defeated because the wrong randomly-chosen individuals were in the leadership - and this is a real possibility, not everyone is cut out to be a revolutionary leader - that's a mistake you can't recover from.

Another point: I wouldn't take an organization seriously if it appointed leaders by lot, and I certainly wouldn't join such a group. I think that this is the kind of oddball thing that would tend to drive people away, as it indicates a group more obsessed with armchair theory than interested in the living class struggle.

[Die Neue Zeit]

A revolutionary party is not a coffee klatch, it is an instrument of class warfare. If it makes a tactical mistake and the revolution is defeated because the wrong randomly-chosen individuals were in the leadership - and this is a real possibility, not everyone is cut out to be a revolutionary leader - that's a mistake you can't recover from.

Another point: I wouldn't take an organization seriously if it appointed leaders by lot, and I certainly wouldn't join such a group. I think that this is the kind of oddball thing that would tend to drive people away, as it indicates a group more obsessed with armchair theory than interested in the living class struggle.

Elected leaders make mistakes too. The Trotskyist insistence upon slates is an import from the very "Marxist-Leninist" parties they condemn. (http://www.revleft.com/vb/origin-slate-system-t132075/index.html)

Appointing most or all leaders by lot allows time to discuss policies.

Labour unrest, labour struggles, etc. /= proper class struggle (which is political, not economic).


If the board is small, the selection can be augmented by quotas to ensure that there is always a mix of newbies/young people and established members/old people. If the board is big, this happens automatically.

Quota: That's the word I was looking for for technocratic filters to plain random selection.

[graymouser]

Elected leaders make mistakes too.
Right, but elected leaders can be tested in action before a revolution - and found wanting. A random leadership cannot. While election is not a perfect process for finding out who has natural talents in leadership, it is at least a process. A serious party can't literally leave that up to chance.


The Trotskyist insistence upon slates is an import from the very "Marxist-Leninist" parties they condemn. (http://www.revleft.com/vb/origin-slate-system-t132075/index.html)
Well, yes, in the sense that most Trotskyist parties came out of the Comintern and held a great deal of stock in continuity with it. And the slate system really does work in a relatively healthy party, keeping the leadership really representative of the group.


Appointing most or all leaders by lot allows time to discuss policies.
So does the slate nomination process - the nominating committee meets outside of the regular sessions of the convention and gives a report or reports as appropriate, which are voted up or down. This isn't even a really serious advantage.


Labour unrest, labour struggles, etc. /= proper class struggle (which is political, not economic).
As someone whose primary activity as a socialist has been in the anti-war movement, I obviously don't have some blinders about what class struggle is.

But this whole discussion has been an exercise in missing the point. Demarchy would not solve any of the problems that face a party. If you had a group structured so that the central or national committee (the larger of the leadership groups) was elected randomly, it would still have members who are better respected than others, who were regarded as its "real leaders" no matter who was in the randomly-selected group. These people would not be accountable in any way, since they would not be elected or recallable, and they would hold more influence than the group that is called the leadership. Essentially, in any party that tried your scheme, you would end up with a formal structure which is quite fair and random, yet had no significant influence, and an informal structure which was uncontrolled by the party membership, and was the real power.

Let me illustrate how this would happen, because it's quite clear to me. You see, a lot of the time well-meaning groups attempt to help young members to get experience by putting them on leadership bodies, even in significant numbers. What happens is that these people, who are theoretically not the equals of the older and more experienced members on the same bodies, have little to contribute, and more or less go along with whatever the group elders say. Assuming that in the randomly-appointed body you have probably a majority of raw rank-and-file members who have never served on such a body before, and a minority of experienced leaders, that minority will dominate this body up and down. That is simple human dynamics; I've seen it happen in organizations that were completely well-meaning in co-opting less experienced members into the leadership. You will wind up with this phenomenon whenever your leadership expresses large unevenness in political understanding.

So your group will end up producing a parallel structure where the formal leadership is dominated by an informal leadership, whose power struggles are not open (since they aren't vying for the majority on the leading bodies) but quite hidden. This leads us into a variant on what Jo Freeman called The Tyranny of Structurelessness (http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/hist_texts/structurelessness.html). If you elect your leaders, at least this fight has to occur out in the open - and members can take sides, and there will be a clear winner or loser. When you randomly appoint leaders, you are pushing this back into the back corridors and rooms. So you will create essentially what you are trying to avoid, and get a worse version since there are no democratic means to uproot the informal leaders.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Right, but elected leaders can be tested in action before a revolution - and found wanting. A random leadership cannot. While election is not a perfect process for finding out who has natural talents in leadership, it is at least a process. A serious party can't literally leave that up to chance.

Sure a random leadership can be tested. You just need to set filters for selection.


Well, yes, in the sense that most Trotskyist parties came out of the Comintern and held a great deal of stock in continuity with it. And the slate system really does work in a relatively healthy party, keeping the leadership really representative of the group.

Did you bother to read the article? The Bolsheviks didn't use slates until 1921. The pre-war SPD never used slates.


So does the slate nomination process - the nominating committee meets outside of the regular sessions of the convention and gives a report or reports as appropriate, which are voted up or down. This isn't even a really serious advantage.

You don't get it, do you? In reality, those in the nominating committee and their political and personal prejudices are the ones that elect those in the slates. Random selection eliminates those prejudices.


These people would not be accountable in any way, since they would not be elected or recallable, and they would hold more influence than the group that is called the leadership. Essentially, in any party that tried your scheme, you would end up with a formal structure which is quite fair and random, yet had no significant influence, and an informal structure which was uncontrolled by the party membership, and was the real power.

Who said anything about demarchy being incompatible with recall? Recall provides a check on abuse. The charismatic figures you refer to, well, the point of random selection is to diversify leadership by putting those figures right back in the rank-and-file once their terms are up. They can, of course, be put back in the leadership by random selection after x- amount of time in the rank-and-file.

[graymouser]

Who said anything about demarchy being incompatible with recall? Recall provides a check on abuse. The charismatic figures you refer to, well, the point of random selection is to diversify leadership by putting those figures right back in the rank-and-file once their terms are up. They can, of course, be put back in the leadership by random selection after x- amount of time in the rank-and-file.
You do not understand the structure that implementing demarchy would actually create, and I think it's worth focusing on how this would work.

In demarchy, what would happen is that there would be two leadership groups: a formal leadership, which is randomly selected at some interval, and an informal leadership, which grows organically through the life of the party. That this will arise is more or less inevitable. Now, there are several ways this can play out, depending upon the character of the informal leadership. If it's a more or less homogeneous bloc, the informal leadership will basically have hegemony over most of the formal leadership regardless of how well represented it is in the official body. With more informal leaders in the formal leadership, they will simply run it as I described earlier. With fewer, the formal leadership becomes insignificant and direction comes from other avenues.

But if it's factionally divided, the politics of the party will play out sub rosa. Factional leaders will use cliques and the party press and any other venues they may have to fight it out - but things will never be settled since the actual leadership is never elected. Everything will go on in terms of whichever faction manages to get better represented on the leading bodies of the party, or is able to subvert those bodies and lead despite them. Since the formal leading bodies do not actually represent what is happening in the group, the undeclared factions will be able to maneuver around them and the random appointees will not have the legitimacy within the ranks to lead a fight against them, and even if they did - the factions could just wait them out. Internal life in such a party would become high-pressure with member burnout, and relatively small fights would get increasingly blown out of proportion, with no ability to resolve the underlying issues since the informal leadership is never elected.

What the advocates of demarchy fail to grasp is that when the formal structures do not create a leadership that has the support and confidence of the party, other forces within the party will. Again, I refer to Freeman's Tyranny of Structurelessness (http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/hist_texts/structurelessness.html) - yet with the illusion of an apparent structure that nevertheless is incapable of overcoming the real leadership that is neither elected nor appointed.

[Q]

graymouser: You are right in that demarchy will put the focus of political debates "endlessly" throughout the party. I disagree with you that the formal leadership with be without authority, they will merely focus more on the administrative side of the party, moderating debates, facilitating the education of all members to participate in the debates, etc.

Having factional debates run through the party press is, in my view, fundamentally a good thing. As I argued earlier (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1950280&postcount=3) public debates will actually educate the class and ourselves politically, tactically, strategically, theoretically and programmatically, which is exactly what we want as we are (or should view ourselves as) those that promote worker self-organisation and self-emancipation. The party can become a central node of that organic process, if it is a crystallisation point of such debates.

As for the slates thing, I agree with the article that DNZ linked that this really has nothing to do with democracy and is most oftenly used by cliques to continue their own rule. This model fits in the "educative elite" model of the party (see my link), which holds on to a specific set of holy formulas. On paper, the "team"-argument sounds ok, but that is really just that, a paper reality as the article DNZ points to makes clear.

[graymouser]

graymouser: You are right in that demarchy will put the focus of political debates "endlessly" throughout the party. I disagree with you that the formal leadership with be without authority, they will merely focus more on the administrative side of the party, moderating debates, facilitating the education of all members to participate in the debates, etc.

Having factional debates run through the party press is, in my view, fundamentally a good thing. As I argued earlier (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1950280&postcount=3) public debates will actually educate the class and ourselves politically, tactically, strategically, theoretically and programmatically, which is exactly what we want as we are (or should view ourselves as) those that promote worker self-organisation and self-emancipation. The party can become a central node of that organic process, if it is a crystallisation point of such debates.
If you believe that a vibrant, healthy party is one that has constant factional debates running through it, I have only one question: have you ever been in a faction fight? Have you had to deal with a comrade who started yelling at a tenuous ally, or wade through pages of tedious exchanges in emails or a discussion bulletin? You think it would be wonderful if this were going on in the public press. This shows that you simply don't understand the long-term damage that groups organizing as a faction can do to the unity of a party. I think the definitive, well-documented example is the grouping around Martin Abern in the US SWP, which led to endless factional strife and ultimately wound up in the Workers Party split of 1940.

I do think there is some place for public debate, as the Trotskyist movement did in the debate on the Russian question in the late 1930s, but endless factional debates are not desirable. The revolutionary party must be trained as much in action as in debate, and that does mean that debates need to have definitive ends. The party is not a debating society, and your recipe is not for a party but a debate group.


As for the slates thing, I agree with the article that DNZ linked that this really has nothing to do with democracy and is most oftenly used by cliques to continue their own rule. This model fits in the "educative elite" model of the party (see my link), which holds on to a specific set of holy formulas. On paper, the "team"-argument sounds ok, but that is really just that, a paper reality as the article DNZ points to makes clear.
This is putting the cart (form) before the horse (content). The slate system was not why the Stalinists took over the party, its abuse was simply a symptom of that dominance. It can be used, and has been used, to create really representative leadership bodies in the history of Trotskyism.

[Q]

If you believe that a vibrant, healthy party is one that has constant factional debates running through it, I have only one question: have you ever been in a faction fight? Have you had to deal with a comrade who started yelling at a tenuous ally, or wade through pages of tedious exchanges in emails or a discussion bulletin? You think it would be wonderful if this were going on in the public press. This shows that you simply don't understand the long-term damage that groups organizing as a faction can do to the unity of a party. I think the definitive, well-documented example is the grouping around Martin Abern in the US SWP, which led to endless factional strife and ultimately wound up in the Workers Party split of 1940.

I do think there is some place for public debate, as the Trotskyist movement did in the debate on the Russian question in the late 1930s, but endless factional debates are not desirable. The revolutionary party must be trained as much in action as in debate, and that does mean that debates need to have definitive ends. The party is not a debating society, and your recipe is not for a party but a debate group.
You're repeating many cliché's here.

To your first question: Yes, I've been in multiple faction fights, mostly with me being in the minority. The Dutch SP experience comes to mind. And yes, I had to deal with the yelling, the long tirades, etc. Been there, done that. The point here is exact that the majority was capable of doing that because it wasn't public and in fact they feared such dissenting views from leaking to other members. So they used such tactics designed to intimidate members, which mostly worked in creating and nurturing an a-political and blindly following membership and scaring off most dissenters.

Splits, likewise, happen most of the time because leaderships are arbitrarily cutting off debate and intimidate members from continueing to spread their views.

I did place "endlessly" within quotation marks, for a reason. Debates run a natural course and won't stop until either the issue at hand is resolved, or the party leadership puts the whip in to end it. You seem to see controversy as something negative, whereas I see it as something positive. Debates and action are not mutually exclusive but are interacting with eachother dialectically, which in turn results to a scientific approach (the falsification of a thesis being a fundamental scientific principle). So, it could be that in a debate a decision is taken by the then majority to carry out an action. The experiences of that action will then feed back to the running debate in which the minority might be getting a lot more support.

I'll leave the age old whining over a "debating group" for what it is.


This is putting the cart (form) before the horse (content). The slate system was not why the Stalinists took over the party, its abuse was simply a symptom of that dominance. It can be used, and has been used, to create really representative leadership bodies in the history of Trotskyism.
I agree with you overall. But surely such a system did play a factor in the degeneration of the Bolshevik party and I think it played a strong one at that. Of course all systems and mechanisms can be used in either good or bad ways, depending on who is running the party and for what interests. The point of demarchy is to make the possibilities for abuse as low as possible.

[graymouser]

You're repeating many cliché's here.
No, I'm relating my own experience with faction fights, and what close comrades who've found themselves in the middle of them have told me about.


To your first question: Yes, I've been in multiple faction fights, mostly with me being in the minority. The Dutch SP experience comes to mind. And yes, I had to deal with the yelling, the long tirades, etc. Been there, done that. The point here is exact that the majority was capable of doing that because it wasn't public and in fact they feared such dissenting views from leaking to other members. So they used such tactics designed to intimidate members, which mostly worked in creating and nurturing an a-political and blindly following membership and scaring off most dissenters.
Party democracy is won, not instituted. If the leadership of a party is bureaucratic and determined to end debate, it will find ways to do so. Sorry about your experiences in the Dutch SP, but the most democratic party can be corrupted if democracy is form and not content.


Splits, likewise, happen most of the time because leaderships are arbitrarily cutting off debate and intimidate members from continueing to spread their views.
Actually, splits usually tend to happen because people in a minority lose a vote and decide to take their toys and make a new party. I've studied the splits in the American Trotskyist movement extensively, and it followed this pattern in every split suffered by the SWP up until 1983 when the party expelled all the Trotskyists on trumped-up charges.


I did place "endlessly" within quotation marks, for a reason. Debates run a natural course and won't stop until either the issue at hand is resolved, or the party leadership puts the whip in to end it. You seem to see controversy as something negative, whereas I see it as something positive. Debates and action are not mutually exclusive but are interacting with eachother dialectically, which in turn results to a scientific approach (the falsification of a thesis being a fundamental scientific principle). So, it could be that in a debate a decision is taken by the then majority to carry out an action. The experiences of that action will then feed back to the running debate in which the minority might be getting a lot more support.
This could have come out of the writings of James P. Cannon - who argued that debate had to be put to an end until a balance sheet was drawn for precisely such a reason.


I'll leave the age old whining over a "debating group" for what it is.
Well, I won't. I've been a member of Solidarity and the Socialist Party USA, both multi-tendency groups that never end debate. Solidarity just shoves any actual decisions under the carpet, while the SP while I was in it was a long-running faction fight. From my experience, so-called "multi-tendency" groups are fucking worthless.


I agree with you overall. But surely such a system did play a factor in the degeneration of the Bolshevik party and I think it played a strong one at that. Of course all systems and mechanisms can be used in either good or bad ways, depending on who is running the party and for what interests. The point of demarchy is to make the possibilities for abuse as low as possible.
Yet, demarchy is addressing form when democracy is 100% content. A really dedicated faction in a demarchic party could easily use the diminished prestige of the demarchic leadership to set up a de facto leading clique with only token deference to the de jure leading bodies. This is the general tendency anyway when a group does not have a formal structure that corresponds to the generally recognized leadership.

Your advocacy of demarchy does not indicate an attempt to limit abuse but a total lack of understanding of how leadership actually functions in political groups. Since it is precisely an attempt to diminish the prestige and power of the leading group, it creates essentially the same situation as no leadership whatsoever: informal groups come to the fore and provide actual leadership. This is how group dynamics work in real life, and you can't legislate around them. The best you can do is to make the leadership group elected and accountable, which requires continuous vigilance.

[Die Neue Zeit]

In demarchy, what would happen is that there would be two leadership groups: a formal leadership, which is randomly selected at some interval, and an informal leadership, which grows organically through the life of the party. That this will arise is more or less inevitable. Now, there are several ways this can play out, depending upon the character of the informal leadership. If it's a more or less homogeneous bloc, the informal leadership will basically have hegemony over most of the formal leadership regardless of how well represented it is in the official body.

In an electoral system, you can't get rid of the "more or less homogeneous bloc." What demarchy does is scatter the individuals, especially if they're not homogeneous in regards to their respective hometowns. When I said that the charismatic figures would go back to the rank-and-file, I mean rank-and-file taking into account geographical factors.

What you should have said in your critique is the role of Internet communication in keeping the charismatic leaders in touch with one another. But already we have seen that e-mail lists can be more cumbersome than message boards.


But if it's factionally divided, the politics of the party will play out sub rosa. Factional leaders will use cliques and the party press and any other venues they may have to fight it out - but things will never be settled since the actual leadership is never elected.

You are confusing the leadership body with what comrade Cockshott referred to as a "Lebanese nightmare of a constitution" for things like the editorial group:

On the other hand, the "elitist" filter can also be based on tendency affiliations. For example, some party organ might need x- Trots, x- Maoists, x- class-strugglist anarchists, but no neo-Kauts. I'm referring to committees like ‘transitory action platform’ committees. Something similar can be said for ‘electoral platform’ committees, but with different compositions. The editorial committee in particular would have to be filtered based on tendency, so as to include as many tendencies as possible on a ‘senatorial’ footing (one member each, regardless of tendency size).

[Note that proportionality may not be considered here.]

The editorial committee can influence the grassroots and the party's Central Workers Council and lower workers councils in the policy voting, and these in turn will settle the matter. Ditto with the proper bureaus.

[Die Neue Zeit]

You think it would be wonderful if this were going on in the public press. This shows that you simply don't understand the long-term damage that groups organizing as a faction can do to the unity of a party. I think the definitive, well-documented example is the grouping around Martin Abern in the US SWP, which led to endless factional strife and ultimately wound up in the Workers Party split of 1940.

I do think there is some place for public debate, as the Trotskyist movement did in the debate on the Russian question in the late 1930s, but endless factional debates are not desirable. The revolutionary party must be trained as much in action as in debate, and that does mean that debates need to have definitive ends. The party is not a debating society, and your recipe is not for a party but a debate group.

How ironic, given Louis Proyect's recent blog on political program and Trotskyist splits:

http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2011/01/05/rethinking-the-question-of-a-revolutionary-program/

The tendency of Trotskyist groups is to debate too much, then split, on things like this:


The “program” referred to all of the classics of Marxism, at least our particular fraction of the movement, as well as all of the approved resolutions of all our conventions. In many ways, the program represented the same thing to us as the Talmud meant to orthodox Jews. It was the record of all the ideological battles that we had fought and won since Marx had it out with Bakunin.

[...]

Having the correct position on when and how the USSR became “state capitalist” or “bureaucratically degenerated” was a litmus test that would separate the pretenders to the throne from the legitimate leader.

So whatever debate time is spared outside of the usual Bakunin-Sorel-Pannekoek-Luxemburg-Trotsky emphasis on Action, only a fraction is allocated to genuine programmatic stuff, as best exemplified by Eisenach, Gotha, and Erfurt.

That's why I made my criticism of Trotsky's TP in the comments section.

[graymouser]

In an electoral system, you can't get rid of the "more or less homogeneous bloc."
Actually, you can. It's hardly a mass party, but an example would be in Socialist Action: the leadership around Nat Weinstein lost its influence in 2001 and basically put itself out of the party as a result, forming their own short-lived group. Democracy basically worked out exactly as it should have: the new leadership had the confidence of the majority and won out.


What demarchy does is scatter the individuals, especially if they're not homogeneous in regards to their respective hometowns. When I said that the charismatic figures would go back to the rank-and-file, I mean rank-and-file taking into account geographical factors.
No, I don't think that's the case at all. Leaders of a party are generally the people writing the in-depth theoretical and newspaper articles on which the propaganda of the party is absolutely reliant. Avoiding the literature becoming a source of authority outside of the demarchic structure would mean literally hobbling the party in terms of its theoretical leaders.


What you should have said in your critique is the role of Internet communication in keeping the charismatic leaders in touch with one another. But already we have seen that e-mail lists can be more cumbersome than message boards.
There is absolutely no reason I would say that. Leaderships developed across geographic lines in the '30s and '60s; there's no real reason to assume that it could not happen in functionally the same way in the modern era.


You are confusing the leadership body with what comrade Cockshott referred to as a "Lebanese nightmare of a constitution" for things like the editorial group:
No, no I'm not. I'm detailing what will happen if you attempt to pre-empt a strong leadership by institutionalizing a weak one. You are avoiding the problems in favor of completely unrelated pronouncements.


The editorial committee can influence the grassroots and the party's Central Workers Council and lower workers councils in the policy voting, and these in turn will settle the matter. Ditto with the proper bureaus.
This is 1000% naivety, and nothing more.

[Jose Gracchus]

Did I lapse into "classicist quasi-literary arguments" when examining the structure of the CPSU?

No, but I am referring to the support given by Cockshott and you for the hard dedication to a demarchic model as a pancea for democracy. This is basically shored up with appeals to Aristotle's choice of terminology. It also strikes me as grossly inappropriate. I do like the idea of policy juries and supplementation of election by sortition, but the Boule of Athens was a standing steering committee for the Ecclessia and I don't think can be attributed to national-level modern politics. I do think trying to avoid careerism and draft everyday people into higher decision making and training to provide the organizational tasks of the revolutionary society is extremely important and support for it, admirable. But I think this is a wild and inappropriate basis to draw an exotic system as a pancea for modern elections.

The Athenian direct democracy model should perhaps be how all "ground level" entities are structured, e.g., party cells, neighborhood and factory assemblies (where the neighborhood and factory committees are the Boule councils of the assemblies' Ecclessia). Mass participation is a must, and is a general palliative for degeneration. Serious thought on how to initiate this process and protect it from degenerative pressures is deserved, but I don't have the strongest faith in this somewhat simple apparent cure-all.

[Die Neue Zeit]

No, but I am referring to the support given by Cockshott and you for the hard dedication to a demarchic model as a pancea for democracy. This is basically shored up with appeals to Aristotle's choice of terminology.

If you look at my commentary called "Class-Strugglist Democracy and the Demarchic Commonwealth," you'll note that the "hard dedication to a demarchic model" is hardly a panacea. There are other elements of the pre-orthodox minimum program to consider.

For example, some of Cockshott's comrades don't downplay the role of recallability and "average skilled workers' standard of living" like he does. Cockshott himself also wants to scrap judges in the justice system.

I inserted a grammatically double-negative variant of suffrage without property qualifications ("disqualification" and "non-ownership") specifically to leave wiggle room for Bolshevik-inspired disenfranchisement of the bourgeoisie from all political affairs (not just from voting every so often).


I do like the idea of policy juries and supplementation of election by sortition, but the Boule of Athens was a standing steering committee for the Ecclessia and I don't think can be attributed to national-level modern politics.

Why not?


The Athenian direct democracy model should perhaps be how all "ground level" entities are structured, e.g., party cells, neighborhood and factory assemblies (where the neighborhood and factory committees are the Boule councils of the assemblies' Ecclessia). Mass participation is a must, and is a general palliative for degeneration. Serious thought on how to initiate this process and protect it from degenerative pressures is deserved, but I don't have the strongest faith in this somewhat simple apparent cure-all.

Actually, it is in the party cells and other grassroots areas where the purely Athenian model may be problematic. These cells may be too small to have standing bodies of 25-30 people, the basis of statistically representative random selection. The neighbourhood and factory assemblies would include everybody (no random selections), and the latter might not need standing bodies of 25-30 people.

See, I too don't think random selections are a cure-all. ;)

[Die Neue Zeit]

One of the comrades here switched boats towards elections, so this does re-raise the question of this one possible exception.

There are five "dictatorships" to consider in all of this messy mix: that of "the class," that of the class movement, that of the "party" (I'll explain the quotation marks at some point later on), the "invisible dictatorship" (from "policy-makers" to conspiracy theories), and the "future workers dictator."

[Q]

(I'll explain the quotation marks at some point later on)

I'll be waiting ;)

[Die Neue Zeit]

You already know, comrade, of my one-man minority position regarding genuine one-party states, of at least one key measure that's needed to realize this (the one about state administrators not being voting members but nevertheless still "members" obligated to pay dues and carry out the Party line).

On the other hand, the above could very well apply instead to the dictatorship of the (singular) class movement, and the "party" could very well refer to something else:

Policy "dictatorships," Handivote, and party roles in demarchy (random selection) (http://www.revleft.com/vb/policy-dictatorships-handivote-t146149/index.html)


In bourgeois circles there are the odd debates on how long a term should last. As opposed to the debates on term limits, term durations can be somewhat tied to policy, especially strategic policy.

"Handivote" refers to a framework by Cockshott and Renaud that takes advantage of cell phones to facilitate referenda with multiple options. However, this brings up the question of policy duration.

GOELRO was a Soviet infrastructure plan that was fulfilled in ten or eleven years, beyond two four-year terms. Can demarchy facilitate policy "dictatorships" whereby certain strategic policies decided either by referenda or by statistical representatives cannot be replaced on a whim (each must be allowed to run its full course without hijacking by statistical bureaucrats or statistical representatives), and what role can parties play in this?


There's no reason why demarchy cannot accommodate long-term goals, you've already suggested one way in which this can be done, i.e., by making the coordinators and representatives subject to the decisions of plebiscites.

Also, demarchy lends itself well to ad hocracy, i.e., the creation of administrative bodies on an ad hoc basis for the purpose of achieving specific goals. So, for instance, you might have an ad hoc demarchic committee designated with the task of planning and overseeing the construction of a nation-wide high-speed rail transportation network, and the committee can continue to exist until the project is complete.

Further, even if we choose not to go that route, there's also no reason why a demarchic body with a relatively frequent refresh rate (e.g., an annual turnover in its composition), wouldn't continue the policies of its predecessors. People are prudent enough to recognize when a continuation of policy is called for, and when, in exceptional circumstances, a radical break from past policy is called for.

EDIT:

After researching and writing on Stratified Sampling (OK with a job slot system), Probability-Proportional-to-Size sampling (scrapping the slate system), Cluster sampling, and Quota sampling (gender, editorial political tendency, etc.), I've vacillated once more to the side of not having a sole-elected "future workers dictator."

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

DNZ: apologies for this being slightly a 'rabbit out the hat' and for diversifying the thread, but I have a question or two regarding many of your theoretical posts.

Do you not think that there is a possibility that, if economic and political power is devolved to workers' councils, workers' committees in the workplace and so on, that many of your theoretical musings could end up never becoming praxis, at least in the way in which you mean them to?

As much as I respect your intellect and some of your ideas, i've always thought that it's perhaps a slightly wasted exercise, in that the only way that such a detailed level of theory could be practically applied is by a dictator-type person or group, on behalf of, rather than by, the working class.

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts and start a discussion on this.

[Die Neue Zeit]

DNZ: apologies for this being slightly a 'rabbit out the hat' and for diversifying the thread, but I have a question or two regarding many of your theoretical posts.

No need to apologize.


Do you not think that there is a possibility that, if economic and political power is devolved to workers' councils, workers' committees in the workplace and so on, that many of your theoretical musings could end up never becoming praxis, at least in the way in which you mean them to?

That's why I prefer a mass partyist model over detached workers councils and such. There needs to be people who can think clearly.


As much as I respect your intellect and some of your ideas, i've always thought that it's perhaps a slightly wasted exercise, in that the only way that such a detailed level of theory could be practically applied is by a dictator-type person or group, on behalf of, rather than by, the working class.

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts and start a discussion on this.

Class movements have always been representative of the class. That is, it's impossible for every single man, woman, and child in the class to do the same thing all at once. What is important is that this representation also gets majority political (obvious not necessarily electoral) support, and an "activists only" membership model doesn't measure that well.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I completely agree that you will never get every sympathising man, woman and child to be wholly active.

But the point is that, if the party - even a mass party - takes the role of representative for itself, is there not the problem that it could be forcing it's will onto those workers in factories and whichever other workplaces they are in, who are committed to Socialism but not necessarily party members?

In other words, with any vanguard party model, whether it is Menshevikist or Bolshevikist, is there not the old problem of bureaucratic centralisation and ideological purity (i.e. the Bolsheviks being a Marxist-Leninist only party) actually working against the furthering of Socialism?

[Jose Gracchus]

DNZ thinks literally plucking names out of a hat, to man the Central Executive Committee under the one-party state will produce true worker magistrates who will be able to guide policies free of top-down party bureaucratic control.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Bureaucracies (that is, bureaucratic processes) are quite compatible with accountability. It's red tape that bumps heads with accountability.

BTW, you know more than that. There are more mechanisms needed for there to be a genuine one-party state (and not a "no-party" state) in the first place.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

In concise terms, though, can you tell me how we marry bureaucracies (presumably, not every national, regional and local government position, down to secretarial work, will be elected) with genuine accountability?

I take issue with the idea of the one-party state. Whatever mechanisms you put in there, the focus is always on stopping the one-party state from degenerating into its inevitable conclusion: dictatorial rule, of some kind, be it of one, of a group, or of a single ideology.
I mean, is it really possible to have a one-party state that supports the inclusion of a broad range of Socialist ideologies? Otherwise, we are surely talking of dictatorship.

[Rowan Duffy]

I've noticed that a number of commentators have confused the use of demarchy for the party with the whole of society. I think there is an interesting lesson there, since I think it's easy to see some change in society that might be useful and to immediately attempt to mimic it in the party. I tend to think this is not always a good idea.

Part of my reasoning has been from watching a party attempt to have the most democratic formal methodology possible, resulting in an overly homogeneous structure with very little capacity for initiative or support for leadership. It neither developed effective political explorations or explorations of practice. It simply sought to take what seemed most beneficial for the whole of society in its form and to mimic it in the party.

At issue here are a few questions.

First, society is not the same thing as the party. In a polity there is not much of an outside when you have universal suffrage. By comparison, a party is usually a very small grouping with respect to the general population. It has less need of compromise politically than then general population since members have the right to "free association" with some new movement that better represents their ideological views. It also somehow must keep itself from disintegrating in the sea of political nonsense surrounding it spewed forth by the bourgeois press.

Much closer to the whole of society is something like a union. Unions actually generally represent more of the mass character within a certain reasonably well defined unit. Demarchy, it seems to me, might make a fair bit of sense as a strategy to use for the magistrate of a union provided that you could actually find ways to provide the time and pay for members to do that.

Second, there is question about how diverse the party is with regards tendency. A single tendency party would probably be less concerned with appropriate representation since there would be less need to ensure that ideological compromise be produced. A party attempting to be a multi-tendency party would need to have a great deal more political compromise being made.

Third, there is a question of scale. If the party is very large, for instance a multi-tendency European party with thousands of members, it might make more sense to have a demarchic model than if you are 18 people sitting in a room. The statistical likelihood of having reasonable samples will be greater assuming that there isn't a continually growing diversity of tendencies as the number of individuals go up [I'm not totally sure if that's true in practice though :)]

I would like to re-iterate the possibility mentiond before of having a formal and informal system functioning. I was a member of a party in which the real functional leadership was totally divorced from the actually elected leadership. I think in a larger party it might be harder to manage, but I believe it still would be possible. If you have a representative population on your central committee they may indeed be persuaded to defer to the more knowledgeable elders rather than push forward with new initiatives and this practice could become entrenched. Perhaps this is better than the current model though.

It's also likely in a demarchic model that education would be taken more seriously, and that factions would attempt to convince through dialog within the party to achieve the most developed participants possible. If it was truly a mass party with weak requirements for membership however, it seems like keeping the centre of the party might be very difficult indeed.

[Die Neue Zeit]

IThird, there is a question of scale. If the party is very large, for instance a multi-tendency European party with thousands of members, it might make more sense to have a demarchic model than if you are 18 people sitting in a room. The statistical likelihood of having reasonable samples will be greater assuming that there isn't a continually growing diversity of tendencies as the number of individuals go up

Comrade, when I wrote my thread Practical Issues and Revisiting the Party Question (http://www.revleft.com/vb/practical-issues-and-t150581/index.html), the model I proposed there is more compatible with a bigger organization than a smaller one. I wrote there:

Since demarchy and centrality were discussed above in relation to workers’ own institutions, how can they be applied to the party itself, [i]especially in a more mature stage with more party councils and bureaus?

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

DNZ: do you have a position on the no party state?

[Die Neue Zeit]

You mean Moshe Lewin's material? I support that hypothesis on the Soviet bureaucracy, but I'm also working on ways around this (i.e., achieving a genuine one-party system, as in a system that's highly politicized within a single party).