Democratic Centralism

[Property Is Robbery]

I know there are already a couple threads about this but I have a specific question. Would this system really be a democracy of the people/workers or of a limited number of party members?

[theblackmask]

Join a democratic centralist organization and find out for yourself. Honestly, nothing has made me fear any kind of centralism more than practicing it.

[28350]

Democratic Centralism is a mechanism of party organization, not a way of organizing society.

[theblackmask]

And when said party seizes state power, it's organizational methods will have no bearing on how it tries to shape society? History seems to maybe say otherwise.

[KC]

Join a democratic centralist organization and find out for yourself. Honestly, nothing has made me fear any kind of centralism more than practicing it.

No organizations currently exist in the US that practice democratic centralism.



And when said party seizes state power, it's organizational methods will have no bearing on how it tries to shape society? History seems to maybe say otherwise.

This would depend entirely on historical circumstances and not on the preferred methods of organization of the party.

[Victus Mortuum]

As I understand it, democratic centralism is the core of an attitude that we need coercive democratic central organization in order to have a successful revolution. That the national majority of an organization should be able to tell a national minority how to organize and what campaigns they need to be involved with in a time of disagreement.

[Red Rebel]

Would this system really be a democracy of the people/workers or of a limited number of party members?


Democratic Centralism is how leninists run their party and it would be limited to only party members.



No organizations currently exist in the US that practice democratic centralism.


The Party for Socialism and Liberation in the USA is a democratic centralist organization. CPUSA still claims to follow democratic centralism.

[theblackmask]

This would depend entirely on historical circumstances and not on the preferred methods of organization of the party.

And if the queen had balls she'd be king. Don't you think the preferred methods of the party ARE part of historical circumstances? Obviously the methods of organization developed by the Bolsheviks were developed out of their circumstances at the time, and we should be developing organizational structures that fit our time...not trying to fit into a century old model.


The Party for Socialism and Liberation in the USA is a democratic centralist organization. CPUSA still claims to follow democratic centralism.

As does the ISO. I think what KC means to say is that no organization in the US practices his approved brand of democratic centralism. While I'll admit that the democratic centralism of the ISO and that of the Bolsheviks do have differences, neither can/could overcome the centralist inertia enough to be a party OF the working class and not a party FOR the working class.

Perhaps, as ComradeOm has posted here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/russian-revolution-bolshevik-t105275/index.html), there are some misconceptions amongst current organizations as to the true nature of democratic centralism...sure, but to support the practice of democratic centralism is to beat a dead horse that's still being paraded around by middle-class activists.

[KC]

The Party for Socialism and Liberation in the USA is a democratic centralist organization. CPUSA still claims to follow democratic centralism.

The PSL is not in a position to practice democratic centralism. No party in the US is.

[Fulanito de Tal]

A benefit of democratic centralism is that it purveys solidarity. It is a good way to enact change quickly and decisively.

The negative is that it does not allow for any dissent among party members. Once the decision has been made, it is over.

Depending on the situation, democratic centralism may be beneficial or not.

[Kassad]

The PSL is not in a position to practice democratic centralism. No party in the US is.

Yeah, keep talking, KC. We're all listening.

[Luisrah]

Democratic Centralism is when a party debates on a certain matter, and when the majority has decided, everyone must follow the decision.

Diversity of opinion, unity of action.

[Enragé]

This would depend entirely on historical circumstances and not on the preferred methods of organization of the party.

Yet, at the same time, methods of organisation of the party historically, running up to the revolution, are part of the historical circumstances.

or not?
then explain how they are not.

[StalinFanboy]

I don't see a problem with centralism within groups. But I have a problem when those groups then try to force this mode of organization on other people while placing themselves at the top. This happened with Socialist Organizer last year at a general assembly, and it helped kill the student movement here.

[chegitz guevara]

Democratic centralism is a completely misunderstood concept. As practiced by most DC organizations today, it is a set of practices proclaimed by Zinoviev in 1924 that all revolutionary groups need to follow in order to follow the Bolshevik path to revolution.

There's one small problem with this.

The Bolsheviks did not practice this type of democratic centralism. For the Bolsheviks, and groups that existed before the Russian Revolution, democratic centralism simply meant a democratic, unified organization, as opposed to groups where their sections and locals could do whatever the hell they wanted. Democratic centralism was NOT outlined in Lenin's "classic" What is to Be Done? That work was nothing more than his attack on the economists and his explanation that a German style party could be built in Russia. He himself, considered it to be old history by 1907.

BTW, democratic centralism is not merely a concept for organizing an underground party (or above ground, as the SPD considered itself DC). Lenin argued for DC as a model of organizing a revolutionary state, i.e., a unified, national government, as opposed to a federation or confederation. The British government (aside from its monarchy) as opposed to the USA or Canada.

[Enragé]

i prefer people locally doing whatever the fuck they want. In fact, they even do so in democratic centralist organisations. Those who deviate too far from the party line step out of the organisation, those who agree what the party line stay inside and thus do whatever the fuck they want.

The problem arises when you transpose the DC principle to a whole country, with a state which has the means to enforce adherance to the party line. All that results is oppression, turmoil, and civil war.

[theblackmask]

Those who deviate too far from the party line step out of the organisation, those who agree what the party line stay inside and thus do whatever the fuck they want.

Democratic Centralism is in no way about "doing whatever the fuck" you may want. DC creates a kind of inertia where ideas flow downwards from the top, and you can either choose to go along with that inertia, or fuck off. The simple act of proposing an agenda change to a meeting can be near impossible.

For example, this would require someone who is willing to speak up about said change, and counterpose their ideas with the ideas of the "leadership." Even then, one must deal with the fact that the leadership will a) usually stick together, and b) has probably already had side discussions with members asking for their support on a matter. Add to this the fact that in most DC organizations I've been around, the leadership won't even release the agenda for said meeting until the night before, and you can easily see how a number of small factors contribute to the overall crippling of the "democratic" part of the organizational model.

Sure, it does allow for some amount of bottom-up input from the rank-and-file, but not in any meaningful way, as the option to expel someone if they don't jive with the leadership is always there. It's no wonder DC organizations put such an effort(more than actual organizing most of the time) into recruiting new members...both the turnaround rate, and the fact that to be more "effective" they need to have plenty of members to be bossed around by leaders, make this mandatory to their survival.

[chegitz guevara]

That's not DC, it's just C. You cannot have DC without the D or the C.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Democratic Centralism is in no way about "doing whatever the fuck" you may want. DC creates a kind of inertia where ideas flow downwards from the top, and you can either choose to go along with that inertia, or fuck off. The simple act of proposing an agenda change to a meeting can be near impossible.

For example, this would require someone who is willing to speak up about said change, and counterpose their ideas with the ideas of the "leadership." Even then, one must deal with the fact that the leadership will a) usually stick together, and b) has probably already had side discussions with members asking for their support on a matter. Add to this the fact that in most DC organizations I've been around, the leadership won't even release the agenda for said meeting until the night before, and you can easily see how a number of small factors contribute to the overall crippling of the "democratic" part of the organizational model.

Sure, it does allow for some amount of bottom-up input from the rank-and-file, but not in any meaningful way, as the option to expel someone if they don't jive with the leadership is always there. It's no wonder DC organizations put such an effort(more than actual organizing most of the time) into recruiting new members...both the turnaround rate, and the fact that to be more "effective" they need to have plenty of members to be bossed around by leaders, make this mandatory to their survival.

I think people fetishize certain kinds of organization from both the anti- and pro- positions. A type of organziation can be stiffing or not stiffiling. I've been to ISO meeting where the atmosphere was stiffiling IMO (also many which are not of course) but I've also been to meeting that were basically open speak-outs and were dominated by a few people and it was equally stiffling and frustrating, back in the global justice movement, almost all coalitions I was a part of that were consensus-run were horribly stifiling.

In my opinion, a lack of struggle from below (as was the defining feature of the time-period we have all lived in until the economic collapse) is more decisive in either organizations becoming a little wooden or allowing for a union or organization to be dominated by people at the top and run in a top-down way.

The important thing to me is what is or is not effective. Democratic centralism IMO is potentially the best way for radicals to combine their individualistic drives and opinionated-asses with their recognition of the need for concerted and collective action. Being able to freely argue and debate out ideas while then also being able to settle on a unified course (temporary but unified in order to be tested in practice) is very effective. It can be misused, it has been sold as "centralism in practice, democratic not really" by the groups and parties that looked to Russia as genuine socialism and so on, but so has democracy itself - many people don't believe in democracy because they see how Capitalist Democracies operate... they have the structures needed for democratic decision making, but they have also insulated themselves from the effects of genuine democracy by creating a bureaucracy, weird procedural rules, expensive campaign operations, and so on.

I don't blame anyone of having suspicions of democratic centralism after the experiences of the USSR, but it's also important not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Also on recruitment - so you don't believe that it's important to win tons of workers and activists to radical politics? You and you buddies are just going to do it all for the working class? I recruit in order to train my replacement and try and build up leadership, people who are followers are totally useless for trying to rebuild a left in the US. Each one teach one.

[KC]

Democratic centralism IMO is potentially the best way for radicals to combine their individualistic drives and opinionated-asses with their recognition of the need for concerted and collective action.

LOL and you're an ISO member.

[Property Is Robbery]

The PSL is not in a position to practice democratic centralism. No party in the US is.
They are and they do. In terms of internal decisions and then carrying out those decisions even if you don't agree.

[KC]

They are and they do. In terms of internal decisions and then carrying out those decisions even if you don't agree.

No they don't. If you think that is the case then you do not know what democratic centralism is.

[Q]

No they don't. If you think that is the case then you do not know what democratic centralism is.

Instead of being a condescending prick about it, you might want to explain the issue. You of all people must be aware that there is a huge amount of confusion about these basic subjects on the left.

Ⓐ☭property_is_robbery☭Ⓐ: The PSL is not democratic-centralist, at least the impression I get from it from the other side of the pond is that the PSL is yet another clone of what has been "common sense" for Leninist organisation for much too long now.

Democratic centralism is a phrase that originates from Russia as far as I'm aware, but the practice is older and we can already see its traces in the German workers movement which the Bolsheviks searched to emulate.

Rosa Luxemburg already hit the nail on the head when she said that democracy is irrelevant for those who agree, but absolutely essential for anyone who disagrees. Put in reverse: Any organisations that do not nurture a climate of disagreement are not democratic.

I can already hear someone speaking up at this point: "wow, you're arguing for disagreement per se? That will only cause splits!". This is both true and untrue.

First the in the abstract: Our politics are about the collective of the working class, we seek to empower the working class to be able to organise, emancipate and liberate itself from capitalism. In other words: Communists seek for the working class to become the new ruling class.

However, put in simple terms, I know nothing about our collective. You know nothing about the collective. We might know a very little bit. The bigger the group grows, the higher our understanding of our class and of knowledge in general. (As an aside: I think KC is talking about the PSL being too small to be really able to represent working class politics as a collective of politics, when he says that the PSL (or any group on the left) can't be democratic-centralist).

However, there is inevitably going to be disagreement. On a personal level we are talking about life experiences, the fact that you're a man of woman, black or white, the education you got, the papers you read, the friends you have, the work you do... is inevitably going to have a reflection on the political ideas you have. On a macro-level there are many currents in the working class movement, some revolutionary, others not, that form the vanguard of the working class. With "vanguard" I mean the most politically aware and militant workers, the actual leaders-on-the-ground that matter.

So, how do we solve the issue of building our class movement with so many different ideas and currents of thought and experiences? The answer is obvious: Democratically!

It needs to be explained here that democracy is meant to be a dialectical process (in b4 trolling Rosa): Opposites conflict and, tried and tested, form a new insight that the collective learns.

An example to make the point: Say a big company closes to ship off to Asia. This means 10 000 redundancies + another 15 000 in supply jobs, etc. How do we react? Say, in our hypothetical class party, we have two camps emerging on this issue. One side, with a trade union bureaucratic background, argues we need to negotiate, the other - left - camp argues we need to strike. The first however wins the argument and the class organisation seeks to negotiate.

Negotiations fail however completely and the debate goes on. This time a majority is found for a strike and occupation. This time there is success. The company stays where it is and 25k jobs are saved.

Now, this particular instance is not very relevant, what is relevant is the lesson that the collective takes. The collective learns that strikes apparently help. They learnt this not because some group forced their will onto the masses, but because they had a say in the debate (or at least a possibility to) and, as a consequence, they are the "owners" of the results of the debate and experiences.

However, this result won't last. A new company comes up wanting to ship off to some low wage country and this time when a strike is organised, it fails. What now? The debate wages on...

This is the basic idea of democratic-centralism, which Lenin so famously captured in his phrase "freedom of discussion, unity in action". You could alternatively capture it by saying there is "unity in disagreement".

However, the "common sense" on the left does not see it this way. For historical reasons and because most leftwing groups have been reduced to irrelevance, a new content has replaced this method by something else. The idea is that we already have all the experiences, ideas and theories due to the accrued history of the working class movement of the last two centuries. The left groups see themselves as a continuation of this tradition (most groups insisting that they have that monopoly, the other groups are just ultra-left/revisionist/sectarian/etc.). All we then logically need to do is: a) recruit the people to these ideas and b) "agitate, agitate, agitate" these ideas into the mass movement. This makes them objectively sectarian as it is not the point to organise the class as a collective, but to institute their group as the leadership over the class, only reaching out to a section (hence sectarian) of the working class vanguard.

"Oh but wait!" I can hear some, "We are democratic! We have conferences, discussions, etc.". Be that as it may, and most groups do have some sort of democratic process, these are ultimately undemocratic. Why? There is a big difference between formal democracy (conferences, congresses, etc) and dialectical democracy (a debating culture).

The democracy of the sect is not designed to stimulate critical thinking, official factions and tendencies are often discouraged or outright banned on punishment of expulsion. The democracy of the sect is designed to mildly modify the existing formulas. Dissent is only allowed within the "official structures", eg on branch meetings, regional meetings and national meetings. That this is a crippled way of democracy, in the sense of allowing and stimulating dissent, should be obvious.

I hope this goes some way out to explain the issue. The PSL may claim it is democratic-centralist, it is however most certainly not.

[Die Neue Zeit]

"Unity in disagreement"? Hey, I like that! :thumbup1:


Dissent is only allowed within the "official structures", eg on branch meetings, regional meetings and national meetings.

I think the issue here is transparency within the organization itself. Surely there's got to be dissent expressed outside those physical meetings. OTOH, such dissent must be transparent as well, or else there's the problem of factionalism.

[KC]

Instead of being a condescending prick about it, you might want to explain the issue. You of all people must be aware that there is a huge amount of confusion about these basic subjects on the left.

I would rather not waste my time trying to explain something so simple to someone that refuses to listen.


(As an aside: I think KC is talking about the PSL being too small to be really able to represent working class politics as a collective of politics, when he says that the PSL (or any group on the left) can't be democratic-centralist).

This is true. A democratic centralist organization is mutually exclusive from the existing sects, not only because of its isolation from the class struggle but also because of its inherent form of organization (i.e. the sect form is inherently opposed to democratic centralism).



An example to make the point: Say a big company closes to ship off to Asia. This means 10 000 redundancies + another 15 000 in supply jobs, etc. How do we react? Say, in our hypothetical class party, we have two camps emerging on this issue. One side, with a trade union bureaucratic background, argues we need to negotiate, the other - left - camp argues we need to strike. The first however wins the argument and the class organisation seeks to negotiate.

Negotiations fail however completely and the debate goes on. This time a majority is found for a strike and occupation. This time there is success. The company stays where it is and 25k jobs are saved.

I think a more relevant example would be where the negotiators win, the strikers split off and form their own group, and then both dogmatically cling to their positions as essential in their belief structures (i.e. the negotiators promote negotiation in general while the strikers do the same wrt striking).

At least, that is how the modern day socialist left came to be.

[Q]

I would rather not waste my time trying to explain something so simple to someone that refuses to listen.
Maybe the person in question won't (I'm not so sure), but what about all others (including guests) reading this thread?


I think a more relevant example would be where the negotiators win, the strikers split off and form their own group, and then both dogmatically cling to their positions as essential in their belief structures (i.e. the negotiators promote negotiation in general while the strikers do the same wrt striking).

At least, that is how the modern day socialist left came to be.
That is a fair enough point, but reinforces the negative.