Democratic Centralism in Practice and Idea: A critical evaluation By S. Nappalos - Miami Autonomy & Solidarity mas II. (2/2)

Unaccountable professional leadership ---- While the formulation of democratic centralism 
traditionally promoted election of all positions, this has not always been utilized. In 
fact the convergence of power and centralization, created a situation in which the method 
of determining leadership became murky in practice. For the New Communist Movement, ?in 
practice, central committees were chosen in a variety of ways, sometimes by members in 
each local area electing their representatives without an organization-wide congress, and 
sometimes without elections at all?[47]. The deep sway, culture, and politicization of 
institutional leadership clearly facilitates this situation. The importance and power of 
leadership contributes to an atmosphere of both withdrawal from and manipulation of the 
direction of the organization.

While the theory may promote elected leadership, the professionalization and unilateral 
power of directive centers makes the maintenance of that democracy problematic. 
Historically, there was a similar repetition where that structure began to undermine the 
theoretical commitment to democracy.

These practices were not merely isolated to groups inspired by Mao however. In fact they 
ran the gamut from Trotskyists to Lotta Continua, an Italian autonomia group that moved 
eventually to a variant Marxist-Leninism. In England, one participant in the Trotskyist 
movement of the same time period discusses the relationship between full time party 
leadership and the factional splits characteristic of that movement. Speaking of the 
International Marxist Group, he said ?bureaucratic centralism develops with the growth of 
the full-time apparatus?[48]. More recently a group of young members from the 
International Socialist Organization split and formed a new group called the New Socialist 
Project. Part of their experiences was shaped by their experiences with such 
organizations, and a desire to move beyond it.

?There have? been subjective weaknesses and factors that we must face up to. In a good 
year, the socialist micro-sects recruit a handful of students and intellectuals without 
training them and without any systematic development process. These sects are usually 
ruled by an unaccountable bureaucracy that runs its micro-empire of mini-branches with an 
iron-fisted combination of elitism and myopia, whether or not they have any internal 
ideology or rhetoric to the contrary?[49]

While we can dismiss fights and harsh words within an often-fractured milieu, these 
experiences and feelings are not isolated, but are pervasive in the democratic centralist 
organizations. Without taking sides on who is in the right, we see a repetition of the 
struggle around unaccountable leadership with monopolies of power holding back membership, 
and contestation around those centers of power. The debate is framed around these 
questions, even if different factions don?t agree on who is in err.

Directives/lack of critical thinking

Corresponding to the empowerment of the central bodies and the shifting power away from 
membership, many participants in democratic centralist groups reference a sense of 
carrying out orders rather than being empowered and developed to think and act as creative 
cadre. This was also referenced above in the quotation aimed at the International 
Socialist Organization from the New Socialist Project. Coming back to the New Communist 
Movement, Fred Ho edited a book of interviews documenting the histories of some of these 
groups called Legacy to Liberation. In one such interview, Chris Kando Lijima describes 
the role of party members under the directives of the central leadership.

?FH: Most people don?t know what [democratic centralism] was like. Describe it some more.

CI: Here?s an example from doing cultural work. Here?s the line, write a song with the 
line. Period. You don?t write anything else that?s not the line. It?s your job to write 
songs, perform songs, that illustrate the line. That was my understanding of [democratic 
centralism] when it came to cultural work.

FH: So it really wasn?t democratic, but directives.

CI: It was a lot of centralism, but not a lot of democracy, which was true of most 
groups?[50].

This assessment, that democratic centralism meant in many instances central directives 
rather than an active and participatory democracy is repeated in many places. Max Elbaum 
writes that ?democratic centralism also meant that central bodies were given a great deal 
of power to direct the work of every other party committee?[51]. This direction of work 
was understood as ?all members were required to belong to and take assignments from a 
party unit [my emphasis]?[52]. All of this is a far cry from building organizations which 
can help create creative, independent, and competent organizations. Contrary to what 
Harnecker argues, the military model of directives and assignments is here reproduced not 
merely in military contexts such as perhaps Russia, but rather in wholly dissimilar 
situations. We can imagine the reason for this lies not only in authoritarian currents in 
society, and class contradictions within capitalism, but more importantly from the 
reproduction of democratic centralist ideology and its inherent tensions.

Suppression of dissent

Directives were not simply an activity of central bodies in isolation. Mechanisms for 
securing the activity of party members required having means of ensuring internal 
discipline. Many groups effectively self-censured and implemented policies aimed at 
suppressing dissent and debate within, especially outside the control of the central 
leadership. In the New Communist Movement, tasks were assigned as stated before, however 
there were also policies aimed at limiting disagreements inside and outside the parties.

?Members were accountable to conduct their work on the basis of group policy and to follow 
through on all their assigned tasks? But group discipline went beyond such sensible 
arguments. Cadre were also responsible for defending their organization?s positions in all 
circumstances and usually prohibited from expressing differences or reservations to any 
nonmember. Some groups even had rules forbidding members from expressing disagreements to 
cadre outside their base unit?[53].

Unity in action here is interpreted not merely as democratically abiding by collective 
decisions, but is taken further. There is an imposition of organizational discipline 
against disagreement that in the most egregious cases isolated militants into cells, with 
the expression of dissent between cells being forbidden.

Louis Proyect is a well-known blog about Marxist theory and practices by a self-described 
a former Trotskyist and present Marxist. One such article describes his experiences with 
democratic centralism in the Trotskyist movement. There, he contests the idea that somehow 
Trotskyist groups were an exception to the centralization of Maoist and Stalinist parties.

?[The Trotskyist] tradition has associated with it a plethora of intellectual 
strait-jackets, gag rules, norms about when freedom of speech is in order (for a couple of 
months even? couple of years, at least in theory!) and not in order (the rest of the 
time), and demonstrated inability to contain even minor differences within an organization.

The specifically Trotskyist side of it has been plagued by splits, expulsions and the 
multiplication of sects, things which have degenerated more than once into spying on 
comrades, using other police-state tactics, goon squads and in the case of the Stalinists 
even murder.

And there is no basis for separating the specifically Trotskyist tradition from the rest 
of it. History has shown that there is as little room even in the ?healthiest? Trotskyist 
Leninist Party for a diversity of views as there is among the pro-Moscow Stalinists or 
Maoists, or as close to as makes no serious difference?[54].

Against seeing these issues as the inherited problems of one or another Leninist 
tradition, we see such experiences repeated throughout critical literature by Leninists. 
Don Hammerquist was a youth member of the Communist Party USA and a red-diaper baby. 
Hammerquist has been a lifelong revolutionary, and helped found the Sojourner Truth 
Organization on a Gramscian-Leninist basis after being expelled from the CPUSA. This next 
passage, though long, gives unique insight into the functioning of these groups as they 
attempted to manage the information members received, and to filter the responses and 
criticisms of party decisions through a tightly controlled central structure (whether this 
was effective or not).

?It?s a bit of a diversion, but a loosely related personal experience might highlight how 
the M.L. [Marxist-Leninist] approach to democratic and participatory discussion on 
?serious? issues actually works. By the close of the 1950s there was ample evidence in 
this country, some of which was widely reported in the capitalist press, that the 
divisions between China and the Soviet Union were growing larger and more antagonistic. 
Nevertheless, this was not acknowledged in the CPUSA and was definitely not a permitted 
topic for membership speculation.

The official Sino/Soviet break came at the 81 Party meeting in the fall of 1960. The N.Y. 
Times immediately carried a detailed report despite the fact that the meeting was supposed 
to have been closed. The Times reporting had substantial credibility, since a couple of 
years earlier it had also printed Khruschev?s ?Secret Report? to a closed session of the 
20th Congress of the CPSU and forced that report to be made public before the Communist 
apparatus was prepared to deal with the repercussions. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Joe Hill?s 
?rebel girl,? was the chairwoman of the U.S. Communist Party and had headed the delegation 
to the 81 Party meeting. (The U.S. delegation also included the Chicago jeweler, Morris 
Childs ? aka ?Solo? ? a long time FBI asset, who we now know was the source for both N.Y. 
Times reports.) Immediately after the Moscow meeting, Gurley Flynn toured the country to 
report back to the party. I was at two such meetings. The first was for a definitely 
atypical group of rank and file communists including my parents. The meeting included a 
number of knowledgeable activists who were not docile receptacles for anyone?s line and 
who read the N.Y. Times. Gurley Flynn was asked about the reports of a split between China 
and the Soviet Union and categorically denied that it had happened, launching into a heavy 
attack on; ?comrades who rely too much on the capitalist press and its lies and distortions?.

At a meeting of the district leaderships of Washington and Oregon the very next day, a 
meeting largely populated by hacks who would never think to raise embarrassing questions 
or to question anything that came from party authority, Gurley Flynn began her report 
quite differently. I still remember the words quite well:

?Comrades, I regret having to report that the Chinese comrades have fallen into complete 
adventurism and petty bourgeois leftism and have split with the international communist 
movement and the working class.?

Why the difference in reports? I asked at the time and was told that it was important to 
organize and plan such discussions carefully in order to ?maintain morale and discipline.? 
That is what ?centralized guidance? meant to me in the U.S. communist party, and it looks 
remarkably like what Mao is pushing in the Chinese Party in this period. The discussion 
only happens in a managed framework after the party leadership decides what is a ?flower? 
and what is a ?weed? for a cadre of slow-witted gardeners prone to fits of depression.?[55].

This is a good example of the infamous incoherence of the political line of communist 
parties, which people associate with the repressive times under the soviet bureaucracies 
and secret police. Again it is not isolated. It isn?t the exception, but centers around 
attempts to manage information and perception of events. This is natural of course for 
people, but it is a different animal when a paid institutionalized hierarchy, armed with 
an ideology of self-appointed leadership of the future revolution, uses it to maintain 
their own dominance.

I hesitate to put a reference in to the Revolutionary Communist Party because of it?s 
infamy for personality cults and a broad consensus amongst the left of it?s questionable 
activity. Yet the quality, detail, and reflection given by Mike Ely from the Kasama 
Project concerning the Revolutionary Communist Party?s homophobic positions shows in 
detail similar manipulations of debate and internal discussion by central bodies as was 
seen above. The secrecy associated with these parties makes such confessions of internal 
activity valuable in understanding how democratic centralist groups in our time function.

?From 1970 until 2001, the RU/RCP [102] held that homosexuality was incompatible with 
revolutionary communist goals and ideology. Gay men and lesbians could not be members. 
Formal programmatic statements held that homosexuality would be abolished under socialism 
through ideological struggle or ?re-education.? The party?s wrong and backward views 
became rather notorious through the 1980s, as the AIDS crisis exploded and the Republican 
Right sought to exploit anti-homosexual bigotry.

What is less well known is how such views were maintained. In the early 1970s it was said 
that gay people couldn?t be communists because they were a security risk of blackmail. 
Then after the party?s founding in 1975 the stress was on ways homosexuality was linked to 
?bourgeois degeneracy.? Then after 1988, the argument was that homosexuality had to be 
rejected because male homosexuality was (supposedly) inherently hostile to women and 
lesbianism was (supposedly) inherently a manifestation of lifestyle reformism.

In other words, over the first thirty-plus years of the RU/RCP, the end verdict (the 
incompatibility of homosexuality with communism) remained the same, while the public 
justifications for that position morphed with time. And there were essentially no open 
discussions of these views allowed within the party?s ranks, though controversy and debate 
increasingly raged around the party?s youth brigade (RCYB).

By the late 1990s, these anti-homosexual politics were so controversial (inside and 
outside the party) that it would have been impossible to create a new program without 
major changes. The question was opened briefly but then shut down when the discussion 
proved highly volatile.

The method used for cutting off this debate is revealing: The new party analysis 
acknowledged that homosexuality is not inherently counterrevolutionary, but insisted that 
the Party?s long-standing condemnation of gay people had not come from any influence of 
anti-gay bigotry. The error, it was said, came from general problems of method and 
reductionism, not from anti-gay prejudices within the Party.

It was officially argued that the question of homosexuality itself had never been a 
cardinal question, but the method used to criticize the party?s previous position had to 
be considered a cardinal question. Translated: The party would still not consider the 
previous anti-gay errors a huge deal, but it would consider any discussion of possible 
homophobia among leaders to be completely intolerable. Also considered hostile to the 
party: Any discussion of why the change in line had taken so long, any appraisal of the 
huge political cost to the revolution because of this error and any discussion of ?the 
closet? within the party (i.e., ways that secretly gay or bisexual members may have been 
forced to deny their sexual orientations).

In short: The party had adopted a new (and truly better approach) to homosexuality, but 
slammed the door hard on any real exploration of anti-gay bigotry among communists and its 
real-world consequences.

What emerges from such methods is a party where discussions are maddeningly confined and 
ritualized. They generally take place only after positions (or even a whole new synthesis) 
have been formally adopted. Questions are ?opened? so a new orthodoxy can replace an old 
one, and then discussions are slammed shut again. Throughout that process ready agreement 
is expected. Real dissent is assumed to be backward (or worse)?[56].

Rather than seeing a nuance around how a political center can facilitate great thought, 
discussion, and cadre development, we see the opposite. It isn?t that a theory such as 
democratic centralism will resolve all on-the-ground problems for us. Yet democratic 
centralism makes itself vulnerable by claiming to be a theory, which does center around 
the political development of its members internally, and a vanguard force externally. That 
framing, combined with an institutionalization of a directive hierarchy creates a 
problematic environment in which the development of a culture of critical thinking, cadre 
development, and the ability to be flexible and adaptive is suppressed rather than 
facilitated.

Retardation of development

Limitations on debate and a command-structure of party activity goes hand and hand with 
holding back the development of competent creative organizers. Such a theme is repeated by 
across tendencies. Louis Proyect discusses the cultivated subservience of members to 
leadership in the Socialist Workers? Party.

?I always remember one recurring type of incident from my days in the SWP leadership that 
symbolizes for me one of the biggest problems with what?s come to be called Leninism. And 
that is when some big development would take place, and younger comrades ?and 
disproportionately women comrades? would ask me what ?we? thought of it. It happened time 
and again, around the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, the overthrow of the Grenadian 
revolutionary government by the Coard faction (yes, in the name of ?democratic 
centralism?), the Peruvian embassy ?crisis? in Cuba and the subsequent Mariel boatlift, 
the Iranian Revolution. What do ?we? think of it. That was the question. Acceptance of 
whatever truth was about to be revealed was assumed, automatic, unquestioned?[57].

The Autonomia, a broad movement of Italy?s upsurges during the 1970s, was known for it?s 
creativity and novel theory in social struggles both inside and outside the workplace. 
Yet, when one of the autonomia groups transitioned from a rather unformed revolutionary 
grouping to a Marxist-Leninist democratic centralist group, similar problems began to 
emerge. We see this discussed in a blog about Big Flame (an autonomist group from England 
in the 1970s), which drew from that tradition. Their analysis draws from Italian primary 
sources within Lotta Continua otherwise unavailable in English.

?Lotta Continua?s organisation prior to 1973 was rudimentary. Apart from decision-making 
at national conventions, it was run by a group of old friends (Sofri in his 1976 congress 
speech confessed to a ?private patrimony?). Then things changed: ?The theoretical and 
political formation of cadres, the election of leaders, the individual responsibilities of 
the militant in the framework of collective discipline, the division of tasks and 
specialisation ?It is nothing else than the discovery of democratic centralism and the 
third-internationalist concept of the party? (Bobbio p130, translation Della Porta p88). 
As a result from 1973 onwards ?the possibility of comrades contributing to the formation 
of the political line was reduced; the responsibility for the major decisions was ever 
more concentrated at the top of the pyramid?[58].

Though some are looking to democratic centralism as a way to move beyond the inability of 
the movement to develop people, facilitate greater creativity and strategy in action, 
etc., historically we see even in the autonomist wing of democratic centralism a tendency 
to reduce such. Don Hammerquist, again drawing from his experience in the Communist Party 
USA, describes a repressive campaign that ran against such development. Criticism and 
engaging the positions of leadership were seen as attacks, and interactions amongst the 
base to develop ideas were actively repressed and discouraged.

?One of the impacts of the Soviet domination of the international movement in the prior 
decades was the cloistering and sanitizing of important aspects of revolutionary theory 
and the relevant intellectual history. The Soviet identified communist parties actively 
discouraged any study of primary writings in the communist tradition ? specifically 
Capital ? and opposed any attempts to place major theoretical contributions and debates 
into their actual historical context. Instead, a list of ?good? and ?bad? authors, a few 
sanctioned pieces from Engels, Marx, and Lenin, and some terrible attempts at 
summarizations and popularizations from house intellectuals were presented as a finished 
and closed scientific system with simple lessons to be internalized and obeyed ? but with 
nothing that challenged or was meant to be challenged.

(?)

In 1968, a group of us in the C.P.U.S.A. were disciplined by the National Board and a 
little later I was put on trial before the National Committee for ?factionalism?. A number 
of issues were involved, one of which related indirectly to Althusser. We were charged 
with engaging in ?horizontal? discussions within the party and opening up those 
discussions to individuals and groupings outside of the party. (The historical precedents 
for this form of discipline in the Communist movement stretch back to the 10th Congress of 
the CPSU, but it was pretty much unknown before that time. d.h.) Our particular 
?factional? discussions centered around a document that challenged the Party?s program 
which was then in a draft form?[59].

It is not simply that these organizations failed to facilitate greater development, but 
that they were organized against such happening. There were systematic attempts to prevent 
the growth and independent thought amongst cadre, and a disciplinary regime that would 
respond to potential new powers. Obviously, a retributive or adversarial orientation 
towards the multiplication of leadership in the movement is reactionary and suicidal. That 
history raises the question around how democratic centralism can capitalize on the 
strength of such disagreement and development, given it?s rotation around an axis of that 
political center.

Conclusions in Practice

??A better way of political organization than Stalinist hierarchy needs to be found. But 
the underlying project ? cohering revolutionary-minded activists into a collective body of 
cadre ? remains a crucial task for constructing any effective left?[60]. -Max Elbaum

For generations of radicals attempting to build revolutionary movements that can challenge 
capitalism, neither the legacy of communist movements nor its theories have been neutral. 
The challenges of building a revolutionary movement in our conjucture has a negative 
synergy with the centralizing impulses that drive democratic centralism. Simply put, the 
challenges of organizing outside of a time of movements and with little historical legacy 
passed on from previous generations are forces that push people towards centralizing 
shortcuts that they hope will generate the necessary struggle. In fact typically the 
opposite occurs, struggles are held back by the conservative and dominating tendencies of 
these groups. While we should not conclude that such reprehensible activity seen above is 
automatically driven by democratic centralist theory, we should recognize that such 
tendencies reside deeply within democratic centralism as a potential, and in fact cannot 
be cleaved from it simply by critiquing bureaucracy and applauding democracy. While this 
browsing of recent history is inherently incomplete and selective, taking a broad view we 
can see that it raises serious challenges for anyone trying to revise democratic 
centralism away from it?s bureaucratizing and centralist orientations. It isn?t that such 
examples are the only type of democratic centralism, but rather that the fights and 
deviations occur around a central axis of democratic centralism that expose its inherent 
weaknesses.

Democratic Centralism outside of time and space

Not all democratic centralists embrace Leninism however. Some groups in Latin America have 
rejected their former identification with Marxism and Leninism, and instead called 
themselves democratic centralist and dialectical materialist without other
identifications[61]. There is a possibility then of arguing that everything I described 
above is actually bureaucratic centralism and that democratic centralism was not practiced 
historically, even though people claimed it. For instance the Puerto Rican Socialist 
Workers Movement (MST) criticizes such a conception:

?We socialists who aspire to contribute to unifying broad sectors of the working class and 
people in one or several mass organizations, fronts, or movements seeking political power, 
can?t even ponder that possibility if we?re wedded to an organizational conception 
according to which, in order to fight for a common goal, all members of an organization 
must obey a position even if a large sector doesn?t agree with it. Such a conception not 
only attempts to homogenize, neglecting the existing heterogeneity, by means of a majority 
vote; even worse, converting ?democratic centralism? into a fundamental criteria for being 
part of an organization, it sacrifices the concrete contributions that the minority sector 
can make in those aspects where there is agreement?[62].

Unlike the Bolshevik conception where democratic centralism is a property of organizations 
(e.g. democratic centralist organizations), this argument holds that democratic centralism 
is merely a process or a method for the internal functioning of revolutionary 
organizations (e.g. organizations do or don?t practice democratic centralism as a process, 
but there are no democratic centralist organizations). Under such a conception, democracy 
is the collective process by which we come to have unity, and centralism is where we 
develop a common course of action, position, or line[63]. The MST for example rejects the 
discipline of minorities to the majority traditional to most democratic centralist 
organizations.

?Adherence to a socialist political organization is a voluntary act, freely agreed upon, 
that shouldn?t be mediated by coercive threats or disciplinary measures. Discipline in a 
socialist organization is a conscious mechanism that allows the unification of individual 
wills to struggle for collective goals. We?re convinced that once a decision has been 
taken, the majority (those who voted in favor) should have the main responsibility of 
putting it in practice; the minority (those who voted against) should have the option of 
standing by it or not. The organization should not force anyone, under threat of 
disciplinary measures, to stand by a decision that may harm the principles of conscience 
of one or more of its members?[64].

The dialectic between democracy and centralization supposedly would yield a more 
democratic organization than other methods because of the engagement of all in the 
decision, struggle, and the back and forth between practice, ideas, and unity[65]. Notably 
absent is the commitment to central bodies with directive powers. This would seem to solve 
some of the problems above by eliminating the conflations of power and position, 
centralism and unity, etc.

The problem is that this is not democratic centralism, and it fails to answer the problems 
of organizing by simply trying to cleave the historical baggage that surrounds the 
concept. This argument is fundamentally flawed because it attempts to take a material 
concept rooted in history, abstract away all context, and put into its place another. 
Behind every intellectual move like this, there?s an objective reality. Democratic 
centralism did not come out of nowhere, but was a concept built in the struggle which 
developed its own tradition, theorists, and practices. An attempt to contest that 
tradition and argue for another needs to base itself not merely on asserting a different 
semantic meaning, but on real practices and engaging with how the theory developed, where 
it came from, and why this theory of democratic centralism is just that and not some other 
theory. Moreover, if ambiguities plague the theory itself, simply cutting away the 
bureaucratic elements of the theory doesn?t necessarily guarantee that you?ll avoid the 
worst of the centralizing tendencies. That is, if we do not offer a clear alternative to 
why democratic centralism tended to produce repressive bureaucratic structure, we may 
simply reproduce it.

Furthermore, politically this is questionable. First, why attempt to ahistorically 
reconstruct the theory at all? If there is a recognition of the need to pull the theory 
away from the tradition that elaborated it, why not abandon the problematic concept as 
well? Why is it better to keep democratic centralism, and try to argue against everything 
that it was separate from the history and people that developed it? Second, why do so 
without any attempt to engage that debate, instead merely castigating all the actual 
democratic centralist tradition as bureaucratic centralist? If we level attacks on the 
theory, it is better to engage that tradition and offer an alternative than it is to 
merely ex-communicate it or semantically change definitions. Third, can it even be taken 
seriously at all when someone attempts to put forward ideas which claim a historical 
concept but fail to engage or even acknowledge the context out of which it was born? It 
borders on being unprincipled or intentionally misleading. The response that the horrors 
of Russia or China were not democratic centralist is unsatisfying, it attempts to skirt 
real issues by creating semantic moving targets.

These are the problems inherited when we attempt to take up these tools uncritically, and 
attempt to brush real problems under the rug without confronting them. Merely using a 
label (bureaucratic centralism) to attack practices you don?t like and democratic 
centralism for those you do fails to address the actual important debates that produced 
both insights and errors. This move is essentially idealist, and works against the best of 
the revolutionary movement, which is the attempt to ground our ideas in the concrete 
movements of the popular classes, its history, and its tendencies and traditions in struggle.

Worse, it seems to obscure the errors and failures of democratic centralism in a time when 
we desperately need to move beyond them, rather than to pass over them in silence. The 
fallout is that we would be inventing a new theory while using a name from another 
history. This gives legitimacy and space to that real the problems that exist within that 
tradition and disarms ourselves against those practices. It puts us only in a position to 
argue for the ?real? democratic centralism against the ?real? bureaucratic centralism that 
borders on religious or canonical exercises less than real revolutionary work. Since there 
are other concepts, other traditions, and work within the struggles of the proletariat 
that were outside, against, and beyond democratic centralism, there is little reason to 
keep flawed concepts and uncritically inherit the baggage that poisons the benefits. The 
ambiguity around the elements of democratic centralist theory creates real problems. These 
are not problems which can be merely avoided by refining the terms. We need different 
concepts and practices all together.

Democratic Centralism in Our Time

Whatever may be said of democratic centralism (and it should be rejected), the motivations 
that led to its development are radically distinct from our situation. If we look at the 
birth of democratic centralism and its maturation, neither case is analogous to our own. 
We do not live in the political climate of Russia or Italy in 1905 or 1919, nor the 
economic climate of China in 1939 or 1950.

Taken in its most broad and dilute form, we can learn from the necessity of having an 
internal process and life of an organization of coming to unity, deciding on that unity, 
and being serious and committed to executing our plans based on our collective democracy. 
This is too general to be called democratic centralism without making everyone already 
democratic centralists, but it is a basic theory shared with non-authoritarian traditions 
and can be seen as the diamond we can extract from the ruff. Moreover, it?s an insight 
lost on most democratic centralists, given the dangerous conflations of professional 
revolutionaries, centralization, and discipline.

The more crass (and most popular) form of democratic centralism, with its submission of 
the base of the party to the decisions of central committees with mandate powers[66] would 
fare and does fare miserably in our environment. Though countless publications today try 
to argue that practicing democratic centralism will solve gaps in consciousness and 
practice, disorganization, and failures of social movements, in practice we often see the 
opposite. That is if one is even able to do the mental gymnastics necessary to ignore its 
role in bringing about repressive state capitalist disasters.

It is totally unclear how this would be a useful method for building revolutionary 
organization now. Given that the left itself is deformed and isolated, and its theory 
starkly abstracted from praxis, democratic centralism stultifies that situation. Focusing 
on centralizing leadership when the leadership itself is isolated, lacks practice, and 
reflects all the problems of the dominant society is a recipe for malice. There?s a 
difference between a political sect centralizing leadership and a revolutionary party 
doing so (not that that is less problematic either). It?s a logical leap to assume that 
mimicking Lenin?s party in our time will have a similar effect as the time it arose out 
of. In actual fact this approach risks (or guarantees) centralizing deformed leadership 
and making concrete the left?s alienation from struggle. By fetishizing the 
institutionalized political center in a time of deep left alienation, democratic 
centralism intensifies the worst dynamics of isolated micro-sects. Democratic centralism 
in our time then is even more problematic.

Trotskyists? analysis of a crisis of leadership in the working class[67] makes this 
problem still worse, since there is already is a crisis of leadership of the left! Merely 
codifying that leadership with democratic centralism makes the problem worse. Historically 
we can see how this has not worked out in practice either, as the revolutionary leadership 
of Trotskyists in the unions in the US has yielded a reformist practice. Despite 80 years 
of attempts to capture and lead the unions, when that leadership was achieved usually the 
reformers became reformists, and in many cases repressed workers struggle just as the 
reactionary leadership of those institutions did. Whatever merit may be said of having 
left leadership of business unions (not much), it is clear that the leadership (in the few 
places it was successful) evaporated in positions of power, or at least left us little 
revolutionary legacy we can point to as successes. That strategy has left us merely with 
the same organs of reformism, repression, and stagnation.

Towards a Fresh Organization

To solve the tension of bureaucracy and repression endemic to democratic centralist 
practice, we need different concepts and different practices. Indeed this problem itself 
is bigger than democratic centralism. Like any section of human history, we can and must 
learn from the experiences that emerged from such movements. There are positive elements 
that speak to our situation today, but as we have seen democratic centralism carries with 
it inherent dangers that demand a critical departure.

Likewise the marxist tradition historically hit a fork in the road with organization. The 
four main currents of marxist political organization all ran aground by the end of the 
last century. Social democracy, which Marx and Engels helped found, eventually lost all 
illusions of revolution (if it ever had any). Much of the original social democratic 
forces moved to a reformist gradualism of change within the capitalist state, and in most 
cases came to embrace the market and capital from the halls of power. Indeed today it is 
social democracy that is amongst the driving forces of austerity and neoliberalism, even 
if apologetic, and this is true from Europe to India and Latin America.

Amongst organized revolutionary Marxist thought, foco or guerilla theory and Leninism 
remain which are the bastions of democratic centralism. The failures of foco theory in 
Latin American guerilla movements across the past decades appears to have aided in its 
waning. Marxist-leninism itself, while still significant, has suffered enormous blows with 
the decline of the Soviet block and China?s embrace of Marxist capitalism.

On the libertarian side, most of the Marxist ultraleft (except the Bordiguists who embrace 
a cousin of Leninism purged of its democratic elements) abandoned organization all 
together in favor of spontaneous revolution and/or determinist ideas of revolution as a 
form of revolutionary destiny. Political and mass organizations alike are seen to carry 
inherent reformist or reactionary potential which bars the door, or at least until the 
spontaneous emergence of revolutionary formations amongst the working class. Instead, 
ultraleft thinkers turn to the internal dynamics of capital itself to deliver revolution. 
Consequently amongst most councilists and the ultraleft no theory of organization remains, 
even the experiments with workers organization of their early eras has been abandoned[68].

Leninist substitutionism (the party substitutes itself for the class) and ultraleft faith 
in spontaneous revolution illuminates the spectrum of the problem. Faced with the 
historical defeats of the 20th century, the present state of marxism reveals deep tensions 
in trying to construct answers building organization beyond substitution, bureaucratism, 
authoritarianism, or reformism. Faced with the dead ends of social democracy, the 
bureaucratic centralist tradition of Leninist inspired movements, and determinist faith of 
the libertarian marxist currents, marxism indeed today faces a crisis of organization.

There are other experiences we can draw from however[69]. Separated by continents and 
decades in time, the organized anarchist-communist movement often came to similar 
conclusions in their struggles. The Chinese Shifuists[70], Korean Anarchist Communists in 
Manchuria[71], the Uruguayan and Argentinian especifistas[72], European platformists[73], 
and Italian dual organizationalists[74] put forward libertarian conceptions of 
organization based on the ruptures of from 1917 to the 1970s. Built from the deepest 
revolutions to have challenged capital in the 20th century, this broad tradition 
represents a global praxis of organization apart from reformist and authoritarian 
experiences. Common to all is a concept of libertarian organized action with common 
strategy, analysis, and goals that is at once strategic and based upon collective democracy.

Democratic centralism raises real questions for anti-authoritarians as well of course. In 
a revolutionary situation of repression, how can we address unevenness in our forces? How 
can we maintain the democratic decisions of collectivities, while uniting to create 
communism directly? Though the answers are flawed, it?s dangerous to out of hand dismiss 
the problems. Here the anarchist communist tradition has a lot to give.

First, there is the concept of organization as a pole for the development of ideas in the 
struggle of the popular classes. Rather than a hierarchical conception of a directive 
minority, this tradition sees the very function of organization to multiply capacity, and 
that leadership is about a libertarian pedagogical relationship of developing praxis 
through the back and forth between ideas and action. Rather than institutionalizing 
leadership into a professional party class, anarchist communist organizations integrated 
an educational method into their work as rank and file social movement militants, and 
internally through trying to elevate all members and counteract the reproduction of class, 
race, and sex hierarchies transmitted in capitalist and statist relationships.

Second, this tradition offered the ideas of unity achieved through collective 
accountability. Recognizing the need for coordination and strategy does not imply 
necessarily specialized authorities either to impose or theorize it. Anarchist communist 
organizations developed practices around bottom up accountability and horizontal 
coordination of revolutionary struggle. Experiences in Spain, Uruguay, and Italy for 
example, showed both the power and necessity for overcoming the false dichotomy of the 
intervention of minorities in insurrectionary moments with the imposition of the will of a 
directive minority.

Lastly, anarchist communist organizationalists have shown the ability to create models for 
building revolutionary currents not just in heat of barricades during revolutions, but in 
our time, in the core and periphery countries, and to changing realities. Rather than 
seeing organization as a timeless method, there is recognition of different tasks 
(educational, movement, and insurrectionary) in different times. Distinctions between 
concepts like social work and social insertion, the battle of ideas, and questions of 
different conjectures and phases are spread across the literature.

Instead of a project of trying to resurrect a purified version of democratic centralism, 
we need our own theory that can break apart the ambiguities, and make elaborate the 
revolutionary process of mass struggle and revolutionary development. To do so in a time 
of low struggle, ruling class assaults and the alienation of the left from practice 
requires a theory for our own time. No such theory or practice will come prepackaged, and 
no critique will provide us with a perfect shield. Still through understanding democratic 
centralism and alternatives, we can better prepare for building our own.

[1] Chretien, T. 2007. Lenin?s theory of the party. International Socialist Review 56 
November-December.

[2] Harman, C. 1998. For democratic centralism. International Socialist Journal 80.

[3] BJ. 2004. The Crisis within the Left: Theory, Program, Organization. December 31, 
2004. For the Party Building Commission of Freedom Road Socialist 
Organization/Organizaci?n Socialista del Camino para la Libertad.

[4] Commission of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. 
History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks). Short Course. New York: 
International Publishers, 1939, p. 198

[5] A fair assessment would require a multi-volume book with extensive history and 
investigation of more theorists. I have strove to make this more accessible to radicals 
with some knowledge of the history and traditions so that it may help our movement think 
materially about our strategy and move forward. That is my primary motivation.

[6] Van, Ngo. In the Crossfire: adventures of a Vietnamese revolutionary. 2010 AK Press.

[7] For an introduction to the discussion on the state capitalist nature of the 
former-soviet states there are a number of sources. CLR James? State Capitalism and World 
Revolution is a good account from this perspective. Bordiga alternatively argued that the 
USSR was merely capitalism plain and simple, but unfortunately Bordiga?s writings are 
notoriously obscure and infrequently translated. A good secondary source is Aufheben?s 
discussion of the debate in their 1997 6th issue reprinted for free on libcom here 
http://libcom.org/library/what-was-the-ussr-aufheben-1. Recently some anarchist communists 
and participatory economics adherents have argued that such economies represent a unique 
type of organization centered around a dictatorship of a managerial or bureaucratic class.

[8] Bottomore, T.B. (1991). A Dictionary of Marxist Thought. Blackwell Publishing, Malden, 
MA. Pg 134-136.

[9] Louis Proyect blog. Once more on democratic centralism. 12/30/10.
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2010/12/30/once-more-on-democratic-centralism/. The 
author drew from Paul Leblanc?s book about Lenin and the Revolutionary Party.

[10] Lenin, VI. 1906. Report on the Unity Congress of the R.S.D.L.P: A Letter to the St. 
Petersburg Workershttp://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1906/rucong/viii.htm

[11] See Lenin?s Account of the 2nd Congress of the R.S.D.L.P 
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1903/sep/15a.htm

[12] For this time period see Lenin?s collected works from the 1901-1903 era particularly 
his reports from the party congresses and What is to be Done?, Rosa Luxembourg?s 
Organizational Questions of the Russian Social Democracy for a sense of the debate from 
Lenin?s left, and Trotsky?s Our Political Tasks from the Menshevik side of things.

[13] Lenin, V.I., What is to be done. 
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/iv.htm

[14] This is true both of Guevarist inspired Foco groups and the Southern Cone urban 
guerilla movements that drew from the work of anarchist-marxist Abraham Guillen.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Ibid.

[17] See Gambone?s article The State and Revolution: An anarchist viewpoint
http://porkupineblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/state-and-revolution-anarchist.html

[18] I am indebted to the comments of Don Hammerquist throughout this essay, though he 
would likely take issue with my account of history. For more on Lenin in general and 
objections to conflating unity and centralization, see Don Hammerquist?s Lenin, Leninism, 
and some leftovers 
http://sketchythoughts.blogspot.com/2009/09/lenin-leninism-and-some-leftovers.html

[19] Rabinowitch, Alexander. (2004). The Bolsheviks Come to Power. Pluto Press.

[20] See Anton Pannekoek?s Workers Councils from AK Press for a particularly lucid 
description of the separation of union bureaucracy from the interests of the working class.

[21] Bolshevik repression of opposition is now well known, but worth repeating. 
Internally, opposition was tolerated for a time but particularly under Stalin all such 
opposition was eventually destroyed. A famous case of this occurred under Lenin?s 
authority and was the left communist Workers? Opposition, forcibly disbanded in 1922 
before Stalin reached ascendancy. Perhaps Lenin?s most reactionary and right-ward looking 
book dealt with such internal and external left communist opposition in Left-Wing 
Communism: an infantile disorder. Externally, the Bolsheviks sought to consolidate power 
via the repression of the Makhnovschina in Ukraine, Kronstadt workers, and the 
illegalization of all political opposition socialist, communist, and anarchist. Much is 
already written on these topics. See Alexandre Skirda?s Nestor Makhno ? Anarchy?s Cossack: 
The struggle for free soviets in the Ukraine, 1917-1921 or alternatively Makhno?s own 
three part memoirs newly translated from Russian by Black Cat Press in Edmonton. For 
Kronstadt, see Paul Avrich?s Kronstadt, 1921 or his Russian Anarchists. Ian McKay also 
provides a detailed account in Kronstadt 1921: The end of the Bolshevik Myth 
http://www.anarkismo.net/article/2654. Trotsky?s defense of the assault is in his Hue and 
Cry Over Kronstadt 1938http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/01/kronstadt.htm. 
Alexandra Kollontai?s The Workers? Opposition or the numerous histories available on 
libcom.org give a good background on left communist internal Bolshevik opposition. Maurice 
Brinton?s The Bolsheviks and Workers? Control covers in detail the struggles between the 
working class and the rising state-capitalist class which found its expression in the 
Bolshevik party. This work includes detailed discussion of the evolution of the soviets 
and the attacks on them by Mensheviks and Bolsheviks. Lenin?s Left-wing Communism: an 
infantile disorder is his rejoinder to those critiques at the time.

[23] ?The factional group of Democratic Centralists (Sapronov, Osinsky, V. Smirnov and 
others) opposed the Party line on economic development. Using phrases about democratic 
centralism, this group spoke against the use of specialists, against centralised state 
administration, against one-man management and the personal responsibility of managers of 
enterprise?s; they insisted on unlimited corporate management.? Lenin, V.I. 9th Congress 
of the R.C.P. (B) 1920http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/mar/29.htm

[24] Workers? Opposition was a group that proposed workers self-management and opposed 
party dictatorship to the rule of the working class itself. They collaborated with other 
groups inside and outside the party. ?Ignatovites or ?a group of activists of Moscow city 
districts? was an anti-Party anarcho-syndicalist group, headed by Y. N. Ignatov, during 
the trade union discussion of 1920-21. Its activity was limited to the Moscow Party 
organisation, because it had no influence among the city?s workers and rank-and-file Party 
members. Before the Tenth Party Congress, it came out with two platforms: the current 
tasks of the trade unions, and Party organisation. The Ignatovites shared the 
anarcho-syndicalist views of the Workers? Opposition; they set the trade unions in 
opposition to the Soviet state, denied the Party?s leadership in socialist construction: 
opposed democratic centralism; demanded freedom of discussions, and wanted the Party 
membership to consist of workers only. They also demanded the handover of the 
administration of the economy to an organ elected by the All-Russia Trade Union Congress?. 
Lenin, V.I. The Party Crisis. 1921http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/jan/19.htm

[25] 9th Party Congress of the R.C.P. (B) Ibid. above

[26] Ibid.

[27] For more on early Gramsci?s relationship and work with the Italian anarchists see 
Levy, Carl. 1999. Gramsci and the Anarchists. Berg Publishers.

[28] Gramsci, Antonio. Translated by Quintin, H & Smith, GN. Selections from the Prison 
Notebooks. International Publishers, NY. 1992. Pg 188-190

[29] Ibid.

[30] Ibid.

[31] Ibid.

[32] Gramsci, Antonio. 1968. The Modern Prince: and other writings. International Publishers.

[33] Bordiga, Amadeo. Considerations on the party?s organic unity when the general 
situation is historically unfavorable. 
http://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1965/consider.htm

[34] Bordiga, Amadeo. The Democratic Principle. 
http://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1922/demo...e.htm

[35] See Gilles Dauve?s Contribution to a Critique of Political Autonomy. 
http://libcom.org/library/a-contribution-critique-political-autonomy-gilles-dauve-2008

[36] It should be said that Bordiga was no ultra-left version of Stalin. One of his main 
contributions is the critique of the Soviet Union as capitalist, and understanding 
revolution in terms of the abolition of capitalist social relations. He rejected 
democracy, but instead called for fairly radical abolition of the basis of all oppression, 
and though unable to break from the Bolsheviks? rigid centralism went beyond most 
communists in demanding socialism in an era of state capitalism and theories of productive 
forces.

[37] Cammatte, Jacques. On Organization. 
http://libcom.org/library/on-organisation-jacques-camatte

[38] I am friendly to the idea of this as a historical move, or in trying to understand 
the thought of a figure. To understand Gramsci we could try to give him some more line. 
From the perspective of trying to reconstruct democratic centralism this would obliterate 
any material or historical basis of the concept, and be mere semantics. That is, assuming 
Gramsci is a saint won?t help us understand democratic centralism outside of it?s 
directive authoritarian role.

[39] Specifically the urban guerilla movements in the southern cone of South America drew 
equally from anarchist theorist Abraham Guillen as they did the structuralists, Maoists, 
and Guevarists. This is evident in diverse groups from the Federacion Anarquista Uruguaya 
pre-1980s, the Tupamarus, and various Brazilian and Argentinian guerilla groups.

[40] Harnecker, Marta. 2002. Should we reject bureaucratic centralism and simply use 
consensus? From Links the International Journal of Socialist Renewal. 
http://links.org.au/node/1078

[41] Ibid.

[42] Ibid.

[43] Ibid.

[44] Elbaum, M. (2006). Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and 
Che. Verso. Pg.159

[45] Ibid. Pg. 173

[46] Ibid. Pg. 175

[47] Ibid. Pg. 176

[48] Oxford Communists. (2010). Bureaucratic Centralism and Ineffectiveness.
http://oxfordcommunists.wordpress.com/2010/03/02/bureaucratic-centralism-and-ineffectiveness/
[49] Kwoba, Brian. (2010). New Beginnings for a New Time. Gathering Forces blog.
http://gatheringforces.org/2010/10/08/new-beginnings-for-a-new-time/

[50] Ho, F., editor. (2000). Legacy to Liberation: politics & culture of Asian/Pacific 
America. Ak Press. Pg. 249

[51] Elbaum, M. (2006). Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and 
Che. Verso. Pg. 150

[52] Ibid. Pg. 173

[53] Ibid. Pg. 175

[54] Louis Proyect blog. (2010). Critical Comments on Democratic Centralism.
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2010/07/16/critical-comments-on-democratic-centralism-2/

[55] Hammerquist, Don. Lenin, Leninism, and Some Leftovers. 
http://sketchythoughts.blogspot.com/2009/09/lenin-leninism-and-some-leftovers.html

[56] Ely, Mike. (2007). 9 Letters to our Comrades. Kasama Project. 
http://kasamaproject.org/pamphlets/9-letters/

[57] Louis Proyect blog. (2010). Critical Comments on Democratic Centralism.
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2010/07/16/critical-comments-on-democratic-centralism-2/

[58] The Big Flame blog. (2009). Lotta Continua. 
http://bigflameuk.wordpress.com/2009/05/30/lotta-continua/

[59] Hammerquist, Don. (2009). Althusser Comments. 
http://sojournertruth.blogsome.com/2009/02/25/althusser/

[60] Elbaum, M. (2006). Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and 
Che. Verso. Pg.180

[61] For instance el Movimiento Socialista de Trabajadores in Puerto Rico, and some 
ex-Maoist groups in Haiti and Latin America.

[62] Movimiento Socialista del Trabajadores. 1999. What is the MST and What Does it Fight 
for? http://nycenlucha.org/2012/06/12/what-is-the-mst-and-what-does-it-fight-for/

[63] Mackandal, Jan. 2009. Democratic Centralism. Unpublished manuscript.

[64] MST, Ibid.

[65] Mackandal, Ibid.

[66] ?? All decisions of higher bodies shall be absolutely binding on lower bodies and on 
all Party members? from the 6th party congress of the R.S.D.L.P. in 1917. As reported by 
the Stalinist official history during the purges of the 1930s History of the Communist 
Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks). Short Course.1939, p. 198

[67] ?All talk to the effect that historical conditions have not yet ?ripened? for 
socialism is the product of ignorance or conscious deception. The objective prerequisites 
for the proletarian revolution have not only ?ripened?; they have begun to get somewhat 
rotten. Without a socialist revolution, in the next historical period at that, a 
catastrophe threatens the whole culture of mankind. The turn is now to the proletariat, 
i.e., chiefly to its revolutionary vanguard. The historical crisis of mankind is reduced 
to the crisis of the revolutionary leadership?. Trotsky, Leon. 1938. The Transitional 
Programme (The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International).

[68] Perhaps an exception to this is the non-bordiguist Italian left communists 
represented by the International Communist Party ? Battaglia Comunista. It?s a worthy 
investigation, though not within the scope of this article to debate that current. Either 
way the tension between determinism and organization is obvious in this tradition, and 
though there is incredibly valuable lessons to be found there, the absence of either a 
theory or practice of revolutionary agency within demonstrates their path in thought.

[69] The treatment of the anarchist-communist tradition here will be necessarily surface 
level only for want of space. Still the references shared here give stepping off points 
for going into the lessons of this tradition.

[70] Dirlik, Arif. 1991. Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution. University of California Press.

[71] Ki-Rak, Ha. 1986. History of the Korean Anarchist Movement. Anarchist Publishing 
Committee.

[72] Editted and translated by Sharkey, Paul. 2009. Federacion Anarquista Uruguaya: 
Crisis, Armed Struggle, and Dictatorship 1967-1985. Kate Sharpley Library.

[73] Skirda, Alexander. 2002. Facing the Enemy: A history of Anarchist Organization from 
Proudhon to May 1968. AK Press.

[74] Italian Anarchist Communist Federation (FdCA). Anarchist Communists: A question of 
class. http://www.fdca.it/fdcaen/organization/theory/acqoc/index.htm

Related Link:
https://miamiautonomyandsolidarity.wordpress.com/2013/03/17/democratic-centralism-in-practice-and-idea-a-critical-evaluation/