Democratic Centralism in Practice and Idea: A critical evaluation By S. Nappalos - Miami Autonomy & Solidarity mas I. (1/2)

The terrain is changing beneath our feet. Since the collapse of the majority of the 
?official communist? regimes, the world has witnessed both events and ideas that have 
undermined the former dominant thinking within the left. The Zapatistas, Argentina in 
2001, South Korean workers movements, Oaxaca in 2006, the struggles around
anti-globalization, and Greece?s series of insurrectionary moments have increasingly 
presented challenges to traditional left answers to movements and organization. In 
previous eras Marxist-Leninism was the nexus which all currents by default had to respond 
to either in agreement or critique. Today, increasingly anarchist practices and theory 
have come to play this role. ---- As a member of an anarchist political organization, a 
friend once told me I in fact was practicing democratic centralism.

This was perplexing, because the group had no resembling structures, practices, or the 
associated behaviors of democratic centralism. However, I was told that since we debated, 
came to common decisions, and acted on that collective democracy, we were in fact 
democratic centralist. This kind of productive confusion led to questions about the 
concept, and why the target of democratic centralism has shifted. This move, the shifting 
conceptual territory of core concepts of a certain orthodoxy, comes up repeatedly not only 
with democratic centralism, but also surrounding ideas like crisis, dialectics, the State, 
and class. The resulting cognitive dissonance caused me to investigate attempts at 
reinvigorating the concept of democratic centralism (democratic centralist revisionism), 
and understand truly what it is, where it came from, and how it has been practiced.
It can be reasonably asked why someone would choose to address democratic centralism in 
light of the catastrophic legacy that the so-called official Communist parties of the 
world (present and former rulers of the Soviet block and associated Marxist-Leninist 
governments), who popularized globally the concept of democratic centralism, have left us. 
Indeed, the human tragedy that occurred throughout the old Soviet-aligned nations is so 
great that we can reasonably question whether we have gotten to the bottom yet, or whether 
more horrors are still to be discovered. From another perspective, for revolutionaries who 
find no connection between democratic centralism and these tragedies, we live in a 
different era from the birth or maturation of democratic centralism. Today is a time of 
dispersed movement, low-levels of struggle, and failure of the left to organize and 
sustain itself. The material reality and historical moment of democratic centralism?s 
heyday could not be further from our own.

Because of the decompositions and changes both in movements and discourse, this has 
created twin pressures on the thinking around democratic centralism. On the one hand there 
is a current underway of reframing many such conceptions (likely at least in part as a 
response to the challenge posed by the failures of so-called official communism and 
challenges from new libertarian currents and events to such thinking). With the collapse 
of the Soviet Union attempts to reinvigorate democratic centralism and rescue it from its 
authoritarian and bureaucratic elements have been increasing. Here, democratic centralism 
is being remixed for new audiences either by the official communist orthodoxy (Stalinist, 
Trotskyist, Maoist, etc.), or by the oppositional Marxist-Leninist tradition that argued 
for a more libertarian interpretation of the concept. Many Marxist-Leninist parties and 
political formations now give verbal credit to concepts like participatory democracy, 
worker self-management, and other traditionally libertarian or anarchist concepts. The 
International Socialist Organization (US) for example while remaining adherent to 
democratic centralism frames its democracy beyond simply democracy in terms of 
participatory democracy. ?There have to be formal mechanisms of democracy within the 
party, but more than that, democracy has to be active and participatory?[1]. The Socialist 
Workers Party (UK), which earlier was in an international organization with the 
International Socialist Organization, likewise frames workers? self-activity in terms of a 
relationship with democratic centralism.

?The ?self activity? of the working class develops through a struggle against the enemy 
class. As part of this ?self activity? revolutionary workers have to be able to suggest 
ways of generalizing the struggle, tactics that can produce victory. They can only do so 
successfully by suggesting tactics, by offering leadership, that fits in with the 
leadership offered by revolutionaries active in other parts of the class. The question of 
coordinated direction, of centralized leadership, necessarily arises again. The existence 
of a centralized revolutionary party does not, therefore, form an obstacle to the 
self-activity of the masses?on the contrary, the latter is incomplete without it?[2].

Freedom Road Socialist Organization draws more explicitly from the anarchist influences 
within members of it?s party, and condemns the practices associated with self-identified 
democratic centralist organizations as bureaucratic centralist.

?Many of our revolutionary youth are under the organizational sway of various anarchist 
tendencies. Some are strongly influenced by what they believe is Zapatismo. They have 
also, perhaps rightly, been soured by what they have learned of the bureaucratic 
centralism and vanguardism practiced by various Marxist-Leninist parties historically?[3]

Though in this moment such statements seem unassuming, it?s worth reflecting on their 
significance. Even the fact that a group like the SWP (UK) would have to put forward and 
defend the concept of the self-activity of the working class is a sign of the times. 
Democratic centralist thinking is being pushed to defend itself against the critiques of 
both past democratic centralist movements and the growing dominance of anarchistic 
thinking that seems to contradict democratic centralism. Democratic centralism is seen 
either as an unachieved goal, or as a tool which can provide solutions to the new 
environment we find ourselves in. There are then multiple attempts to contest ownership of 
democratic centralism, craft a new revisionism about democratic centralism, break it from 
its most crass Stalinist form, and claim new lineages or practices.

As the Freedom Road quote shows such moves do not only come from within the 
Marxist-Leninist milieu, but also from ex-anarchists and anarchist sympathizers. This is 
not neither necessarily new nor solely monopolized by the Marxist-Leninist left. Perceived 
roadblocks and limitations of the broad libertarian or anarchist milieu have sent some in 
search of answers to real problems they face as revolutionaries in struggle. The series of 
protest movements which fueled anarchism?s rise in the global north (anti-nuke, anti-war, 
anti-globalization, anti-austerity, etc.) have presented insufficient responses to the 
attacks of states and capital, and the unorganized or anti-organizational libertarian 
milieu is perceived as not posing sufficient answers to on-the-ground issues of how to 
respond to repression, how to push forward with revolutionary challenges, and how to build 
upwards across the peaks and valleys of struggle. Some anti-authoritarians (though likely 
a small minority) thus have begun to turn to democratic centralism as well as a cure for 
the perennial disorganization and out-organization of social movements at this time, and 
as a general response to low-points in struggle.

Framing Failure

It?s worth noting though in both cases, there?s thinking around organization that connects 
a theory of organization across the periods with specific problems of movement today. Many 
thinkers attempt this move, for example when people try to account for the failures of 
revolutions in terms of the actions, absence, or presence of specific revolutionary 
organizations. Surely those things are factors, but there is a larger elephant in the room.

Take the Spanish revolution of 1936 for example. One series of analyses relates to 
questions of organization either from Trotsky, the Friends of Durruti, factions in the 
CNT, or relationships to organized international movements. In other words, why weren?t 
particular organized revolutionaries able to win the war, deepen the revolutionary 
process, or beat back sabotaging reformist tendencies? Another question though is why did 
the Spanish popular classes fail to intervene at key moments even when there were 
organized tendencies representing such positions? There are separate questions and 
elements in these situations. There are organizations, there are revolutionaries, there 
are reactionary forces, and there are the activities of the popular classes (as diverse 
and complex as they are). We should separate out then questions about organizations from 
large scale popular questions. The two are bound up together, but answers to one do not 
necessarily provide answers to the other. To be concrete, even if you have the perfect 
organization with the correct line in 1936 Barcelona, it?s not given that the people would 
have destroyed the State and assumed popular control. This is just to say that the 
question of revolution is bigger (though not independent) than organization.

The project to revise, expand, or reframe democratic centralism arises from these 
instincts about organizational questions settling political problems. In trying to do so, 
democratic centralist thought is pushed in a number of directions that can not be 
reconciled. In opening up this discussion, the intention is not just to point the 
independent anarchist-communist organizational history, but rather to question the way in 
which the project of democratic centralist revision approaches organization in our 
conjuncture: today, here, and with our problems.

Defining the Debate

In Petrograd during the summer of 1917, the Sixth Party Congress of the Russian Social 
Democratic Labor Party (Bolshevik) occurred. At this congress it was later reported that 
the Bolsheviks defined democratic centralism as follows:

That all directing bodies of the Party, from top to bottom, shall be elected;
That Party bodies shall give periodical accounts of their activities to their respective 
Party organizations;
That there shall be strict Party discipline and the subordination of the minority to the 
majority;
That all decisions of higher bodies shall be absolutely binding on lower bodies and on all 
Party members[4].
The first three points are relatively uninteresting, whatever we think of directing 
bodies, elections, minorities, and discipline. The fourth stands out. The history the 
quote is draw from was written by a special commission of the Communist Party central 
committee under Stalin, shortly following some of the worst purges in the 1930s, and with 
the liquidation of much of the leadership of the Bolsheviks from the revolution having 
been murdered.

Most of the content of this article arose from a debate with friends about the legitimacy 
of the fourth point above. There are a number of factors. Was it real? Is this actually 
what democratic centralism represents or merely a Stalinist aberration? To what extent did 
it actually represent Bolshevik practice? Is democratic centralism inherently Leninist, or 
is it a more fundamental concept? Did it represent it only for certain periods? Is there 
another way of interpreting it?

Critics from the libertarian left have often been content to merely attack the most 
obvious and egregious forms of democratic centralism. This leaves these critiques open to 
quick dismissal and wastes an opportunity to expose core political issues that can help 
our movement grow. It is useful then to engage the theory, take on democratic centralism 
at its best arguments, on its own terms, and provide a more nuanced understanding of the 
dangers of democratic centralism so that we do not face the same problems under a 
different banner.

Democratic centralism will be addressed on four fronts to provide a wider scope than is 
normally given to the concept. First, where did democratic centralism grow out of, and how 
did it develop in history? Second, what did oppositional revolutionaries who contested the 
ideas of democratic centralism outside the orthodoxy offer in understanding the debate? 
Third, moving to the US context, how did democratic centralist practice function in recent 
history? Lastly what does it look like if we abstract away all the history and practices, 
and look at it hypothetically as a theory of the process of the internal functioning of 
organizations?

Within democratic centralism we see for all the theorists, there are two components: a 
process of internal functioning, and a structural proposal for the interaction of 
centralized bodies with the base of the party. The interpretations between the two 
components vary. It is with the process of internal functioning we will find the main 
motivations for the theory and practice, as well as the best insights it has to offer. The 
structural proposal on the other hand has the least offered justifications and the worst 
implications. It is in the ambiguity within and between these two components, and the 
failure to demarcate the structural component from an authoritarian relation that gives 
democratic centralism its fatal flaws, and makes any reinvigoration from more democratic 
motivations unsustainable.

Though unfortunately broad, this investigation tries to reveal a fork created by 
democratic centralism. On one side is the material reality of democratic centralism as a 
living theory in the history of class struggle with inherent bureaucratic and 
authoritarian tendencies[5]. As Ngo Van, Vietnamese revolutionary and participant in 
various Vietnamese Leninist parties, states, ?the so-called ?workers? parties? (Leninist 
parties in particular) are embryonic forms of the state. Once in power, these parties form 
the nucleus of a new ruling class and bring about nothing more than a new system of 
exploitation?[6].

On the other side there is democratic centralism as a liberatory concept abstracted from 
practice, yet so broad that nearly every form of organization from anarchist to market 
socialist becomes democratic centralist, and hence meaningless. The goal, as with any 
revolutionary inquiry, is not to merely castigate or to try and paint the adherents of 
movements or theories as one-sided pathological villains, but to learn from the mistakes 
and victories of humanity in pursuit of liberation from centuries of exploitation and 
oppression.

We will close not simply with the critique, but instead with a brief description of a 
different methodology for revolutionary organization. Called especifismo, 
dual-organizationalism, platformism, or at other times simply anarchist communism, this 
tradition developed it?s way of thinking and acting in unity without the structures or 
concepts of democratic centralism. Coming to life independently in different moments in 
Asia, South America, Europe, and North America this tradition provides answers for the 
real problems that democratic centralism wrestled with and ultimately failed to address.

The Birth of Democratic Centralism

Today we can see that democratic centralism was to become the organizational theory of a 
rising ruling class. It became a tool of domination over all of Russia?s laboring classes, 
and eventually across the globe. Struggles for liberation led by committed revolutionaries 
produced state capitalist dictatorships against the proletariat, though under a red banner 
[7]. The story of democratic centralism is more complicated than this however, and it is 
important not merely to condemn the mistakes but to attempt to understand what happened.

Democratic centralism lived and changed across its life beginning with Russian Social 
Democracy and evolved to become a dominant political class with a monopoly of power and 
illegalized all political opposition. We should say there are many democratic centralisms 
rather than a single unitary theory. It is easy to look back at its most characteristic 
form under Stalin and associated official Communist Parties wherein higher bodies had 
dominant powers and centralization trumped democracy, but both the theory and practice of 
democratic centralism never had such coherence or continuity.

The most broad and populist formulation of democratic centralism describes it as being a 
method for internal function, or how to act inside an organization, that goes through a 
process of democratic deliberation to form a unity, which will be carried out as a group. 
It is democracy in deciding, and unity in action. Allegedly, non-democratic centralist 
groups rejected unity in action, having discussion and then individuals and divisions 
acting as they pleased irrespective of decision. Still other groups have no democratic 
debate, and simply implement directives. Democratic centralism is supposed to unify these 
(dialectically) in a practice of internal democracy, and external unified action. But what 
were the motivations for this theory, and what relationship does it have to higher bodies, 
directives, internal oppositions, etc.?

The term was first used by a Lassalean named Schweitzer, who was a German socialist active 
in the General Association of German Workers. That group was organized under what he 
called ?democratic centralism?. Interestingly Marx and Engels criticized the strict 
organization practiced by this group in their September 1868 letters[8].

The fleshed out democratic centralism as we know it came on the heels of a short period of 
openness secured by the 1905 revolution in Russian. Both the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks 
introduced the concept when they were in the common social democratic party. The 
Mensheviks were actually the first ones to put out the concept at their 1905 conference, 
with the Bolsheviks following shortly thereafter. At a unity conference in 1906 both 
factions adopted a resolution endorsing democratic centralism[9]. The most common 
formulation however came from Lenin?s report at that congress, and was ?freedom of 
discussion, unity of action?[10]. In the context of the congress this meant the engagement 
and debate of the party members, the coming together of branches in a coordinated cohesive 
organization, and implementing the decisions made in the open discussions.

The split in Russian social democracy that was to produce a fleshed-out democratic 
centralism occurred around a division on what membership constituted[11]. Lenin?s 
conception of democratic centralism sought to respond to a context of illegality and the 
authoritarianism of the Russian monarchy. Democratic centralism was a proposal for how the 
party should function both for a level of commitment and unity, and for paid professional 
revolutionaries[12]. All of these issues were transformed first in the 1905 revolution, 
and later during the subsequent Russian revolutions. The kernels of this thought underwent 
shifts alongside the tumult of those struggles.

It is important to see that democratic centralism sought to address real issues. With 
democratic centralism, Lenin and his associates promoted the idea of revolutionary 
organization based on coordinated activity, an internal process for debating and trying 
craft and hone political positions around that activity, and an orientation of members to 
that work at a high level of commitment.

Stated in that way, these are important points that are not owned by democratic 
centralism, but are broad issues many revolutionaries (and their theories) try to grapple 
with. It was the particular ambiguities and marriages of these concepts to others that 
gave democratic centralism its historical significance and problems.

Lenin?s conception of commitment was expressed as paid professional revolutionaries.

?I assert: (1) that no revolutionary movement can endure without a stable organisation of 
leaders maintaining continuity; (2) that the broader the popular mass drawn spontaneously 
into the struggle, which forms the basis of the movement and participates in it, the more 
urgent the need for such an organisation, and the more solid this organisation must be 
(for it is much easier for all sorts of demagogues to side-track the more backward 
sections of the masses); (3) that such an organisation must consist chiefly of people 
professionally engaged in revolutionary activity; (4) that in an autocratic state, the 
more we confine the membership of such an organisation to people who are professionally 
engaged in revolutionary activity and who have been professionally trained in the art of 
combating the political police, the more difficult will it be to unearth the organisation; 
and (5) the greater will be the number of people from the working class and from the other 
social classes who will be able to join the movement and perform active work in it.?[13]

There are a number of false assumptions here that led to dangerous paths. We can 
reasonably question (4) given the unsuccessful experiences of guerilla movements 
worldwide. Professionalism and training do not seem to have sheltered movements for 
example in the Southern Cone of South America from the resources and organization of local 
and international imperialism[14]. Today Lenin?s assertions seem na?ve

?When we have forces of specially trained worker-revolutionaries who have gone through 
extensive preparation (and, of course, revolutionaries ?of all arms of the service?), no 
political police in the world will then be able to contend with them, for these forces, 
boundlessly devoted to the revolution, will enjoy the boundless confidence of the widest 
masses of the workers?[15].

The ability of revolutionary movements to be immersed and supported within popular power 
under such repressive conditions provided a much better security than professionalism 
could hope to. Confidence in the workers comes less from professional training than the 
emergence of revolutionary currents in autonomous struggles. Lenin had no serious response 
to the alienation of paid professionals from those struggles.

Lenin also failed to see the distinction between seriousness and discipline versus the 
centralization of decision-making and power. He explicitly rejected such distinctions in 
fact. Lenin argued for a rigorously applied division of labor, and believed that workers 
and non-proletarian revolutionaries needed to be removed from wage labor in order to 
become a professional revolutionary. For instance Lenin argues that ?a well-organised 
secret apparatus requires professionally well-trained revolutionaries and a division of 
labour applied with the greatest consistency??[16]

As Larry Gambone and Don Hammerquist point out, there is a difference between political 
unity and the centralization of power[17][18]. Many communists of the period conflated the 
two concepts, in terms of the form or structure of the organization and the content of the 
organization. The point ultimately was to ensure an effective and serious organization, 
but the professionalization of this work was to be transformed later in practice into 
party-bureaucracy officials. This division would eventually become one of the bases by 
which the party bureaucracies became the administrative ruling class, and sought to 
liquidate all political opposition in the masses and internally.

For all the talk of seriousness, paid professionals, cadre, etc., it can reasonably be 
questioned how accurate that was for the Bolsheviks at various points, and the causality 
of the revolution. It?s often proposed that the Bolshevik?s understanding and practice of 
democratic centralism, unlike the disorganization of anarchists say, secured their 
position at the vanguard of the masses, and made ultimately allowed the revolution to 
thrive, at least initially. Yet there?s also a different defense of the Bolsheviks that 
contradicts these ideas. Some put forward the idea that the Bolsheviks were very 
democratic initially, to the point were the central committees could not have discipline 
over the party, which had an allegedly thriving democracy.

For example one author, Alexander Rabinowitch, makes reference to a well-cited event in 
which the central committee suppressed one of Lenin?s letters (Marxism and Insurrection) 
from the party?s membership in 1917. Lenin criticized the party publicly. Similar disputes 
and disagreements in the Central Committee at that pivotal time are taken as evidence of 
the lack of cohesion and authoritarianism charged against the Bolsheviks under Lenin. In 
the July days of the Russian Revolution the military organization of the party and 
regional bureaus (something like locals) acted independently of the Central Committee in 
partly initiating the demonstrations that led to the July days. Perhaps most famous of all 
was the incident where Lenin argued for overthrowing the provisional government in an 
insurrectionary act by the party and revolutionary forces. Key to this for the purposes of 
argument is the fact that Lenin was in a minority concerning launching the October 
revolution, for which the majority of the Central Committee opposed even publicly[19].

This poses a contradiction however. If the Bolsheviks were not a cohesive organization, 
with a robust democracy of sections acting independently of each other, a central 
committee unable to maintain the will of the majority, etc., it begs the question what 
role democratic centralism plays? If the party was not democratic centralist at that time, 
then it appears democratic centralism occurred with the rise of the bureaucracy and the 
death of the revolution. If it was democratic centralist during the chaotic period, in 
what sense was it centralist? As we will see these ambiguities plague the theory and 
become a moving target.

At some point even most Leninists would agree that party cadre were transformed from 
revolutionaries attempting to build initiative, accountability, and discipline into having 
military like obedience of party hierarchies. Surely the theory itself has a strong role 
to play in this, but the historical struggles of Bolsheviks and Russian peasantry and 
workers intrinsically shaped this ideology as well in the course of successive 
revolutionary waves. As history unfolded, what were once mere concepts in writings were 
later interpreted and found a voice in the post-revolution world of Russia and other nations.

Today we can see some errors in the theory that should be increasingly obvious, and which 
had practical consequences. There is a difference between voluntary commitment of 
militants and compulsory obedience to higher authorities with monopolies of power. This is 
not merely moralism either; without independent capabilities and assessment skills, 
revolutionaries will not be able to build anything. Under the soviet bureaucracies, such 
soldier-like functioning was able to function in accordance with the interests of the 
State, but in our situation replicating such is suicidal. Paid professional 
revolutionaries develop interests and perspectives separate and often against that of the 
working class they are supposed to serve. Through separating both in terms of work, 
physically, and organizationally from the classes they serve, bureaucracies develop 
independent perspectives, needs, and desires which they reflect as any class formation 
does. This should be clear from union bureaucracies that arise from the working class but 
grow to work against it, for example when union bureaucracies seek to secure a reliable 
existence through soft-ball contracts and appeasing the bosses. Though in theory they 
represent the workers, in reality their own interests as bureaucrats can turn them against 
their fundamental task, and put them in an antagonistic position in relation to workers. 
Left ideologies have no silver bullet to prevent that transformation[20].

Some claim that Lenin gets a pass, with Stalin taking the blame for the mechanical and 
repressive structure of the Russian Communist Party following Lenin?s death. The 
consequences of this professionalization and centralization proved disastrous in terms of 
repression against political and popular opposition before Stalin?s rise however, and its 
role was solidified in the early 1920s in producing a bureaucracy vested in reorganizing 
capitalism within the revolution through attacks on the soviets and collectivization 
efforts, and eventually introduction of market reforms under the NDP period[21].

The victory in the civil war against the counterrevolutionary Russian whites brought about 
new problems for the fledgling Bolshevik regime. Years of war and the backwardness of the 
Russian economy proved a challenge. Though the whites were defeated, there was far from 
cohesion both inside the party and outside of it. Imperialist invasions, internal 
sabotage, and competition with other political currents all weighed heavily on the rising 
Bolsheviks. External to the party, prior political allies were viewed increasingly as a 
liability. Economically, Lenin and the party looked to capitalist theory of economic 
production through Taylorist management, factory time studies, and centralized repressive 
managerial powers in production. Autonomous workers and peasants movements provided a 
potential challenge to any plans to implement Taylorist production in Russia. Their direct 
implementation of collectivizations and proto-socialist experiments created a bulwark and 
organization of alternatives that would have to be restrained in order to move in that 
direction. The Bolsheviks believed that Russia needed to pass through a capitalist phase 
before graduating to socialism, and sought to increase the productive forces of Russia via 
state-capitalist measures. Allies of the revolutionary peasantry and working class thus 
posed a double challenge to Bolshevik power.

The Ukrainian anarchist worker and peasant movements were thus seen as a threat. Earlier, 
the Ukrainian anarchist militias (often called the Makhnovschina after the most famous of 
them, Nestor Makhno) saved the Bolsheviks during the White assault that nearly destroyed 
them. The Whites had advanced to Moscow, only to beat back when the Ukrainians destroyed 
their supply lines from behind bit by bit, and sent them fleeing. With the whites out of 
the way, the Bolsheviks turned on their former Makhnovschina allies and sought to destroy 
the power of the workers and peasants in Ukraine, Siberia, and elsewhere (let alone 
considering Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia, etc). Likewise Left Social Revolutionaries party 
members would face brutal repression in the Bolsheviks? attempts to centralize power in a 
party dictatorship. The workers movements, inspired by councilist and anarchosyndicalist 
movements, faced military repression including the infamous assault and murder of the 
communist and anarchist Kronstadt sailors, once amongst the front guard of the 
revolution[22]. The mass movements were treated as threats to the power of a professional 
revolutionary force using the might of a centralized military to impose capitalism onto a 
rebellious and self-organizing peasant and workers movement. While these issues are 
external and democratic centralism only deals with internal manners, it is worth 
understanding the economic and political transformations the Bolsheviks initiated while 
consolidating their conception of internal functioning.

Whatever one may think about these external oppositional movements, internally as well the 
Bolshevik leadership turned its guns on its political opponents with Lenin leading the 
charge. Two internal factions (there were also other left communists that split from the 
party) sought to critique the relationship of the party to the mass movements as one of 
domination and repression, and question the role of centralization internally. The 
Democratic Centralist faction[23] and the Workers? Opposition[24] led this fight, and 
advocated something akin to syndicalism and a communist critique of the Bolsheviks? 
repression and imposition of capitalist social relations on the insurgent working and 
peasant classes. Both factions were made up of old Bolsheviks from early in the party and 
were proletarian in character, making them more difficult to carry out character 
assassinations on. Their opposition movement arose specifically to the imposition of 
one-man rule in the factories and the administration of the economy by the party, and in 
fact the centralization of the Central Committee. These factions argued at the Ninth Party 
Congress of the Bolshevik Party that the soviets should remain autonomous from the party?s 
rule, and that the management of the economy should be by the union and soviet 
organizations and not the party. They lost this battle with Lenin blasting them. Here 
Lenin is at his most candid in rejecting their demands:

?I assert that you will find nothing like it in the fifteen years? pre- revolutionary 
history of the Social-Democratic movement. Democratic centralism means only that 
representatives from the localities get together and elect a responsible body, which is to 
do the administering [my emphasis]. But how? That depends on how many suitable people, how 
many good administrators are available. Democratic centralism means that the congress 
supervises the work of the Central Committee, and can remove it and appoint another in its 
place.?[25]

Immediately the Workers Opposition and Democratic Centralists were attacked for their 
alleged anarchist and syndicalist deviations. Lenin acknowledged that there were not 
Makhnovists, but that Makhnovists would use their positions against the Bolsheviks[26]. 
The response was to endorse the now infamous concept of one-man rule in factories under 
the banner of the militarization of labor.

This presents some difficulty for those who would seek to pull democratic centralism away 
from its historical centralization and bureaucracy. The democratic centralist faction 
tried to expand the democratic elements of the theory, but at what moment did this occur? 
What was happening was not merely an argument over terms. The emergence of a monopoly of 
power in a revolutionary situation transformed existing practices and concepts, and 
created new contradictory political currents within the same body.

This clash would lead to the ban on party factions, and sew the seeds of the imprisonment 
and murder of any left communist opposition thereafter. While moral and political 
critiques of this activity are emotionally resonant and meaningful, there are deeper 
lessons we should draw as well. The Bolsheviks were not merely great men of history greedy 
and lusting after power, but were revolutionaries who dedicated their lives to the cause 
of human equality. Here at these crucial moments, elements of the theory of democratic 
centralism (professional revolutionaries separate from the masses, subservience of mass 
movements to the party, and centralization) became ideological weapons of a (perhaps 
unconscious) ruling class in ascendancy. Far from being liberatory tools, these ideas were 
embedded in a productivist capitalist ideology that sought to bring the insurgent workers 
autonomy and peasant implementations of direct socialist production (such as in Ukraine, 
Georgia, and Siberia) under one-man rule of Taylorist capitalism. The liquidation of those 
revolutionary experiments would span three decades, and would cost the peoples under 
Bolshevik regimes countless lives and suffering.

Democratic centralism beyond Lenin- hope in the West?

Even before Lenin fell and Stalin rose, the Bolsheviks lost allies. A growing amalgam of 
left communist opposition (councilist, ultra-left, and anarchist) built upon their 
non-Leninist traditions in the struggles and revolutions across the globe. Still some want 
to have their cake and eat it to. What about those inspired by democratic centralism, but 
who either had critiques of or broke from the practices of the Bolsheviks? I will look at 
a few figures to get a sense of the field. Though one can?t possibly look at everyone who 
wrote anything about democratic centralism, I hope that by spanning theorists as diverse 
as Gramsci to Bordiga we can get a sense of what role the concept has played.

Antonio Gramsci is one with credentials that would aid democratic centralism. Gramsci came 
of political age in the libertarian milieu of industrial Turin. Gramsci, though fond of 
some rather unenlightened critiques of anarchists, he cooperated with the anarchist 
workers movements in Turin during the Red Years[27]. Of all the Leninist figures, Gramsci 
is perhaps one of the most thoroughly libertarian leaning, or at least problematizes a 
narrow reading of either tradition. Gramsci surprisingly wrote very little explicitly 
about democratic centralism. The one place he takes it up in some detail is The Modern 
Prince during his internship in fascist prison. There a few unique elements of Gramsci?s 
interpretation of democratic centralism that set it apart from the Bolsheviks. Gramsci 
sees democratic centralism not merely as a set of characteristics of an organization, or a 
method for internal decision making, but additionally a process embedded in and shaped by 
history.

??Organicity? can only be found in democratic centralism, which is so to speak a 
?centralism? in movement-i.e. a continual adaptation of the organisation to the real 
movement, a matching of thrusts from below with orders from above [my emphasis], a 
continuous insertion of elements thrown up from the depths of the rank and file into the 
solid framework of the leadership apparatus which ensures continuity and the regular 
accumulation of experience. Democratic centralism is ?organic? because on the one hand it 
takes account of movement, which is the organic mode in which historical reality reveals 
itself, and does not solidify mechanically into bureaucracy; and because at the same time 
it takes account of that which is relatively stable and permanent, or which at least moves 
in an easily predictable direction, etc?[28].

Though Gramsci?s language is somewhat abstract he appears to open the party up to being 
accountable to history and the proletariat as well as internally democratic. That is to 
say that for Gramsci, a democratic centralist organization is such only when it is able to 
adapt and reflect the real movement of the working class in struggle. This is moreover 
internal to his concept of democratic centralism.

?Democratic centralism offers an elastic formula, which can be embodied in many diverse 
forms; it comes alive in so far as it is interpreted and continually adapted to necessity. 
It consists in the critical pursuit of what is identical in seeming diversity of form and 
on the other hand of what is distinct and even opposed in apparent uniformity, in order to 
organise and interconnect closely that which is similar, but in such a way that the 
organising and the interconnecting appear to ?be a practical and ?inductive? necessity, 
experimental, and not the result of a rationalistic, deductive, abstract process-i.e. one 
typical of pure intellectuals (or pure asses). This continuous effort to separate out the 
?international? and ?unitary? element in national and local reality is true concrete 
political action, the sole activity productive of historical progress?[29].

Democratic centralism for Gramsci is both an objective measure of judging the co-evolution 
of the party with the dominated classes, as well as a methodology utilized by the party to 
ensure its connection and development within resistance to capitalism.

This is an advance over the Bolshevik model for the theory since it requires that the 
political organization be judged objectively both in terms of its role in history and its 
role for the class. Again somewhat obscurely, Gramsci seems to imply a more pluralistic 
operation of political organization through the engagement, co-existence, and synthesis of 
political opposition as opposed to authoritarian practices.

Unfortunately Gramsci does not fully break from the Leninist model, though perhaps he lays 
down the paving stones for an exit route.

?This element of stability [see first quote] within the State is embodied in the organic 
development of the leading group?s central nucleus, just as happens on a more limited 
scale within parties. The prevalence of bureaucratic centralism in the State indicates 
that the leading group is saturated, that it is turning into a narrow clique which tends 
to perpetuate its selfish privileges by controlling or even by stifling the birth of 
oppositional forces-even if these forces are homogeneous with the fundamental dominant 
interests (e.g. in the ultra-protectionist systems struggling against economic 
liberalism). In parties which represent socially subaltern classes, the element of 
stability is necessary to ensure that hegemony will be exercised not by privileged groups 
but by the progressive elements-organically progressive in relation to other forces which, 
though related and allied, are heterogeneous and wavering?[30].

Gramsci understands the problem of rising bureaucracy and their antagonism to the 
subaltern classes, but retains the division between rulers and ruled, between centralized 
power and the class organized. This is not merely an issue with some forces being better 
organized or having advanced ideas, but the existence of a political class with special 
organizational powers and in a position of authority in relation to the subaltern classes. 
In other writings Gramsci argues that the proletariat can develop only embryonic 
consciousness, which lacks full development without the revolutionary communist party.

?[Democratic Centralism] requires an organic unity between theory and practice, between 
intellectual strata and popular masses, between rulers and ruled. The formulae of unity 
and federation lose a great part of their significance from this point of view, whereas 
they retain their sting in the bureaucratic conception, where in the end there is no unity 
but a stagnant swamp, on the surface calm and ?mute?, and no federation but a ?sack of 
potatoes?, i.e. a mechanical juxtaposition of single ?units? without any connection 
between them.[31]?

Likewise, in other places Gramsci speaks of organization which seems to suggest a belief 
in the sufficiency and necessity of presumably revolutionary vanguard leadership.??In 
reality it is easier to create an army than to create generals. It is equally true that an 
already existing army is destroyed if the generals disappear, while the existence of a 
group of generals, trained to work together, amongst themselves, with common ends, soon 
creates an army even where none exists.?[32]

Reading Gramsci charitably, perhaps we could excuse or read out the more authoritarian 
interpretations of that division. Indeed it could be seen as fluid and more historical 
than organizational. These readings may in fact be unfair to Gramsci, but it creates a 
dilemma. Take Gramsci at face value and he accepts the problematic divisions in democratic 
centralism which threaten the more liberatory elements he puts forward.

If on the other hand we find the more liberatory elements in his thought, his stress on 
praxis, the movements and ruptures of history, the necessity of federation, organic 
intellectuals, etc., it should be reasonably asked in what sense it is democratic centralism?

The problem is that short of that division, it?s unclear what would distinguish democratic 
centralism from other organizational methodologies, forms, and histories with completely 
distinct practices and concepts. Anarchist and socialist practices mirror some of these 
elements Gramsci describes, but fail to take up the democratic centralist call for the 
?orders from above?. We are not interested in Gramsci here, but whether Gramsci provides a 
basis for reclaiming or revising democratic centralism. It is quite possible that Gramsci 
indeed broke with the Bolshevik?s theory, but such a break would hardly leave democratic 
centralism as a coherent concept intact.

Though merely a side point here, it should be noted that Gramsci does something unique 
with organization. By attempting to understand and develop organizational theory as a 
dynamic within history, he puts it on a footing which goes beyond mere structural 
proposals. This points to need for historically specific strategies for organization, and 
for our organizations to evolve with their practices in the struggles of the popular 
classes. While easy to understand, this conception of praxis and historically rooted 
theory is generally absent or under utilized from most traditions of left thought.

An opponent of Gramsci provides an interesting counterpoint. Amadeo Bordiga, once a large 
figure in Italian socialist and communist leadership, and later a leading figure of the 
left communist current, rejected democratic centralism outright. Gramsci is replying to 
Bordiga in part when he addresses ?organic centralism?, which the Bordigists counterposed 
to democratic centralism. Bordiga had a thorough critique of democracy in general as a 
product of bourgeois society, and contrasted it to communism which would have no such 
corollaries (since communism implies the abolition of classes and the state). Bordiga 
agreed with Lenin?s argument for tight centralized parties, but rejected the democratic 
portion for somewhat related reasons.

Bordiga said, ??the meaning of unitarism and of organic centralism is that the party 
develops inside itself the organs suited to the various functions?? and called for the 
party to ??[eliminate] from its structure one of the starting errors of the Moscow 
International, by getting rid of democratic centralism and of any voting mechanism, as 
well as every last member eliminating from his ideology any concession to democratoid, 
pacifist, autonomist or libertarian trends?[33].

Bordiga was prone to polemics and obscurity, and the last quote comes from his left 
communist period following WWII. Looking to an earlier time when he was opposing the 
Bolshevization of the communist movement (he was the last to call Stalin the gravedigger 
of the revolution to his face and live) we gain more insight.

?Democracy cannot be a principle for us. Centralism is indisputably one, since the 
essential characteristics of party organization must be unity of structure and action. The 
term centralism is sufficient to express the continuity of party structure in space; in 
order to introduce the essential idea of continuity in time, the historical continuity of 
the struggle which, surmounting successive obstacles, always advances towards the same 
goal, and in order to combine these two essential ideas of unity in the same formula, we 
would propose that the communist party base its organization on ?organic centralism??[34].

For Bordiga then, democratic centralism borrows from bourgeois society democratic formal 
mechanisms (voting procedures, layered semi-parliamentary structure), and merges them with 
a centralist orientation of unity around a communist program. This is a rather crass 
formulation of Bordiga?s quite insightful distinction between content and form[35]. For 
Bordiga the content of communism was primary, and the party was rigorously centralized 
around that content. Though he opposed Gramsci, we see a few areas where they differed and 
others of apparent agreement.

Bordiga was for continuity and a trajectory, while Gramsci was for movement and induction. 
Bordiga was against democracy, Gramsci roughly for it (obviously not the bourgeois form). 
Bordiga raises the issue of centralism though in a way which demonstrates the field of 
contestation. Bordiga?s critical intervention maintains centralization and places it as a 
point of agreement, even if an artificial, stagnant, and mechanical one[36]. In 
otherwords, Bordiga and Gramsci disagree on the meaning and practice of democracy, but 
agree partly on centralism. That agreement problematizes any attempt to make centralism 
more innocuous. Centralism is not merely doing what you say you do, but rather a more 
fundamentally hierarchical power of minorities over majorities.

Jacques Cammatte, an ultra-left figure once close to Bordiga, but who split from the 
Bordigist movement, criticized these positions on democracy and centralism.

?The central committee of a party or the center of any sort of regroupment plays the same 
role as the state. Democratic centralism only managed to mimic the parliamentary form 
characteristic of formal domination. And organic centralism, affirmed merely in a negative 
fashion, as refusal of democracy and its form (subjugation of the minority to the 
majority, votes, congresses, etc.) actually just gets trapped again in the more modern 
forms. This results in the mystique of organization (as with fascism). This was how the 
PCI (International Communist Party [Bordigist]) evolved into a gang.?[37]

It is interesting that here, amongst the extreme of the ultra-left it is again taken 
without question that it is the role of the center that is in question. The question of 
centralism then from Leninism to left-opposition to ultra-left rejection do not contest 
that concept of centralism during the heyday of the theory. Unless we grant Gramsci a 
level of exceptionalism[38], however we construe it the debate around democratic 
centralism involved an understanding of the role of an organized hierarchical center with 
directive powers.

A Dialectical Alternative?

Moving now to a different tradition, some have looked to the structuralists that came out 
of Europe and Latin America for alternative tools for reconceptualizing Marxism. Though 
infamous for becoming apologists for the worst of Stalinism under Althusser, some of the 
structuralists (such as Poulantzas) embraced seemingly libertarian positions such as the 
autonomy of the state, if only from a problematic revisionist Marxist political economic 
perspective. These thinkers (Balibar, Poulantzas, Marta Harnecker, etc) inspired a 
generation of revolutionaries in Latin America and the Caribbean who sought more 
liberatory forms of Marxism and were more pluralistic in their influences[39].

In the article Should we reject bureaucratic centralism and simply use consensus?, Marta 
Harnecker presents arguments for democratic centralism against bureaucratic centralism. 
Correctly she asserts that

?For a long time, left-wing parties operated along authoritarian lines. The usual practice 
was that of bureaucratic centralism, influenced by the experiences of Soviet socialism. 
All decisions regarding criterion, tasks, initiatives, and the course of political action 
to take were restricted to the party elite, without the participation or debate of the 
membership, who were limited to following orders that they never got to discuss and in 
many cases did not understand. For most people, such practices are increasing 
intolerable?[40].

Unfortunately against these experiences, she makes a caricature of its critiques by 
contrasting it only to largely anti-organizational perspectives such as excessive faith in 
consensus decision making procedures alone. Ignoring the crass straw men in her arguments, 
she promotes democratic moves such as supporting positions of minorities, and encouraging 
full debate while discouraging majorities from dominating and crushing opposition. At the 
same time she quite explicitly embraces the binding authority of decisions by higher 
levels on the base and all the baggage that brings with it.

?For the sake of a unified course of action, lower levels of the organisation should 
respect the decisions made by the higher bodies, and those who have ended up in the 
minority should accept whatever course of action emerges triumphant, carrying out the task 
together with all the other members?[41].

Again, she makes an identification between democratic centralism and unification not 
merely of positions but rather of a centralized decision making authority. ?This 
combination of single centralised leadership and democratic debate at different levels of 
the organisation is called democratic centralism. [emphasis is the author?s][42]?.

Moving to the second facet of democratic centralism, Harnecker presents a different 
perspective. Unlike Gramsci who sees the role of democratic centralism as a movement in 
time of the relationship between the masses and party, Harnecker sees the same movement 
and dialectic between levels of struggle and the party.

?It is a dialectic combination: in complicated political periods, of revolutionary fervour 
or war, there is no other alternative than to lean towards centralisation; in periods of 
calm, when the rhythm of events is slower, the democratic character should be emphasised?[43].

Gramsci seeks to use democratic centralism as a method for building a unity of democracy 
and centralization, or perhaps centralization is a democratic process of bringing together 
the diversity in the mass struggle within revolutionary organization. Yet Harnecker is 
closer to Bordiga in seeing them as polar opposites. Taking them dialectically in this 
fashion, we would wonder when the dialectic is overcome and what comes next (the 
synthesis)? The implications are not comforting as increasing struggles negate democracy 
and that does not give us the tools to understand how to avoid the errors of the official 
communist nations, in all their barbarity. This must be contextualized coming from an 
intellectual of the party elite writing from Habana.

The deeper point is not about the extent to which Harnecker has come to question the 
legacy of the Bolshevik inspired national experiments. Rather it is that the debate about 
democratic centralism by its adherents revolves around two poles: the issue of structural 
centralization, and the dialectical movement of the process of democratic centralism. 
Positions differ on how the dialectic is understood, how the structure is produced and 
relates to the masses, and how it all stands via the party and the question of 
externality. Yet we can see the ambiguities present at the birth of democratic centralism 
carry through the theory into its later incarnations. Gramsci came closest to breaking 
with that tradition, but without the ideological apparatus to climb over that wall. In his 
case, it may have been both the fascist prison walls and the Stalinist wall of 
communication surrounding him that prevented his escape or elaborating a separate conception.

In Practice

Democratic centralism as a theory revolves around theses about centralization, higher and 
lower bodies, and internal processes for revolutionary organization. What about the 
practice? What about recent practice, near to our own situation here in the United States 
in the conjuncture we find ourselves in? Luckily we have accounts of people in these 
movements reflecting on their participation in and construction of democratic centralist 
political organization not merely from one sect or tendency, but from a number of 
different tendencies, communities, and moments. The length of some of these passages is 
justified, because such accounts are not always readily available, and provide direct 
insight into these groups from first-hand participants.

Honing in on a few of these, we can see trends in the practice that mirror the problems in 
the theory. It isn?t that democratic centralism automatically creates bureaucratic or 
authoritarian practices. This is not a survey or a quantative study of these parties. 
Theories are not computer programs that spit out copies of their instructions. Practices 
diverge, struggle, and evolve in a historical context. Yet looking across disparate 
traditions and moments we do see some regularity of such practices, and when 
contextualized with the internal conflict in the theory of democratic centralism, we gain 
tools for understanding both the theory and the practices, and perhaps a way beyond them. 
From these reports we find themes of the suppression of critical thinking amongst cadre, 
directive-command structure from central bodies, suppression of debate and dissent within, 
holding back the political development of cadre, and unaccountable 
leadership/professionals. Whether deviant or not, recent US democratic centralist practice 
reflects the acceptance of centralized directive hierarchies rather than showing them to 
be contested in thought or struggle.

Central bodies

One of the core elements of democratic centralism is the relationship of central bodies to 
the party as a whole. Likewise as in the theory, in practice this led to strong central 
bodies with distinct powers and direction of the party as a whole. Max Elbaum discusses 
democratic centralist practice in the party and pre-party democratic centralist 
organizations of the New Communist Movement, a collection of Mao-inspired communist groups 
formed in the 60s-80s.

??All sections of the New Communist Movement drew heavily on selections from Mao when 
trying to define democratic centralism, especially his concise stricture that: ?(1) the 
individual is subordinate to the organization; (2) the minority is subordinate to the 
majority; (3) the lower level is subordinate to the higher level; and (4) the entire 
membership is subordinate to the Central Committee?[44]

With the entire membership subordinated to the authority of the central committee, these 
groups ??gave far more weight to centralism than democracy?[45]. In an environment of such 
concentrations of control, questions surface concerning where power lies and how the 
membership sets the agenda for the organization. Elbaum, speaking broadly across the 
various groups, reflects on how this structure proved mystifying and concentrated not 
merely decision making in the hands of the central bodies, but also the positions of the 
organizations as a whole were set by a small group of leaders.

??The new Marxist-Leninist groups functioned with a sophisticated division of labor and 
pronounced hierarchy [emphasis is mine]? To exercise week-to-week leadership, the larger 
groups generally had some kind of central body of five to twelve people located at the 
national headquarters-usually termed a political bureau or executive committee. Sometimes 
real power rested with an even smaller subgroup dubbed a standing committee or co-chairs 
collective? In theory all executive committers were subordinate to the larger central 
committee, but in practice central committees were relegated to a relatively passive role 
except in periods of upheaval. Executive committees typically retained authority to choose 
which individuals would be assigned to the most important organizational posts, including 
the newspaper, theoretical journal and internal bulletin editors. Those individuals 
(usually members of the executive committee themselves) shaped the way an organization?s 
views would be present?? [46]

While perhaps in theory institutionalization of leadership could try to spread that 
leadership, in practice it creates a bureaucracy with interests in preserving their 
control over the life of the organization. Rather than resolving the question of building 
more capacity, this institutionalized political center problematized it as struggles 
emerged to retain political control over the organization. This is clear in revolutionary 
moments from the peaks of history, but also is evident in smaller examples from the New 
Communist Movement as Elbaum demonstrated.

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