Democratic Centralism

The following is the text to the YouTube video called "Democratic Centralism" by RedNickD.

It has come to my attention that a lot of people don’t know what democratic centralism is, and that these people like to go around spreading lies and false assumptions about democratic centralism. So I have found some material here that will help you understand exactly what democratic centralism is and how it works. So, let’s take a look at some Bolshevik quotes about democratic centralism, and some Maoism too. Please take the time to read these quotes for yourself.

Centralism in Society

“Far from precluding local self-government, with autonomy for regions having special economic and social conditions, a distinct national composition of the population, and so forth, democratic centralism necessarily demands both.” - Lenin, Critical Remarks on the National Question

“Truly democratic centralism requires that the manifold paths, forms, and methods by which local creativity and spirit of initiative attain general goals have a sufficiently unhindered development.” - Lenin

“… [we] must provide for wide regional autonomy (not for Poland alone, of course, but for all the regions of Russia) and fully democratic local self-government, and the boundaries of the self-governing and autonomous regions must he determined by the local inhabitants themselves on the basis of their economic and social conditions, national make-up of the population, etc.” - Russian Marxist Programme.

“The organs of state must practice democratic centralism, they must rely on the masses and their personnel must serve the people.” - Mao Zedong, On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People.

Now I will give a brief summary of the Maoist Mass Line idea, which many believe stems from democratic centralism. The communists learn from the experiences of the non-Party workers; the Party distills the best aspects of the workers' views and forms a new line; the communists then go out to win the non-Party workers to support this new, more left line and get them to join the party.

Centralism in the Party

Lenin’s idea of democratic centralism is as follows.

-Make local organizations the principal units of the Party

-All higher Party bodies must be elected and subject to recall if necessary

- Autonomy of the various Party Organizations

- Ideological debate between different types of Marxists

- Party Congress supervises the Central Committee and can dissolve it

“The principle of democratic centralism and autonomy for local Party organizations implies universal and full freedom to criticize, so long as this does not disturb the unity of a definite action…” -Lenin, Freedom to Criticize and Unity of Action

This quote means that members have the right to criticize the Party as long as it does not serve to ruin the plans of the Party which have already been decided on (definite actions) democratically. Even if one member disagrees with a decision, they are expected to uphold the decision externally while working from within to convince other members that they are wrong. This method of organization is based on the assumption that eventually the majority of the members of a group, presented with conflicting views, will be able to arrive at the best possible decision.

Here is an example. If the Party decides to run in elections, and a branch tells people to boycott the elections, this could harm the Party. This goes against a definite action. However, if a branch supports boycotting elections and argues for such during the decision making process, then that is acceptable. Constructive criticism of the Party’s plan after the elections is also important and can be done.

The Party must be united in carrying out its plans in order to achieve success. It will be hard to tell if an idea works if the Party is not united in putting the idea into practice.

Here is an argument in favor of democratic centralism that I believe can be true a lot of the time, but of course not all of the time. Organizations without democratic centralism, whether they lean towards anarchism or something else, have trouble being truly democratic because they lead to the formation of informal cliques that translate into power for those more experienced or more connected people - and powerlessness for other members. However, it is also possible for cliques to arise under democratic centralism as well, as we have seen in the past.

Democratic centralism also helps to limit infiltration within the party. For example, the Black Panther Party only loosely enforced centralism. This allowed them to be easily infiltrated by government spies. State spies had no problem discovering which BPP members disagreed with which others. They used this knowledge to play one off the other, by sending forged messages to people, and by agitating with those not entirely satisfied with a policy or rule. Rather than fostering healthy debate, the lack of centralism served to stifle it, allowing dishonest elements into powerful roles within their party.

Sources:
“On Democratic Centralism” PLP article
“Democratic Centralism” MIM Notes article
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/crnq/6.htm
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1906/rucong/viii.htm
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1906/may/20c.htm
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/red-book/quotes.htm
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-8/mswv8_64.htm