A Comparative View of Democratic Centralism

Abstract

THE VAGUE AND CONTRADICTORY FORMULA OF ‘DEMOCRATIC centralism’ has never been understood as a static device independent of historical circumstances. Though it has been dogmatized, despite the opposition of other non-revisionist tendencies in the international labour movement such as Rosa Luxemburg and the Worker's Opposition in Russia during the 9th Party Congress in 1920, the formula always had to be reinterpreted according to the needs of different phases of class struggle. In every phase of development, the relation between the components ‘democracy‘ and ‘centralism‘ has been defined in a different way.3 Since the 3rd Party Congress centralism was considered to be the basic organizational principle of the party, whereas democracy had to be adapted to the changing circumstances and to the political conditions of different countries. Certainly Lenin was right in arguing in his pamphlet Chto delat (1902) that, under the circumstances of tsarist autocratic rule, ‘democratism’ within the party would have been ‘an empty and dangerous game’. Also the Menshevik leaders - in spite of their controversies with Lenin - still admitted at that time that a centralized and disciplined party organization was of the highest importance. Thus Schapiro is probably right when he sees little difference between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks on the question of democratic centralism at the time of the conflict in Iskra.