In his article, "A Party of Socialism in the 21st Century," Sam Webb argues for dropping the term and the concept of democratic centralism as our main organizing principle. Terminology is of lesser importance. As Shakespeare said “What’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” We can change our terminology to facilitate our communications with different audiences, though we cause confusion when we overdo that also. But I would like to defend the basic concept of “democratic centralism” as still being valid for us, and for other kinds of organizations as well.

Different kinds of entities require different organizational principles.

A labor union, for example, can not be organized on the basis of uniformity of ideology, because its strength lies in including everybody in the shop, except the bosses. Yet there is still a minimum of “democratic centralism” in labor union functioning: When a strike is called, even those workers who voted against the strike authorization are required to refrain from crossing the picket line. Members of a union local who violate this are sometimes severely chastised, and always subjected to sharp criticism as “scabs.”

A mistake the leaders of the old U.S.S.R. made was to think that it was possible or desirable to use “democratic centralism” as the method of organizing an entire nation, in all its variety and with all its internal contradictions. So “democratic centralism” as an organizing principle for society was written into the U.S.S.R.’s constitution. This, in my opinion, may have restricted the ability of the socialist government to deal creatively with the inevitable internal conflicts and complexities of a large modern state. In fact a nation can not be organized on the basis of democratic centralism. Even socialist governments will always have to deal with the task of governing people who have strong disagreements with the way things are being done, being flexible enough not to push such people over from dissidence into a state of outright rebellion.

Yet in any country, no matter how democratic, people are expected to obey the laws. Is that not, to a certain extent, democratic centralism?

That said, there were extremes to which the concept of democratic centralism has been taken in the past, which we might very well leave behind us as sectarian foolishness or relics of another time.

When I first entered the Party in November 1987, people still talked about not being allowed to have political discussions with Party members who were members of other clubs or at any rate did not participate in the same collective as oneself. At the same time, there was supposedly a rule that husbands and wives were not supposed to belong to the same Party club. The reader may surmise that this led to some long silences across the dinner table in some people’s homes. But I doubt that anybody ever was "brought up on charges" for talking politics with his or her spouse!

In the age of the internet and social media, such rules are impossible to enforce, and can, I think, be safely put behind us. People will talk.

Another thing that is impossible to enforce in modern conditions is the rule that after the Party Convention has finished, discussion stops except on the subject of how to carry out the decisions of the Convention. The speed of social, economic and political change in the modern world is simply to fast for this to be feasible. There need to be mechanisms for ongoing discussion, involving the whole party, and not restricted by topic.

Finally, while we are talking about jettisoning certain vocabulary, I think the word “vanguard’ can definitely be put in mothballs until such time as we can definitely state that we are the “vanguard” in deeds and not just in words. The left in the United States has a long history of little sects popping up overnight and declaring themselves to be the new, authentic “vanguard” of the working class, based on their claims to possess some sort of divinely revealed truth about the meanings of the writings of Trotsky, Mao or Hoxha. Some of these groups could have held their Party Congresses in a telephone booth, yet God almighty has somehow declared them to be the “vanguard of the working class.” I believe in the slogan “Be more than you seem.” So “vanguard” goes into the attic until further need. It is too often a pretentious and empty boast.

What remains is the need to have a coherent structure, focused on action and not allowing us to degenerate into a talking shop, or a mere passive membership organization. And this is where I take issue with the idea of dropping the central elements of “democratic centralism” in our practice.

According to Lenin, “democratic centralism” in the Bolshevik Party, later the Communist Party of the U.S.S.R., had the following key characteristics:

1.    All leadership at all levels was elected, and party policies were determined by democratic votes of the appropriate collectives. That’s the “democratic” part of democratic centralism.

2.    All leadership was to be accountable to the collective. That’s another “democratic” aspect. Leaders who resist accountability are not being democratic.

3.    All subordinate bodies of the party were required to carry out the (democratically arrived at) decisions of the upper bodies. That’s the centralist part.

4.    All party members were required to carry out the (democratically arrived at) decisions of the collective. Again, centralism within democracy.

Later, the Bolsheviks added a ban on factionalism. But the above four points constituted the essence of the concept that Lenin laid out in his 1902 book: “What is to be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement.” I think it is important to note that Lenin did not argue that such organizational principles were necessary only to protect the party and its members from repression, but also to maintain a coherent decision making structure and to keep the activities of the party members focused on collectively derived goals. Democratic centralism was designed also to prevent the party from becoming a diffuse talking shop instead of a fighting political organization. In “What is to be Done” Lenin pointed out that membership in the Bolshevik Party was voluntary; nobody was forced to be a member if they did not agree with the Party’s principles. Organizational democracy did not imply paralysis.

All accounts of the early period of the Bolshevik party, out of and then in power, suggest that there was a large amount of internal discussion and disagreement, for which one was not generally punished by expulsion.

But running an opposition party is different from running a ruling party and through it, the government of a huge and conflict filled state. After Lenin became incapacitated by a series of strokes, dying finally in February of 1924, the amount of conflict within the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (as it came to be known) became destabilizing for the whole country. And out of this situation Josef Stalin, playing one faction off against another, was able to distort the concept of democratic centralism, and a lot of other things also, so as to create a the basis for his personal dictatorship. Stalin did not continue to implement democratic centralism the way Lenin had conceptualized it, but worked to undermine it, producing what might better be called “bureaucratic centralism.” Stalin and his closest collaborators did everything in the name of the Party, but by diverging from the “democratic” dimension of democratic centralism, they undermined the Party, killing hundreds of thousands of active members and cowing the rest into submission to the Stalinist state. One of the ways they accomplished this was by creating internal cliques within the Party that were not accountable to the mechanisms of “democratic centralism” – the infamous “troikas.”

So if anybody suggests that democratic centralism is a relic of Stalinism, I think he or she is wrong. Stalin’s practices in party and government were a negation of democratic centralism.

I have never written on subjects such as the Stalin Period or even the reasons for the collapse of the USSR, for the simple reason that I do not read Russian and do not have access even to a good academic library, let alone the archives of the Soviet government and Party. However, I have a strong suspicion that David Laibman, in his 2007 book “Deep History: A Study in Social Evolution and Human Potential.” is right when he identifies the undemocratic practices of the Stalin period as the poisonous seeds which eventually grew into the forces that destroyed the USSR.

Now the CPUSA faces many new situations which require adaptation of old concepts and practices. As I have said above, I would shed no tears for the ditching of phraseology such as “vanguard,” or practices such as impeding communication within the party, or stopping all discussion between Party Conferences. Yet I think the core concepts of democratic centralism are still valid for running a coherent organization, and for having an impact in the class struggle.

•    Districts and clubs are asked to raise money for the Party and its press. As few of us have much in the way of personal resources, this means organizing fundraising activities: Dinners, banquets, phone calls to possible contributors, etc. This requires the mobilization and, if necessary, creation of collective groups to plan and carry out such activities. All of this work can not be on the shoulders of a handful of leaders in each area. We need to be able to come together collectively, and bring in as many party members and friends as we can to make the appropriate decisions, create a plan of work, assign responsibilities and do check up to make sure that people who take on tasks actually carry them out.

•    There are many new applicants for Party membership, perhaps as many as a thousand over the past year when one includes both people who have joined online and people who have joined (or expressed interest) in the context of mass struggles. Though some of these folks would be satisfied with a nominal membership, others really do look for the leadership and guidance of the Party as a whole. They want a sense of being part of an active organization, not just to be names on a membership list.  How do I know? Because in my district they call us up, send me e-mails etc. and tell us so Someone has to do follow-up with these new comrades, to meet with them or at least talk to them by phone, to plug them into educational activities, to consult with them about mass struggles in which they are involved, and other such things. We need to have strong district organizations and clubs to plan that follow up work. It can’t all be left to individuals to jump in and start doing things without any collective support structure. But if we drop the concept of democratic centralism, I fear that these district organizations and clubs will atrophy.

•    The class struggle is heating up. There are demonstrations and other actions going on constantly and all over the place. For us to have a maximal impact we need to coordinate and focus our efforts at every level, from shops and local neighborhoods to the national and international scene. This requires collective decision making, strategic planning, assignment of tasks, and checkup/accountability. 

•    There is always a danger of disruption either by conscious agents-provocateurs, or by people who simply can’t deal with accountability. In my own 24 years in the CPUSA, I have seen some wildly disruptive behavior. There has to be a mechanism whereby some authoritative body says “look, shape up or ship out.” For this kind of action to have credibility, a collective approach is essential or it would be seen as, and would indeed be, a bureaucratic and not democratic control mechanism: Some individual pulling rank.

For all of these things and more, we need well functioning collectives: National bodies, district organizations, clubs, commissions and topic-specific task forces. We have always worked well when our collectives are strong, and, whether we like the phrase or not, our collectives have always been based on democratic centralism.

At the same time, in all the clubs I have been in, there have always been passive members who don’t show up for the meetings or otherwise participate in the club’s activities. The main problem with such people (some of whom had good excuses, such as advanced age, health problems, work schedule conflicts, security problems and logistical problems for getting to activities) was that an active member of the club had to spend time doing such things as going around collecting their dues—not a big deal. This did not impede us from doing what we set out to do, and it would not today. Not all individual members are going to be active to the same degree. But to let collectives, as collectives, become atrophied is a big problem.

So pick another phrase than “democratic centralism” if you prefer, but let’s keep the essence of the concept, adapting it flexibly to new situations that have arisen and will arise in the future.