The continuity of conformism
"Get along to a meeting
I joined the Socialist Workers Party at Marxism 2012 after reading the paper for a few months. Since then I have been to as many meetings as possible and learned more than in the previous 20 odd years.
I would happily encourage anyone reading this to get to a meeting, listen, learn, speak up, think, ask questions and get involved. You might even get a cup of tea.
Matty, Bradford"
"The Leninist party model is entirely different, and not based on bourgeois democracy but the relationship between ideas, revolutionary goals and its environment. Though aiming to convince the majority class to take control, a revolutionary party is very much a minority, attracting only the most politically advanced to its ranks. They, in turn, seek to act as a vanguard, to win over the reformist majority of the working class. For the minority to do this it must put forward radical arguments, and propose alternative forms of action-in other words to lead. Thus the revolutionary party must aspire to make every member a leader. In that sense the normal definition of leaders/followers breaks down, and it is more accurate to talk about a technical division of labour between a “party centre” and a party rank and file.
The centre may consist of those who have proved their abilities, can bring particular theoretical or practical experience to bear, have the time and opportunity to play a central role in the organisation, and so on. But, in essence, it is not distinct from the rank and file in the way that an MP or union general secretary is. Bourgeois democracy makes a fetish of elections and representation in order to disguise who really rules. The revolutionary party has no use for such a fetish. It does not exist for itself, for the momentary satisfaction individuals might gain from self-expression in a ballot, but for a specific purpose-the transformation of society. Its internal processes are there to assist that process and nothing more.
Revolutionary party members cannot passively wait for the centre to act on their behalf, nor is it in the interest of the centre for the members to be reduced to passivity. The relationship between both must be dynamic and interactive if a party of leaders is to exist. It does not follow that a revolutionary party is automatically immune from bureaucratic degeneration. Protection from that lies not so much in a constitution as in political action. The relationship between internal structure and external context applies here, as elsewhere.
In seeking to engage with those who are at present to its right, a revolutionary party exposes itself to a working class that is majority reformist. So the danger of accommodating to reformism does not disappear just because someone joins. For example, members may hold prominent positions in trade unions; that puts them under pressure from the bureaucracy. Other members might begin with a revolutionary attitude but succumb to bourgeois ideology over time. Revolutionaries must work alongside members of reformist organisations in joint campaigns and may be more influenced by them rather than vice versa.
In this situation the party cannot remain true to its ideal of winning real democracy unless it can prevent this drag to the right. So a primary democratic function of the internal structure is to uphold the revolutionary ideal against pressures on members to accommodate. For this to work all of the party must be accountable for their actions and their politics-both at the centre and in the rank and file. Accountability is absent in reformist parties, because members can hold backward bourgeois ideas, leaders can sell out-and nothing happens. Russia’s Mensheviks were originally in the same party as the Bolsheviks (the Russian Social Democratic and Labour Party), but a split occurred precisely over the issue of accountability, which they regarded as unnecessary. When the Bolsheviks achieved their great democratic leap forward, the Mensheviks were in the camp of the Whites, battling through civil war to defeat these gains.
Countering the drag to the right produces an opposite danger-that the party becomes a sect. Till the moment of the revolution itself revolutionaries are constantly swimming against the stream, and so there is a temptation to renounce meaningful interaction with the working class and retreat into a more comfortable isolation. This leaves them preaching at the class from the sidelines rather than trying to lead. This has been the fate of many socialist parties in the past. The internal regime of a sect is sclerotic and tends to lack democratic debate, because all that is required (for both leadership and rank and file) is constant repetition of unchanging general beliefs and strategy. Revolution, which alone can bring real democracy, cannot be achieved if it becomes a sterile belief and is not constantly tested, developed and informed by the struggle for leadership in the working class. So just as the revolutionary party protects itself from the pressure to adapt to its capitalist environment, it must expose itself through intervention.
This requires an internal structure that reflects members’ experience in striving to lead within the working class and decides how to act. It is called “democratic centralism”. It does not prefigure a workers’ state or mass democracy, such as the soviet. Trotsky, whose commitment to proletarian democracy cost him his life at the hands of a Stalinist assassin, was insistent that democratic centralism was not a formal set of constitutional points. There was no:
formula on democratic centralism that “once and for all” would eliminate misunderstandings and false interpretations. A party is an active organism. It develops in the struggle with outside obstacles and inner contradictions… The regime of a party does not fall ready made from the sky but is formed gradually in struggle. A political line predominates over the regime. First of all, it is necessary to define strategic problems and tactical methods correctly in order to solve them. The organisational forms should correspond to the strategy and the tactic.74
Here is a classic expression of this article’s argument. The key to healthy internal relationships within a revolutionary party is the correct political orientation outside the party. Such intervention consists of two elements-the formulation of the strategy and its application. The balance was described by Lenin in these terms:
We must centralise the leadership of the movement. We must also…decentralise responsibility to the party on the part of its individual members, of every participant in its work, and of every circle belonging to or associated with the party. This decentralisation is an essential prerequisite of revolutionary centralisation and an essential corrective to it.75
Democratic centralism is not only a necessity from an internal party point of view. It is an essential counter both at this level, and at the level of the working class as a whole, to the undemocratic centralism of the ruling class.
Whatever democratic figleaf is in place, the capitalist minority of exploiters depend on intense centralism to prevail against the majority. The capitalist state is highly centralised, and most noticeably so in its weapons of coercion-the army and police. Here power is concentrated through a rigid, unelected and unaccountable hierarchy, from privates at the base to generals at the top. But this is mirrored equally in the staggering concentrations represented by giant corporations. For example, in 2007 Walmart, Exxon and Shell were each worth as much as the Greek economy, larger than Denmark, Argentina and South Africa, and so on.
The working class needs to centralise its efforts if it is to stand up against such accumulations of force. As a class this cannot be achieved on an individual basis. It requires the involvement of as many people as possible and so must also be democratic. In both an abstract and a practical sense, democracy and centralism are contradictory and complementary.
It is easy to talk about democratic centralism in a revolutionary party, but harder to practise it. If that party spends all its time in democratic discussions to find the best approach, it ceases to deserve the name and becomes an irrelevant talking shop and sect. If a party spends all its time implementing decisions that have been taken, but never revises them to fit changing circumstances, it will be out of touch with the needs of the moment-again a sect. The correct balance must be struck, although this changes constantly.
Writing on the subject in 1937 Trotsky said:
Democracy and centralism do not at all find themselves in an invariable ratio to one another. Everything depends on the concrete circumstances, on the political situation in the country, on the strength of the party and its experience, on the general level of its members, on the authority the leadership has succeeded in winning. Before a conference, when the problem is one of formulating a political line for the next period, democracy triumphs over centralism.
When the problem is political action, centralism subordinates democracy to itself. Democracy again asserts its rights when the party feels the need to examine critically its own actions. The equilibrium between democracy and centralism establishes itself in the actual struggle; at moments it is violated and then again re-established.76
Democratic centralism in the revolutionary party is the opposite of what occurs under the most free and fair parliamentary system. Here the centralism of the rich and powerful and their state, armies, courts and legislatures work to protect the ruling class, all under the pretence of democracy."
