Are you tired of spending years in big tent parties making real progress getting people on your side, only to have the bourgeois collaborators/infiltrators take over the party and purge it of socialists/communists? Are you tired of even hearing the word "vote" when it comes to the bourgeois policy/personality trade show every four years?
Hi, Billy Mays here for the world’s most successful revolutionary organizational strategy, Democratic Centralism.
Why am I smashing the bourgeois state with this hammer & sickle? To show you the amazing protection you get from Democratic Centralism!
And this hammer & sickle is real. The same party strategy was used in nearly all successful socialist revolutions in the history of the world today!
If you have a sore, tired, aching soul from years of watching unions, socialist parties, and spontaneous movements get ripped apart by COINTELPRO & the Amerikkkan state, Democratic Centralism absorbs more shocking pressure than other organizational methods. Unlike regular organizational methods that break down over time and State infiltration, Democratic Centralism is injected into the areas that provide pressure relief where you need it most – at every level of organization.
The method never breaks down. And when State pressure occurs, the members all discuss, vote, and repeat until a binding resolution has been reached. Since the Party is united in their line, the Party acts as one unbroken force and infiltrators can only reveal themselves by not following Party line. No liberal method can do that. Even after continuous pounding, these ML's don’t break.
Imagine the relief you’ll feel on all kinds of issues. No longer do you have to argue with liberals masquerading as socialists one weekend a year about the "unrealistic nature of socialism". No longer do you have to toil away at getting your Party to do something materially beneficial to the movement only for an opposing faction to cancel all of the work you've done … I’m going to run over my hand with this 6,000-pound car. That’s the power and protection of Democratic Centralism.
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In Secret Hitler, one of the best strategies is to vote alongside the Liberals on every issue, while agitating against any liberal that breaks the party line by accusing her of fascism.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say, can you elaborate on what you mean here lol?
Democratic Centrism has its problems.
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Exactly :mao-shining:
Link me some maoist critiques of dem cent
Ok, can you explain what your problems with it are? And can I ask if you've had experience organizing within such a party?
waves hands at the entire history of Trotskyism
I mean, just for starters, the constant game of wack-the-liberal has an unfortunate habit of creating schisms in even nascent movements. Movements that survive long-term tend towards the Maoist Mass Line or the Stalinist Communism In One Country nationalist approach. Without a powerful charismatic voice to unify a Bolshevik movement and exceptional organizing talent in the mid-ranks, as well as a deeply unpopular opposition, Democratic Centrism has a hard time maintaining internal ideological consistency while also surviving external pressures.
I don't think it's clear whether this was a brilliant unstoppable strategy or merely a competent strategy executed against disorganized and incompetent opposition. I do think that, since it's inception, capitalist counter-revolutionary operations have fine-tuned methods for undermining it more often than not.
I've had some limited experience organizing within political parties generally speaking. And from my experience, the biggest struggle is keeping sizable groups of people engaged at all. Recruiting, building strong relationships between members, and consistently encouraging turnout to functions are the biggest hurdles to the formation of a movement. Repeated calling for loyalty tests is not conducive to any of those goals.
Trotskyist factions were formed in opposition to Democratic Centralism. Trotsky split from the CPSU after undermining the Party line for a decade. Of course, an organizing tradition of splitting from the Party line produces organizations which split from various parties lines.
Neither of these contradict Democratic Centralism. It is ahistorical to say the CPSU under Stalin or the CPC under Mao were not organized using Democratic Centralism.
Yes. Without dedicated revolutionaries, a party will fail regardless of its organization strategy.
What? Unless you consider Western imperialism "deeply unpopular opposition", this does not really describe Democratic Centralist parties which have achieve state power. If you do consider that, then the "deeply unpopular opposition" will exist until capitalism is overthrown.
Every single organizing strategy succumbs to this. Democratic Centralism has proven to be the most effective organizing strategy to counteract that. International communist parties have maintain internal ideological consistencies and survived external pressures longer than any other anti-capitalist organization.
I can understand how you can have that perspective historically, especially with regards to the USSR. As u/Gkalaitza hinted at, Mass Line and its variants (based on the conditions in that society) is a crucial addition that works to prevent the tangential evolution of the party away from the masses.
I would be curious why you think ML parties are constantly doing purity tests. Sure, they have a historical line, but there's really nowhere within the line that they take anything but a dialectically/historically materialist stance. Parties aren't exactly doing purges, they generally have candidacy periods in which you are educated on the party line and can clear up any disagreements/misunderstandings. Its not like they don't acknowledge failings of existing/previous socialist states, all that's required is to understand and agree with the concept of critical support and the lessons that can be learned in each and perhaps applied today.
In reality, democratic centralism in practice today is all about agreeing on a way to proceed from the current material situation in that moment and how to plan for future ones, and after a resolution has been agreed upon by majority, everyone acts in unison so it actually gets done, instead of gridlock and diffusement. If you don't agree with the party line, then why do you want to be a member of the vanguard party? If you don't trust your comrades to understand why something was agreed upon, then your comrades can't really trust you, and that's when a party falls apart.
Not everyone knows what the party line is going to be before they join. And simply going along with the majority requires a certain degree of faith in the institution and its major movers. Consequently, a vanguard runs the risk of splitting or dissolving when major disputes are reached. Exacerbating wedge issues within the opposition is a common means of creating schism and dysfunction within a movement. The Civil Rights Movement of the 60s was plagued by these schisms, ultimately deteriorating in the 70s and dissolving in the 80s.
Now imagine trying to organize a BLM protest along the vanguardist line. How many people do you think would agree in advance that "Defund the Police" was a winning message before it was popularized during the marches? How many people are you willing to eject from the movement for failing to follow the leader of a leaderless movement on this line?
I don't see this as a means of building or maintaining momentum. I see it as a poisoned pill that sickens and kills a movement before it's taken off.
Well when you join, you don't have to know anything. PSL often recruits cadre from street actions with no previous history with Marxist thought. During the candidacy process, the party lines are described, and those candidates discuss them and are given further clarification by senior party members. By finishing your candidacy process and choosing to continue on to be a full voting member, you are agreeing that you understand the party lines, why they are what they are, and that in order to build a movement, Party members must agree on them. Anything that is reasonably debatable is something that you can always raise as a topic for re-examination. Democratic centralism is merely acting in unison in public. Disagreements within the party are to be discussed cordially and even if the Party goes the other way, yes you are expected to go with it. But that doesn't mean its not something that can be brought up again later if there is a change in circumstance or if the chosen path meets unexpected hardship. Again, you are signing up to a party and saying you trust the other members and in return they will trust you. There are a lot of benefits that come with this, and all it takes is for you to not go behind the will of your fellow cadre.
Do you think the PSL wasn't involved in the BLM movements? Again, the vanguard is not there to lead and direct the movement. The vanguard only becomes involved with State power if the people elevates them to that role. The PSL supports and operates WITHIN people's movements, its goal is not to co-opt them.
I've never worked with PSL, so I don't have experience with this. I'll definitely have to look for an organization in my area, as I'm curious to see this in action.
I don't doubt PSL members organized and operated during the BLM protests. But I don't see BLM organized under ML principles.
BLM is a slogan and a movement. It is not an organization nor a party. It is not organized by any principle. There are ML parties and other DemSoc organizations working within the movement. There are also Liberals, Anarchists, Right Libertarians, etc.
It is really frustrating to see you argue against Democratic Centralism while have absolutely no clue how it works.
@cpfhornet just described the most basic component of Democratic Centralism: a candidacy period, education on party line, commitment to party line following candidacy. Your response was "I don’t have experience with this."
It is okay to lack experience. But dismissing Democratic Centralism after playing Secret Hitler is very weird tho
It's a reference point I had that I assumed other people may have also experienced, as it was a fairly popular board game back in college.
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The board game actually does a pretty good job at showing how COINTELPRO kills all non-dem. cent. orgs lol
I had never heard of it so since I looked it up here's the link for others
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_Hitler