This article is about the Leninist organizational principle. For the national political structure contrasted to democratic federalism, see democratic unitary state.

Democratic centralism is the name given to the principles of internal organization used by Leninist political parties, and the term is sometimes used as a synonym for any Leninist policy inside a political party. The democratic aspect of this organizational method describes the freedom of members of the political party to discuss and debate matters of policy and direction, but once the decision of the party is made by majority vote, all members are expected to uphold that decision. This latter aspect represents the centralism. As Lenin described it, democratic centralism consisted of "of discussion, unity of action".Lenin, V. (1906), [http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1906/rucong/viii.htm Report on the Unity Congress of the R.S.D.L.P.

Compared to other forms of democracy, democratic centralist organization is highly resistant at attempts of infiltration, provocation and division at the hands of external threats: "If all members of a party uphold the party line to the general public it will be much more difficult for agents of the state to create false conflict from the outside."^* For this reason, democratic centralism has become a popular method of organization among many political and non-governmental organizations besides Communist and Marxist political parties.

Leninist organizations' constitutions have typically defined the following key principles of democratic centralism:

1. Election of all party organs from bottom to top and systematic renewal of their composition, if needed.
2. Responsibility of party structures to both lower and upper structures.
3. Strict and conscious discipline in the party -- the minority must obey the majority until such time as the policy is changed.
4. Decisions of upper structures are mandatory for the lower structures.
5. Cooperation of all party organs in a collective manner at all times, and correspondingly, personal responsibility of party members for the assignments given to them and for the assignments they themselves create.

The text What Is To Be Done? from 1902 ^* is popularly seen as the founding text of democratic centralism. At this time, democratic centralism was generally viewed as a set of principles for the organising of a revolutionary workers' party. Lenin's model for such a party, which he repeatedly discussed as being 'democratic centralist', was the German Social Democratic Party.

The doctrine of democratic centralism served as one of the sources of the split between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. The Mensheviks supported a looser party discipline within the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party in 1903, as did Leon Trotsky, in Our Political Tasks, although Trotsky became convinced by democratic centralism in 1917.

After the successful consolidation of power by the Communist Party following the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Russian Civil War, the Bolshevik leadership, including Lenin, instituted an ostensibly "temporary" ban on factions within the party in 1921, by using the very mechanism of "democratic centralism". Thereafter there was less and less communication between the Bolsheviks and the Russian populace, and eventually there was very little freedom of discussion even within the party, except by members of the ruling Politburo. These developments have led some observers to question whether the democratic aspect of democratic centralism can be maintained over time.

References

• Democratic Centralism MIM Notes 51, April 1991

Notes