Democratic Centralism
Socialist Press1978 1978-12-20Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 5 →
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The method of organisation fought for by Lenin in the Bolshevik Party, maximising democratic discussion in the making of decisions, and then ensuring full, centralised discipline of the party in carrying out decisions.
Under the Stalinist bureaucracy democratic centralism was perverted to bureaucratic centralism, in which the party became simply the tool of the leading bureaucrats.
The Fourth International 1938 restored Lenin's form organisation:
'Without inner democracyno revolutionary education. Without discipline-no revolutionary action. The inner structure of the Fourth International is based on principles of democratic centralism; full freedom in discussion, complete unity in action." class.
In place of defence of the fatherland, the internationalists argue for a line of "revolutionary defeatism"
This stated that the primary question for the working class in any country is the revolutionary overthrow of its own bourgeoisie, and that such a struggle should be maintained even at the expense of a defeat in war of that bourgeoisie by a "foreign" rival.
Such a defeat, they argued, would be a far lesser evil to the working class than the formation of a political bloc between the workers' movement and the capitalist class.