The Democratic Principle
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Author : Amadeo Bordiga

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First Published: Rassegna Comunista - February 1922;Source: http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/3909/bordiga0.html;HTML Markup: Andy Blunden 2003.
The use of certain terms in the exposition of the problems of communism very
often engenders ambiguities because of the different meanings these terms may
be given. Such is the case with the words democracy and
democratic. In its statements of principle, Marxist communism presents
itself as a critique and a negation of democracy; yet communists often defend
the democratic character of proletarian organizations (the state system of
workers' councils, trade unions and the party) and the application of democracy
within them. There is certainly no contradiction in this, and no objection can
be made to the use of the dilemma, "either bourgeois democracy or proletarian
democracy" as a perfect equivalent to the formula "bourgeois democracy or
proletarian dictatorship".

The Marxist critique of the postulates of bourgeois democracy is in fact
based on the definition of the class character of modern society. It
demonstrates the theoretical inconsistency and the practical deception of a
system which pretends to reconcile political equality with the division of
society into social classes determined by the nature of the mode of
production.

Political freedom and equality, which, according to the theory of
liberalism, are expressed in the right to vote, have no meaning except on a
basis that excludes inequality of fundamental economic conditions. For this
reason we communists accept their application within the class organizations of
the proletariat and contend that they should function democratically.

In order to avoid creating ambiguities, and dignifying the concept of
democracy, so entrenched in the prevailing ideology which we strive
relentlessly to demolish, it would be desirable to use a different term in each
of the two cases. Even if we do not do this, it is nonetheless useful to look a
little further into the very content of the democratic principle, both in
general and in its application to homogeneous class organs. This is necessary
to eliminate the danger of again raising the democratic principle to an
absolute principle of truth and justice. Such a relapse into apriorism would
introduce an element foreign to our entire theoretical framework at the very
moment when we are trying, by means of our critique, to sweep away the
deceptive and arbitrary content of "liberal" theories.

I

A theoretical error is always at the root of an error of political tactics.
In other words, it is the translation of the tactical error into the language
of our collective critical consciousness. Thus the pernicious politics and
tactics of social-democracy are reflected in the error of principle that
presents socialism as the inheritor of a substantial part of the doctrine that
liberalism opposed to the old spiritualist doctrines. In reality, far from ever
accepting and completing the critique that democratic liberalism had raised
against the aristocratic and absolute monarchies of the ancien regime,
Marxist socialism in its earliest formulations demolished it utterly. It did so
not to defend the spiritualist or idealist doctrine against the Voltairean
materialism of the bourgeois revolutionaries, but to demonstrate how the
theoreticians of bourgeois materialism had in reality only deluded themselves
when they imagined that the political philosophy of the Encyclopedists had led
them out of the mists of metaphysics and idealist nonsense. In fact, like all
their predecessors, they had to surrender to the genuinely objective critique
of social and historical phenomena provided by Marx's historical
materialism.

It is also important from a theoretical point of view to demonstrate that no
idealist or neo-idealist revision of our principles is needed to deepen the
abyss between socialism and bourgeois democracy, to restore to the theory of
proletarian revolution its powerfully revolutionary content which had been
adulterated by the falsifications of those who fornicate with bourgeois
democracy. It is enough merely to refer to the positions taken by the founders
of Marxism in the face of the lies of liberal doctrines and of bourgeois
materialism.

To return to our argument, we will show that the socialist critique of
democracy was in essence a critique of the democratic critique of the old
political philosophies. Marxism denies their alleged universal opposition and
demonstrates that in reality they are theoretically similar, just as in
practice the proletariat did not have much reason to celebrate when the
direction of society passed from the hands of the feudal, monarchical and
religious nobility into the hands of the young commercial and industrial
bourgeoisie. And the theoretical demonstration that the new bourgeois
philosophy had not overcome the old errors of the despotic regimes, but was
itself only an edifice of new sophisms, corresponded concretely to the
appearance of the revolutionary movement of the proletariat which contained the
negation of the bourgeois claim of having forever established the
administration of society on a peaceful and infinitely perfectible basis,
thanks to the introduction of suffrage and of parliamentary democracy.

The old political doctrines based on spiritualist concepts or even on
religious revelation claimed that the supernatural forces which govern the
consciousness and the will of men had assigned to certain individuals, families
or castes, the task of ruling and managing the collective existence, making
them the repositories of "authority" by divine right. To this, the democratic
philosophy which asserted itself at the time of the bourgeois revolution
counterposed the proclamation of the moral, political and juridical equality of
all citizens, whether they were nobles, clerics or plebeians. It sought to
transfer "sovereignty" from the narrow sphere of caste or dynasty to the
universal sphere of popular consultation based on suffrage which allowed a
majority of the citizens to designate the leaders of the state, according to
its will.

The thunderbolts hurled against this conception by the priests of all
religions and by spiritualist philosophers do not suffice to give it
recognition as the definitive victory of truth over obscurantist error, even if
the "rationalism" of this political philosophy seemed for a long time to be the
last word in social science and the art of politics, and even if many would-be
socialists proclaimed their solidarity with it. This claim that the time of
"privilege" was over, once a system with its social hierarchy based on the
consent of the majority of electors had been set up, does not withstand the
Marxist critique, which throws a completely different light on the nature of
social phenomena. This claim may look like an attractive logical construction
only if it is admitted from the outset that the vote, that is, the
judgment, the opinion, the consciousness of each elector has the same weight
in delegating power for the administration of the collective business. It is
already evident that this conception is unrealistic and unmaterialist because
it considers each individual to be a perfect "unit" within a system made up of
many potentially equivalent units, and instead of appraising the value of the
individual's opinion in the light of his manifold conditions of existence, that
is, his relations with others, it postulates this value a priori with
the hypothesis of the "sovereignty" of the individual. Again this amounts to
denying that the consciousness of men is a concrete reflection of the facts and
material conditions of their existence, to viewing it as a spark ignited with
the same providential fairness in each organism, healthy or impaired, tormented
or harmoniously satisfied in all its needs, by some undefinable supreme
bestower of life. In the democratic theory, this supreme being no longer
designates a monarch, but confers on everyone the equal capacity to do so! In
spite of its rationalist front, the democratic theory rests on a no less
childish metaphysical premise than does "free will", which, according to the
catholic doctrine of the afterlife, wins men either damnation or salvation.
Because it places itself outside of time and historical contingencies, the
democratic theory is no less tainted with spiritualism than are the equally
erroneous philosophies of revelation and monarchy by divine right.

To further extend this comparison, it is sufficient to remember that many
centuries before the French Revolution and the declaration of the rights of man
and citizen, the democratic political doctrine had been advanced by thinkers
who took their stand resolutely on the terrain of idealism and metaphysical
philosophy. Moreover, if the French Revolution toppled the altars of the
Christian god in the name of Reason, it was, wittingly or not, only to make
Reason into a new divinity.

This metaphysical presupposition, incompatible with the Marxist critique, is
characteristic not only of the doctrine constructed by bourgeois liberalism,
but also of all the constitutional doctrines and plans for a new society based
on the "intrinsic value" of certain schemes of social and state relations. In
building its own doctrine of history, Marxism in fact demolished medieval
idealism, bourgeois liberalism and utopian socialism with a single blow.

II

To these arbitrary constructions of social constitutions, whether
aristocratic or democratic, authoritarian or liberal, as well as to the
anarchist conception of a society without hierarchy or delegation of power,
which is rooted in analogous errors, the communist critique opposed a much more
thorough study of the nature and causes of social relations in their complex
evolution throughout human history and a careful analysis of their
characteristics in the present capitalist epoch from which it drew a series of
reasoned hypotheses about their further evolution. To this can now be added the
enormous theoretical and practical contribution of the proletarian revolution
in Russia.

It would be superfluous here to develop the well-known concepts of economic
determinism and the arguments which justify its use in interpreting historical
events and the social dynamic. The apriorism common to conservatives and
utopians is eliminated by the analysis of factors rooted in production, the
economy, and the class relations they determine. This makes possible a
scientific explanation of the juridical, political, military, religious and
cultural facts which make up the diverse manifestations of social life.

We will merely retrace the historical evolution of the mode of social
organization and grouping of men, not only in the state, an abstract
representation of a collectivity fusing together all individuals, but also in
other organizations which arise from the relations between men.

The basis of the interpretation of every social hierarchy, whether extended
or limited, is the relations between different individuals, and the basis of
these relations is the division of tasks and functions among these
individuals.

We can imagine without serious error that at the beginning the human species
existed in a completely unorganized form. Still few in number, these
individuals could live from the products of nature without the application of
technology or labor and in such conditions could do without their fellow
beings. The only existing relations, common to all species, were those of
reproduction. But for the human species - and not only for it - these were
already sufficient to form a system of relations with its own hierarchy - the
family. This could be based on polygamy, polyandry or monogamy. We will not
enter into a detailed analysis here; let us say only that the family represents
an embryo of organized collective life, based on a division of functions
directly determined by physiological factors, since the mother nourished and
raised the children, and the father devoted himself to the hunt, to the
acquisition of plunder and to the protection of the family from external
enemies, etc.

In this initial phase, where production and economy are almost totally
absent, as well as in later stages when they are developing, it is useless to
dwell on the abstract question of whether we are dealing with the
individual-unit or the society-unit. Without any doubt, the individual is a
unit from a biological point of view, but one cannot make this individual the
basis of social organization without falling into metaphysical nonsense. From a
social perspective, all the individual units do not have the same value. The
collectivity is born from relations and groupings in which the status and
activity of each individual do not derive from an individual function but from
a collective one determined by the multiple influences of the social milieu.
Even in the elementary case of an unorganized society or non-society, the
simple physiological basis which produces family organization is already
sufficient to refute the arbitrary doctrine of the individual as an indivisible
unit free to combine with other fellow units, without ceasing to be distinct
from, yet somehow, equivalent to them. In this case, obviously the society-unit
does not exist either, since relations between men, even reduced to the simple
notion that others exist, are extremely limited and restricted to the sphere of
the family or the clan. The self-evident conclusion can be drawn in advance:
the society-unit has never existed and probably never will except as a "limit"
which can be brought progressively nearer by the disappearance of the
boundaries of classes and states.

Setting out from the individual-unit in order to draw social conclusions and
to construct social blueprints or even in order to deny society, is setting out
from an unreal supposition which, even in its most modern formulations, only
amounts to refurbishing the concepts of religious revelation and creation and
of a spiritual life which is not dependent upon natural and organic life. The
divine creator - or a single power governing the destiny of the universe has
given each individual this elementary property of being an autonomous
well-defined molecule endowed with consciousness, will and responsibility
within the social aggregate, independent of contingent factors deriving from
the physical influence of the environment. Only the appearance of this
religious and idealist conception is modified in the doctrine of democratic
liberalism or libertarian individualism. The soul as a spark from the supreme
Being, the subjective sovereignty of each elector, or the unlimited autonomy of
the citizen of a society without laws - these are so many sophisms which, in
the eyes of the Marxist critique, are tainted with the same infantile idealism,
no matter how resolutely "materialist" the first bourgeois liberals and
anarchists may have been.

This conception finds its match in the equally idealist hypothesis of the
perfect social unit - of social monism - based on the divine will which is
supposed to govern and administer the life of our species. Returning to the
primitive stage of social life which we were considering and to the family
organization discovered there, we conclude that we do not need such
metaphysical hypotheses of the individual-unit and the society-unit in order to
interpret the life of the species and the process of its evolution. On the
other hand, we can positively state that we are dealing with a type of
collectivity organized on a unitary basis, i.e. the family. We take
care not to make this a fixed or permanent type or to idealize it as the model
form of the social collectivity, as anarchism or absolute monarchy do with the
individual. Rather we simply record the existence of the family as the primary
unit of human organization, which will be succeeded by others, which itself
will be modified in many aspects, and which will become a constituent element
of other collective organizations, or, one may suppose, will disappear in very
advanced social forms. We do not feel at all obliged to be for or against the
family in principle, any more than, for example, for or against the state. What
does concern us is to grasp the evolutionary direction of these types of human
organization. When we ask ourselves whether they will disappear one day, we do
so objectively, because it could not occur to us to think of them as sacred and
eternal, or as pernicious and to be destroyed. Conservatism and its opposite
(i.e. the negation of every form of organization and social hierarchy) are
equally weak from a critical view-point, and equally sterile.

Thus leaving aside the traditional opposition between the categories
individual and society, we follow the formation and the evolution of other
units in our study of human history: organized human collectivities,
broad or restricted groupings of men with a hierarchy based on a division of
functions, which appear as the real factors and agents of social life. Such
units can in a certain sense be compared to organic units, to living organisms
whose cells, with their different functions and values, can be represented by
men or by rudimentary groups of men. However the analogy is not complete, since
while a living organism has well-defined limits and obeys the inflexible
biological laws of its growth and death, organized social units do not have
fixed boundaries and are continually being renewed, mingling with one another,
simultaneously splitting and recombining. If we dwelt on the first conspicuous
example of the family unit, it was to demonstrate the following: if these units
which we are considering are clearly composed of individuals and if their very
composition is variable, they nonetheless behave like organic and integral
"wholes", such that to split them into individual units has no real meaning and
is tantamount to a myth. The family element constitutes a whole whose life does
not depend on the number of individuals that comprise it, but on the network of
their relationships. To take a crude example, a family composed of the head,
the wives and a few feeble old men is not equal to another made up of its head
and many strong young men.

Setting out from the family, the first organized social form, where one
finds the first example of division of functions, the first hierarchies, the
first forms of authority and the direction of individuals' activities and the
administration of things, human evolution passes through an infinite series of
other organizational forms, increasingly broad and complex. The reason for this
increasing complexity lies in the growing complexity of social relations and
hierarchies born from the ever-increasing differentiation between functions.
The latter is directly determined by the systems of production that technology
and science place at the disposal of human activity in order to provide an
increasing number of products suited to satisfying the needs of larger
societies evolving towards higher forms of life. An analysis which seeks to
understand the process of formation and change of different human
organizations, as well as the interplay of relations within the whole of
society, must be based on the notion of the development of productive
technology and the economic relations which arise from the distribution of
individuals among the different tasks required by the productive mechanism. The
formation and evolution of dynasties, castes, armies, states, empires,
corporations and parties can and must be studied on the basis of these
elements. One can imagine that at the highest point of this complex development
a kind of organized unit will appear which will encompass all of mankind and
which will establish a rational division of functions between all men. What
significance and limits the hierarchical system of collective administration
will have in this higher form of human social life is a matter for further
study.

III

To examine those unitary bodies whose internal relations are regulated by
what is generally called the "democratic principle", for reasons of simplicity
we will distinguish between organized collectivities whose hierarchies are
imposed from outside and those that choose their own hierarchy from within.
According to the religious conception and the pure doctrine of authority, in
every epoch human society is a collective unit which receives its hierarchy
from supernatural powers. We will not repeat the critique of such a
metaphysical over-simplification which is contradicted by our whole experience.
It is the necessity of the division of functions which gives rise naturally to
hierarchies; and this is what has happened in the case of the family. As it
develops into a tribe or horde, it must organize itself in order to struggle
against rival tribes. Leadership must be entrusted to those most able to use
the communal energies, and military hierarchies emerge in response to this
need. This criterion of choice in the common interest appeared thousands of
years before modern democratic electoralism; in the beginning kings, military
chiefs and priests were elected. In the course of time, other criteria for the
formation of hierarchies prevailed, giving rise to caste privileges transmitted
by inheritance or even by initiation into closed schools, sects and cults.
Nevertheless, in normal practice, accession to a given rank and inheritance of
that rank were motivated by the possession of special aptitudes. We do not
intend to follow here the whole process of the formation of castes and then of
classes within society. We will only say that their appearance no longer
corresponds to the logical necessity of a division of functions alone, but also
to the fact that certain strata occupying a privileged position in the economic
mechanism end up monopolizing power and social influence. In one way or
another, every ruling caste provides itself with its own organization, its own
hierarchy, and likewise, economically privileged classes. To limit ourselves to
one example - the landed aristocracy of the Middle Ages, by uniting itself for
the defense of its common privileges against the assaults of the other classes,
constructed an organizational form culminating in the monarchy, which
concentrated public powers in its own hands to the complete exclusion of the
other layers of the population. The state of the feudal epoch was the
organization of the feudal nobility supported by the clergy. The principal
element of coercion of the military monarchy was the army. Here we have a type
of organized collectivity whose hierarchy was instituted from without since it
was the king who bestowed the ranks, and in the army, passive obedience was the
rule. Every form of state concentrates under one authority the organizing and
officering of a whole series of executive hierarchies: the army, police,
magistracy, bureaucracy. Thus the state makes material use of the activity of
individuals from all classes, but it is organized on the basis of a single or a
few privileged classes which appropriate the power to constitute its different
hierarchies. The other classes, and in general all groups of individuals for
whom it was only too evident that the state, in spite of its claims, by no
means guaranteed the interests of everyone, seek to provide themselves with
their own organizations in order to make their own interests prevail. Their
point of departure is that their members occupy an identical position in
production and economic life.

As for organizations which provide themselves with their own hierarchy, if
we ask what is the best way to ensure the defense of the collective interests
and to avoid the formation of privileged strata, some will propose the
democratic method whose principle lies in using the majority opinion to select
those to fill the various offices.

Our critique of such a method must be much more severe when it is applied to
the whole of society as it is today, or to given nations, than when it is
introduced into much more restricted organizations, such as trade unions and
parties.

In the first case it must be rejected without hesitation as without
foundation, since it takes no account of the situation of individuals in the
economy and since it presupposes the intrinsic perfection of the system without
taking into consideration the historical evolution of the collectivity to which
it is applied.

The division of society into classes distinguished by economic privilege
clearly removes all value from majority decision-making. Our critique refutes
the deceitful theory that the democratic and parliamentary state machine which
arose from modern liberal constitutions is an organization of all citizens in
the interests of all citizens. From the moment that opposing interests and
class conflicts exist, there can be no unity of organization, and in spite of
the outward appearance of popular sovereignty, the state remains the organ of
the economically dominant class and the instrument of defense of its interests.
In spite of the application of the democratic system to political
representation, bourgeois society appears as a complex network of unitary
bodies. Many of these, which spring from the privileged layers and tend to
preserve the present social apparatus, gather around the powerful centralized
organism of the political state. Others may be neutral or may have a changing
attitude towards the state. Finally, others arise within the economically
oppressed and exploited layers and are directed against the class state.
Communism demonstrates that the formal juridical and political application of
the democratic and majority principle to all citizens while society is divided
into opposed classes in relation to the economy, is incapable of making the
state an organizational unit of the whole society or the whole nation.
Officially that is what political democracy claims to be, whereas in reality it
is the form suited to the power of the capitalist class, to the dictatorship of
this particular class, for the purpose of preserving its privileges.

Therefore it is not necessary to devote much time to refuting the error of
attributing the same degree of independence and maturity to the vote of each
elector, whether he is a worker exhausted by excessive physical labor or a
rich dissolute, a shrewd captain of industry or an unfortunate proletarian
ignorant of the causes of his misery and the means of remedying them. From time
to time, after long intervals, the opinion of these and others is solicited,
and it is claimed that the accomplishment of this "sovereign" duty is
sufficient to ensure calm and the obedience of whoever feels victimized and
ill-treated by the state policies and administration.

IV

It is clear that the principle of democracy has no intrinsic virtue. It is
not a "principle", but rather a simple mechanism of
organization, responding to the simple and crude arithmetical presumption that
the majority is right and the minority is wrong. Now we shall see if and to
what extent this mechanism is useful and sufficient for the functioning of
organizations comprising more restricted collectivities which are not divided
by economic antagonisms. To do this, these organizations must be considered in
their process of historical development.

Is this democratic mechanism applicable in the dictatorship of the
proletariat, i.e. in the state form born from the revolutionary victory of
rebel classes against the power of the bourgeois states? Can this form of
state, on account of its internal mechanism of the delegation of powers and of
the formation of hierarchies, thus be defined as a "proletarian democracy"? The
question should be broached without prejudice, because if although we might
reach the conclusion that the democratic mechanism is useful under certain
conditions, as long as history has not produced a better mechanism, we must be
convinced that there is not the slightest reason to establish a priori
the concept of the sovereignty of the "majority" of the proletariat. In fact
the day after the revolution, the proletariat will not yet be a totally
homogeneous collectivity nor will it be the only class. In Russia for example,
power is in the hands of the working class and the peasantry, but if we
consider the entire development of the revolutionary movement, it is easy to
demonstrate that the industrial proletarian class, although much less numerous
than the peasantry, nevertheless plays a far more important role. Then it is
logical that the Soviet mechanism accords much more value to the vote of a
worker than that of a peasant.

We do not intend to examine thoroughly here the characteristics of the
proletarian state constitution. We will not consider it metaphysically as
something absolute, as reactionaries do the divine right of the monarchy,
liberals, parliamentarism based on universal suffrage, and anarchists, the
non-state. As it is an organization of one class destined to strip the opposing
classes of their economic privileges, the proletarian state is a real
historical force which adapts itself to the goal it pursues, that is, to the
necessities which gave birth to it. At certain moments its impulse may come
from either broad mass consultations or from the action of very restricted
executive organs endowed with full powers. What is essential is to give this
organization of proletarian power the means and weapons to destroy bourgeois
economic privilege and the political and military resistance of the
bourgeoisie, in a way that prepares for the subsequent disappearance of classes
themselves, and for the more and more profound modifications of the tasks and
structure of the proletarian state.

One thing is sure - while bourgeois democracy's real goal is to deprive the
large proletarian and petty-bourgeois masses of all influence in the control of
the state, reserved for the big industrial, banking and agricultural
oligarchies, the proletarian dictatorship must be able to involve the broadest
layers of the proletarian and even semi-proletarian masses in the struggle that
it embodies. But only those who are the victims of democratic prejudice could
imagine that attaining this end merely requires the setting up of a vast
mechanism of electoral consultation. This may be excessive or - more often -
insufficient, because this form of participation by many proletarians may
result in their not taking part in other more active manifestations of the
class struggle. On the other hand, the intensity of the struggle in particular
phases demands speed of decision and movement and a centralized organization of
efforts in a common direction, which, as the Russian experience is
demonstrating with a whole series of examples, imposes on the proletarian state
constitutional characteristics which are in open contradiction to the canons of
bourgeois democracy. Supporters of bourgeois democracy howl about the violation
of liberties, whereas it is only a matter of unmasking the philistine
prejudices which have always allowed demagogues to ensure power to the
privileged. In the dictatorship of the proletariat, the constitutional
mechanism of the state organization is not only consultative, but at the same
time executive. Participation in the functions of political life, if not of the
whole mass of electors, then at least of a wide layer of their delegates, is
not intermittent but continuous. It is interesting to note that this is
accomplished without at all harming the unitary character of the action of the
whole state apparatus - rather to the contrary. And this is thanks precisely to
the criteria opposed to those of bourgeois hyperliberalism, that is, virtual
suppression of direct elections and proportional
representation, once, as we have seen, the other sacred dogma of the
equal vote, has been overthrown.

We do not claim that these new criteria introduced into the representative
mechanism, or codified in a constitution, stem from reasons of principle. Under
new circumstances, the criteria could be different. In any case we are
attempting to make it clear that we do not attribute any intrinsic value to
these forms of organization and representation. This is translated into a
fundamental Marxist thesis: the revolution is not a problem of forms of
organization. On the contrary, the revolution is a problem of content, a
problem of the movement and action of revolutionary forces in an unending
process, which cannot be theorized and crystallized in any scheme for an
immutable "constitutional doctrine".

In any case, in the mechanisms of the workers' councils we find no trace of
the rule of bourgeois democracy, which states that each citizen directly
chooses his delegate to the supreme representative body, the parliament. On the
contrary, there are different levels of workers' and peasants' councils, each
one with a broader territorial base culminating in the congress of Soviets.
Each local or district council elects its delegates to a higher council, and in
the same way elects its own administration, i.e. its executive organ. At the
base, in the city or rural council, the entire mass is consulted. In the
election of delegates to higher councils and local administrative offices, each
group of electors votes not according to a proportional system, but according
to a majority system, choosing its delegates from lists put forward by the
parties. Furthermore, since a single delegate is sufficient to establish a link
between a lower and higher council, it is clear that the two dogmas of formal
liberalism -voting for several members from a list and proportional
representation - fall by the wayside. At each level, the councils must give
rise to organs that are both consultative and administrative and directly
linked to the central administration. Thus it is natural that as one progresses
towards higher representative organs, one does not encounter parliamentary
assemblies of chatterboxes who discuss interminably without ever acting;
rather, one sees compact and homogeneous bodies capable of directing the action
and political struggle, and of giving revolutionary guidance to the whole mass
thus organized in a unitary fashion.

These capacities, which are definitely not automatically inherent in any
constitutional schema, are reached in this mechanism because of the presence of
an extremely important factor, the political party, whose content goes far
beyond pure organizational form, and whose collective and active consciousness
and will allow the work to be oriented according to the requirements of a long
and always advancing process. Of all the organs of the proletarian
dictatorship, the political party is the one whose characteristics most nearly
approach those of a homogeneous unitary collectivity, unified in action. In
reality, it only encompasses a minority of the mass, but the properties which
distinguish it from all other broad-based forms of representative organization
demonstrate precisely that the party represents the collective interests and
movement better than any other organ. All party members participate directly in
accomplishing the common task and prepare themselves to resolve the problems of
the revolutionary struggle and the reconstruction of society, which the
majority of the mass only become aware of when they are actually faced with
them. For all these reasons, in a system of representation and delegation based
not on the democratic lie but on a layer of the population whose common
fundamental interests propel them on the course of revolution, it is natural
that the choices fall spontaneously on elements put forward by the
revolutionary party, which is equipped to respond to the demands of the
struggle and to resolve the problems for which it has been able to prepare
itself. We do not attribute these capacities of the party to its particular
constitution, anymore than we do in the case of any other organization. The
party may or may not be suited to its task of leading the revolutionary action
of a class; it is not any political party but a precise one, namely the
communist party, that can assume this task, and not even the communist party is
immune to the numerous dangers of degeneration and dissolution. What makes the
party equal to its task is not its statutes or mere internal organizational
measures. It is the positive characteristics which develop within the party
because it participates in the struggle as an organization possessing a single
orientation which derives from its conception of the historical process, form a
fundamental program which has been translated into a collective consciousness
and at the same time from a secure organizational discipline.

To return to the nature of the constitutional mechanism of the proletarian
dictatorship - of which we have already said that it was executive as well as
legislative at all levels - we must add something to specify what tasks of the
collective life this mechanism's executive functions and initiatives respond
to. These functions and initiatives are the very reason for its formation, and
they determine the relationships existing within its continually evolving
elastic mechanism. We refer here to the initial period of proletarian power
whose image we have in the four and a half years that the proletarian
dictatorship has existed in Russia, because we do not wish to speculate as to
what the definitive basis of the representative organs will be in a classless
communist society. We cannot predict how exactly society will evolve as it
approaches this stage; we can only envisage that it will move in the direction
of a fusion of various political, administrative and economic organs, and at
the same time, a progressive elimination of every element of coercion and of
the state itself as an instrument of power of one class and a weapon of
struggle against the surviving enemy classes.

In its initial period, the proletarian dictatorship has an extremely
difficult and complex task that can be subdivided into three spheres of action:
political, military and economic. Military defense against
counter-revolutionary attacks from within and without and the reconstruction of
society on a collective basis depend upon a systematic and rational plan of
activity which, while utilizing the diverse energies of the whole mass with the
maximum efficiency and results, must also achieve a powerful unity. As a
consequence, the body which leads the struggle against the domestic and foreign
enemy, that is, the revolutionary army and police, must be based on discipline,
and its hierarchy must be centralized in the hands of the proletarian power.
The Red Army itself is thus an organized unit whose hierarchy is imposed from
without by the government of the proletarian state, and the same is true for
the revolutionary police and tribunals.

The problems of the economic apparatus which the victorious proletariat
erects in order to lay the foundations of the new system of production and
distribution is more complex. The characteristic that distinguishes this
rational administration from the "chaos" of bourgeois private economy is
centralization. Every enterprise must be managed in the interest of the entire
collectivity and in harmony with the requirements of the whole plan of
production and distribution. On the other hand, the economic apparatus (and the
groups of individuals that comprise it) is continually being modified, not only
through its own gradual development but also by the inevitable crises in a
period of such vast transformations, which cannot be without political and
military struggles. These considerations lead to the following conclusions: in
the initial period of the proletarian dictatorship, although the councils at
different levels must appoint their delegates to the local executive organs as
well as to the legislative organs at higher levels, the absolute responsibility
for military defense, and in a less rigid way, for the economic campaign, must
remain with the center. For their part, the local organs serve to organize the
masses politically so that they will participate in fulfilling the plans and
accept military and economic organization. They thereby create the conditions
for the broadest and most continuous mass activity possible, and can channel
this activity towards the formation of a highly centralized proletarian
state.

These considerations certainly are not intended to deny all possibility of
movement and initiative to the intermediary organs of the state hierarchy. But
we wanted to show that one cannot theorize that they must be formed by the
application of groups of electors organized on the basis of factories or army
divisions to the revolution's executive tasks of maintaining military or
economic order. The structure of such groups is simply not able to confer any
special abilities on them. The units in which the electors are grouped at the
base can therefore be formed according to empirical criteria. In fact they
will constitute themselves according to empirical criteria, among
which, for instance, the convergence in the workplace, the neighborhood, the
garrison, the battlefront or any other situation in daily life, without any of
them being excluded a priori or held up as a model. This does not
prevent the representative organs of the proletarian state from being based on
a territorial division into electoral districts. None of these considerations
is absolute, and this takes us back to our thesis that no constitutional schema
has the value of a principle, and that majority democracy in the formal and
arithmetic sense is only one possible method for coordinating the relations
that arise within collective organizations. No matter what point of view one
takes, it is impossible to attribute to it an intrinsic character of necessity
or justice. For Marxists these terms have no meaning. Therefore we do not
propose to substitute for the democratic schema which we have been criticizing
any other schema of a state apparatus which in itself will be exempt from
defects and errors.

V

It seems to us that enough has been said about the democratic principle in
its application to the bourgeois state, which claims to embrace all classes,
and also in its application to the proletarian class exclusively as the basis
of the state after the revolutionary victory. Something should be said about
the application of the democratic mechanism to organizations existing within
the proletariat before (and also after) the conquest of power, i.e. in trade
unions and the political party.

We established above that a true organizational unity is only possible on
the basis of an identity of interests among the members. Since one joins unions
or parties by virtue of a spontaneous decision to participate in a specific
kind of action, a critique which absolutely denies any value to the democratic
mechanism in the case of the bourgeois state (i.e. a fallacious constitutional
union of all classes) is not applicable here. Nevertheless, even in the case of
the party and the trade union it is necessary not to be led astray by the
arbitrary concept of the "sanctity" of majority decisions.

In contrast to the party, the trade union is characterized by the virtual
identity of its members' immediate material interests. Within the limits of the
category, it attains a broad homogeneity of composition and it is an
organization with voluntary membership. It tends to become an organization
which all the workers of a given category or industry join automatically or are
even, as in a certain phase of the dictatorship of the proletariat, obliged to
join. It is certain that in this domain number remains the decisive factor and
the majority decision has a great value, but we cannot confine ourselves to a
schematic consideration of its results. It is also necessary to take into
account other factors which come into play in the life of the union
organization: a bureaucratized hierarchy of functionaries which paralyzes the
union under its tutelage, and the vanguard groups that the revolutionary party
has established within it in order to lead it onto the terrain of revolutionary
action. In this struggle, communists often point out that the functionaries of
the union bureaucracy violate the democratic idea and are contemptuous of the
will of the majority. It is correct to denounce this because the right-wing
union bosses parade a democratic mentality, and it is necessary to point out
their contradictions. We do the same with bourgeois liberals each time they
coerce and falsify the popular consultation, without proposing that even a free
consultation would resolve the problems which weigh on the proletariat. It is
right and opportune to do this because in the moments when the broad masses are
forced into action by the pressure of the economic situation, it is possible to
turn aside the union bureaucrats' influence, which is in substance an
extra-proletarian influence of classes and organizations alien to the trade
union, thereby augmenting the influence of the revolutionary groups. But in all
this there are no "constitutional" prejudices, and communists, provided that
they are understood by the masses and can demonstrate to them that they are
acting in the direction of their most immediate felt interests, can and must
behave in a flexible way vis-à-vis the canons of formal democracy. For
example, there is no contradiction between these two tactical attitudes: on one
hand, taking the responsibility of representing the minority in the leadership
organs of the unions insofar as the statues allow; and on the other hand,
stating that this statutory representation should be suppressed once we have
conquered these organizations in order to speed up their actions. What should
guide us in this question is a careful analysis of the developmental process in
the unions in the present phase. We must accelerate their transformation from
organs of counter-revolutionary influence on the proletariat into organs of
revolutionary struggle. The criteria of internal organization have no value in
themselves but only insofar as they contribute to this objective.

We now analyze the party organization which we have already touched on in
regard to the mechanism of the worker's state. The party does not start from as
complete an identity of economic interests as does the union. On the contrary
it bases the unity of its organization not on category, like the union, but on
the much broader basis of the entire class. This is true not only in space,
since the party strives to become international, but also in time, since it is
the specific organ whose consciousness and action reflect the requirements of
victory throughout the process of the proletariat's revolutionary emancipation.
When we study the problems of party structure and internal organization, these
well-known considerations force us to keep in mind the whole process of its
formation and life in relation to the complex tasks which it continually has to
carry out. At the end of this already long exposition, we cannot enter into
details of the mechanism which should regulate consultation of the party's mass
membership, their recruitment and the designation of responsible officers.
There is no doubt that for the moment there is nothing better to do than hold
to the majority principle. But as we have emphasized, there is no reason to
raise use of the democratic mechanism to a principle. Besides its consultative
functions, analogous to the legislative tasks of the state apparatus, the party
has executive tasks which at the crucial moment of the struggle, correspond to
those of an army and which demand maximum discipline toward the hierarchy. In
fact, in the complex process which has led to the formation of communist
parties, the emergence of a hierarchy is a real and dialectical phenomenon
which has remote origins and which corresponds to the entire past experience of
the functioning of the party's mechanism. We cannot state that the decisions of
the party majority are per se as correct as those of the infallible
supernatural judges who are supposed to have given human societies their
leaders, like the gods believed in by all those who think that the Holy Spirit
participates in papal conclaves. Even in an organization like the party where
the broad composition is a result of selection through spontaneous voluntary
membership and control of recruitment, the decision of the majority is not
intrinsically the best. If it contributes to a better working of the party's
executive bodies, this is only because of the coincidence of individual efforts
in a unitary and well-oriented work. We will not propose at this time replacing
this mechanism by another and we will not examine in detail what such a new
system might be. But we can envisage a mode of organization which will be
increasingly liberated from the conventions of the democratic principle, and it
will not be necessary to reject it out of unjustified fears if one day it can
be shown that other methods of decision, of choice, of resolution of problems
are more consistent with the real demands of the party's development and its
activity in the framework of history.

The democratic criterion has been for us so far a material and incidental
factor in the construction of our internal organization and the formulation of
our party statutes; it is not an indispensable platform for them. Therefore we
will not raise the organizational formula known as "democratic centralism" to
the level of a principle. Democracy cannot be a principle for us. Centralism is
indisputably one, since the essential characteristics of party organization
must be unity of structure and action. The term centralism is
sufficient to express the continuity of party structure in space; in order to
introduce the essential idea of continuity in time, the historical continuity
of the struggle which, surmounting successive obstacles, always advances
towards the same goal, and in order to combine these two essential ideas of
unity in the same formula, we would propose that the communist party base its
organization on "organic centralism". While preserving as much of the
incidental democratic mechanism that can be used, we will eliminate the use of
the term "democracy", which is dear to the worst demagogues but tainted with
irony for the exploited, oppressed and cheated, abandoning it to the exclusive
usage of the bourgeoisie and the champions of liberalism in their diverse
guises and sometimes extremist poses.


     From : Marxists.org

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     The Democratic Principle -- Added : March 03, 2021

     The Democratic Principle -- Updated : January 08, 2022

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