Re: Bureaucracy (speculative rant alert)

[bantam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

> BTW, in practice, most "democratic centralist" organizations end up
> not
> being democratic.
> The rank and file end up being manipulated by the central
> committee or its leader, i.e., end up being passive followers rather
> than
> active, democratic, participants.
>
> ^^^^^^^^
>
> CB:  Most ? Do you have stats on this ?This is a  standard
> anti-democratic centralist claim and opinion.

Standard because historically substantiated, Charles.

Democratic centralism leads to bureaucratic centralism and, ultimately,
an apparat not unlike a ruling class, whose being (and material
interests) is unlike that of its 'constituency' and whose consciousness
comes to reflect this.  It's a process of substitutionism.  First, the
party stands for the class on the grounds that those not yet in the
party (the vast majority of the class) could not yet be expected to know
its own interests (just what you'd expect a middle class intellectual
minority to think, I suppose).  Then, to disagree with the party (or,
rather, what current power relations within the formal party determine)
is to be a counter-revolutionary, an enemy of your class.  So you're
removed.  Top-down nonsense like this ain't Marxian revolution at all -
not in the medium term anyway.  Read Marx on The Paris Commune, mate;
it's all about ever revocable delegates from, for, of and by the
people.  Theory ain't nothin' without social practice (praxis), so the
revolutionary engine is the people, not a bunch of abstractly-theorising
elitists selflessly throwing pearls before swine.

There's much spilled blood in the very guts of the notion, I reckon.

Cheers,
Rob.