Bureaucracy (speculative rant alert)

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

 Bureaucracy (speculative rant alert)
by bantam
16 April 2002 15:13 UTC



> 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.


^^^^^^^

CB: I don't see any historical substantiation adduced here.

So, I assert the opposite. It is a historical distortion.

What is democracy , Rob ?

^^^^^

Democratic centralism leads to bureaucratic centralism

^^^^

CB: What's "bureaucratic" centralism ? "Bureaucracy" has been historically substantiated to be a muddle headed concept. What concept are you putting forth in "bureaucracy" that is not already in "centralism" ? You must be mean more centralized than you prefer.

However, you are just asserting these. You haven't demonstrated that a good balance between democracy and centralism has not been maintained in many parties aspiring to democratic 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;

^^^^^^^

CB: I already did. Read Lenin on Marx on these issues.

^^^^^^^


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.

^^^^^^^^

CB: This sounds more like intellectual email lists and universities than historically existent democratic centralist parties, which parties have been  a lot more in touch with masses of people ( like in Venezuela !) than said email lists and universities.  You really kid yourself when you claim that Communist Parties have not been in close conection with masses. As if Nazism or U.S. Nazism in Vietnam could have been defeated with the Parties detached from the masses.

^^^^^

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

Cheers,
Rob.