He is an interesting article on “Democratic Centralism” by Prof. Javeed Alam. An active debate is underway in the Indian Left on the relevance of so-called ‘principles of party discipline’ which were attributed to Lenin. Lenin’s Democratic Centralism has to be understood in the proper historical context.
Can Democratic Centralism Be Conducive to Democracy? By Javeed Alam Democratic centralism has generally been accepted as the principle for building communist organisations, whereas it was only meant to address the organisational demands of a particular historical context in Tsarist Russia. By institutionalising centralism and leaving democracy undefined, this organisational form has fostered authoritarian tendencies and undermined the growth of new ideas in the working class movement. This is seen in India where the engagement of the communist parties with democracy has remained ad hoc and untheorised. This article argues that democratic centralism has been an obstacle for the communist parties to be able to creatively respond to new situations and conditions. Read Full at: http://epw.in/epw/uploads/articles/13939.pdf Vijaya Kumar Marla ________________________________________________ YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
