Re: [Marxism] John Molyneux on party democracy
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
Re: [Marxism] John Molyneux on party democracy
Louis, I haven't read your article so I'm not sure if you mentioned the context that Molyneux's article is being written in. Molyneux is a strong voice in the SWP attacking the (in my opinion, wrongheaded) no-platform policy BNP policy. The few months before the SWP conference (now) are apparently the only times when members can form factions. On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 5:20 PM, Louis Proyect l...@panix.com wrote: In the latest issue of International Socialism, a quarterly put out by the British SWP, John Molyneux has an 8600 word article “On Party Democracy” that raises some interesting questions but fails to get to the heart of the real problem in self-declared Leninist vanguards like the SWP. 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
Re: [Marxism] John Molyneux on party democracy
Rosa L meant to send this link that works: http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2009_02.htm Les 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
