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Democratic centralism is a political concept referring to the governance of political parties and groups. It
is generally regarded as being an element of Leninism, and sometimes as a synonym
for it. The term was adopted by Stalin in his famous book on Leninism and it is from
this work that most commentaries derive.
In Lenin's lifetime, democratic centralism was generally viewed as a set of principles for the organising of a revolutionary
workers' party. Lenin's model for such a party, which he repeatedly discussed as being democratic centralist, was the German
Social Democratic Party.
Similarly, Lenin's theoretical model of democratic centralism was adapted from the work of Karl Kautsky as he makes clear in his pamphlet What is to Be Done?
which is popularly seen as the founding text of democratic centralism.
As Lenin described it, democratic centralism consisted of "freedom of discussion and criticism, unity of action". The
democratic aspect of this methodology describes the freedom of members
of the political party to discuss and debate matters of policy and direction, but once the decision by the party was made by
majority vote, all members were
expected to follow that decision unquestioningly in public. This latter aspect represented the centralism. The doctrine of democratic
centralism served as a source of the split between the Bolsheviks and the
Mensheviks, who supported a looser party discipline, within the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party in 1903.
After the successful consolidation of power by the party, the Bolshevik leadership instituted an ostensibly "temporary" ban on
factions within the party in 1921. This precipitated the end of the "democratic" element of
democratic centralism within the party membership, and with the rise of Stalin to a
position of absolute power within the party (and the Soviet Union), there
was no freedom of discussion within the party, except by members of the ruling party Politburo.
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