Organic Centralism: How and Why

Two fundamental principles of the revolutionary organization have always been centralism and strict discipline.

In our party, centralism – as a unity of structure and movement – is best described as “organic”. Organic centralism is a way of life that the political formation of the proletariat has managed to select after passing through a historical course and different stages of its struggle against the bourgeoisie.

Origins of the Movement and Democratic Centralism

At the beginning of the proletarian movement, different political trends appeared within it. In addition to the Marxist movement, there were tendencies which, although not communist, had their own traditions which were recognized within the workers’ movement. And the experiences of the class struggle had not yet overcome them. In the First International there were anarchists and initially also the followers of Mazzini. In the Second International, reformist Marxism coexisted with revolutionary Marxism. This was until, inside all national parties of the time, opposition grew between the two very different parties, tending towards splitting, prepared in years of hard and bitter opposition of programs and tactics. However, the left-wing tendencies, until the time of consummate splitting, never failed to centralism and discipline, neither in theory nor in practice.

In this situation of relative immaturity and tactical inexperience, the revolutionary movement adopted democratic centralism, not as a principle but as a “congress mechanism”. This was considered as a modest instrument for taking practical decisions, while waiting for the lessons of history to show the best way and the refinement of the correct doctrine.

The First World War and the October Revolution definitively marked the failure of reformist socialism, and, since then, we can say that there is no longer a “class reformism”, that is proletarian, but all reformism belongs to the ruling class, and it is its exclusive expression. The birth of the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party takes place before this historical passage and it endures all its difficulties.

Free from the Form of Democracy

Despite the need to use the democratic mechanism, the organizations of the working class have always tended towards a superior way of functioning. The modus operandi used by the First International in its best years, as shown by the minutes, the correspondence, the relationship between comrades and between centre and periphery, correspond to the superior form of centralism that our tendency will call organic. Even the Third International was on the way – albeit not entirely consciously – to an organic functioning, with its healthy purpose of overcoming within itself both the fractions and the democratic form, always hoping for unanimous votes. These results could certainly not be obtained by statute, but only be the product of a theoretical, programmatic and tactical homogeneity. Also in this regard the Italian Communist Left requested in 1920 the conditions for admission to the International be tightened up.

In Italy in 1921 the revolutionary tendency separated from the reformist one of the PSI and the Communist Party of Italy was born. This, like the Russian Party, was still resorting to democratic centralism, but the comrades had already well understood that the degree of programmatic homogeneity, reached after 70 years of proletarian struggle since 1848, was now such that the organization could do better without that mechanism.

In 1922 we wrote in “The Democratic Principle”: “It is not appropriate to elevate this use of the democratic mechanism to a principle. Alongside a task of consultation analogous to the legislative task of the State apparatus, the party has an executive task which corresponds in extreme moments of struggle, even to that of an army, which demands the maximum of hierarchical discipline (…) We cannot conceive of a majority decision of the party as being aprioristically happy in its choices as that of an infallible judge (…).Even in an organism in which, like the party, the composition of the mass is the result of a selection, through spontaneous voluntary adhesion and the control of recruitment, the pronouncement of the majority is not, for itself, the best (…) The democratic criterion is for us, so far, an accidental material for the construction of our internal organization and the formulation of the party statutes: it is not the indispensable platform. That is why we will not make the well-known organisational formula of “democratic centralism” one of our principle. Democracy cannot be a principle for us”.

Organic centralism is neither a formula nor an organisational form. There are no articles of an internal “organic regulation” of the party, as an absolute guarantee against crises, against its degeneration. Organic centralism is nothing more than the dialectical overcoming of the democratic mechanism within the party, from which it has come to free itself spontaneously in its historical journey.

Short-term Objections

By taking away democracy, it is objected that all the “power” will be concentrated in the centre of the party, who will be the only one deciding its “political line”.

It is easy to answer that the “political line” is already established by our program, by our theses, to which all the militia, centre and periphery, voluntarily submit. In the Party no one commands and all are commanded. No one commands because, impersonally and objectively, there is nothing to decide at this point in time. All are commanded because the “orders” are already written in the uninterrupted line of our program, stamped in the lessons of the counterrevolutions taken by the “historical party”.

Therefore, the tactical lines of action are the result of a study, which the party tends to do collectively, picking up the thread of what was done before, from Marx to date. It is no coincidence that it is good practice and method for us to reread and study well what the party has written in the past before risking a new evaluation.

We believe that tomorrow the party will be able to carry out its function as the governing body of the Revolution if the human ensemble that forms it succeeds in transmitting not only the correct doctrine but also its correct way of being and relationship within it. Form and content are linked in a team of fighters for a historical cause that goes beyond the individual and all personal and group interests.

For two-thirds of a century now, it is in this environment that our intensive section, regional and general meetings have been held.

Is there no debate in our Party? We proudly answer that in the party, no, there is no debate. There is a continuous scientific study that leads comrades to work together to better address the issues to be resolved, which certainly come to be raised. But no debate, no congresses, with a final vote. A disagreement on tactics is the result of an incomplete knowledge of the issue in the party as a whole. As long as there is no clarity, this is not achieved either by any count of the votes at the base or by an order from above, but only by further investigation of the issue and its empirical verification, through the results obtained in the action.

It is possible that the party makes mistakes, of course, but it will not be certain of not making them and learning their lessons through the method, now only gossipy and personalist, of counting votes. The party does not protect itself with an organizational form, not with formal rules of representation and decision, but only through the correct revolutionary work and the direct and continuous commitment of all its militants.

Organic centralism and future society

The Communist Party, as written in the Theses, is a prefiguration of the natural and spontaneous way of associating of the future humanity.

In our “From the dream and need of communism to the scientific Marxist revolutionary program” we write:
“Our organizational model also postulates and practices organic centralism, not so much and only to benefit from the “scientific” method, but to enjoy a “society” that prefigures communism, in which it is not debated, but sculpted, in research and struggle, what the revolutionary tradition has accumulated in terms of experiences and life of species, with enthusiasm, in a vision of time that combines the perspective and sense of differences with the unique vision that binds together the pitecanthropus armed with club (by the way: it seems that it was mild, but not stupid and helpless, symbol of tribal unity that recalls the beast from which perhaps we descend….) with the communist man, in a single Time that is not in contrast with the only Space, according to the close and dialectic relationship that Einstein has indicated, and image of a Cosmos (order) that only the communist society will be able to reach”.

The party is at the same time the guardian of the doctrine and the organ that by holding it as a weapon will be able to guide the class in the revolution, abandoning forever within it the individualism of the rotten bourgeois society.