John Riddell:
“Many socialist groups today seek to shape their organizational principles in the spirit of ‘democratic centralism’ identified with V.I. Lenin.”

Bjorn-Olav Kvidal;
Which groups? State-capitalist nationalist leftist groups, especially groups striving to establish party state and party dictatorship. Their ideology is based upon an elitist leadership, a general staff, to lead the masses considered by the same groups unfit to lead themselves. This ideology is born in the upper classes. That is why there is a close link between centralism and discipline – from discipline to an authoritarian method demolishes the little democratic rights which may exist before the elitist machinery is established.

John Riddell:
“The basic concept underlying “democratic centralism,” far from unfamiliar or complex, is in fact common to most voluntary organizations of working people. Its essence is simple: all group participants are engaged, either directly or through elected leaderships, in making collective decisions, and all are then obliged to help carry them out. This principle applies to workers organizing a sporting or social club as much as it does to a revolutionary socialist party. But internal democracy and discipline had a unique meaning in the Comintern that flowed from the nature of the International’s goal.”

Bjorn-Olav Kvidal:
This is common in organisations where the leadership is giving orders and that the members or participants are suppose to obey. This is not a proletarian way of organisation but a bourgeois method seen in the capitalist factories and its military units. The method is based upon elitism and unconditional discipline to alienate the masses, forcing them to be spectators to their own revolution.

Internal democracy did not exist in Comintern which can be seen in Lenin’s 21 thesis. His goal was to establish a single party state ruling the whole planet. Comintern was to be ruled from Moscow and the majority of its leadership to live in the same city, easy to control and manipulate by the existing party dictatorship. That is why many progressive parties and organisation where blocked from membership despite the fact they had a majority of the workers behind them. Class struggle would of course put strain on a wide, non-Leninist, organisation, but that is the only way forward unless the aim is to reduce revolutionary groups to sects. This was the outcome of the Leninist project despite his attack on left-wing revolutionaries.

John Riddell:
“The parties of the Comintern aimed to educate, rally, and organize working people in a social revolution to overturn capitalist power and institute workers’ rule. The Russian revolution of 1917 was taken as a model of what might be achieved in the near future. This revolutionary task had to be carried out in the teeth of fierce opposition by the present ruling elite, which defended its power using every available means – from police repression to murderous military assault. A breakdown in membership discipline – that is, a failure to carry out agreed decisions – could be catastrophic for both the party as a whole and for its individual members. Disciplined functioning by members was essential not only to success but to survival.”

Bjorn-Olav Kvidal;
A social revolution is not a military task but an action of the masses themselves. There are no place for a General Secretary or a Commandante to rule from the top. Elitist parties are always separated from the masses despite their empty slogans to know the interests of the masses better than the masses themselves. Lenin himself was very keen that intellectual and revolutionary workers should leave their ordinary jobs and working in the party apparatus. What a naive idea that a party can be communist if it is filled and controlled by people who are not ordinary working class people.

John Riddell:
“A revolutionary party’s course of action is not predetermined; it must be deduced from the social and political context and the lessons of experience. Policy flows not from leadership decisions alone but from perceptions of the party ranks. The authority of leadership bodies flow from a democratic election process based on membership discussion of the party’s course of action.

Most revolutionary socialist groups and parties embrace these concepts, viewing them as the lesson of experience in the epoch of the Russian revolution a century ago. They often view it as an inheritance from the Bolshevik party of Russia and its central leader, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.”

Bjorn-Olav Kvidal:
What a bloody lie! The Bolshevik party actually abolished elections to the soviets and in the end established a party dictatorship. The factories were ruled with iron discipline and all power to the technical managers while the employees were denied a majority rule in the board of the factories. Read Maurice Brinton’s article at libcom in the section of 1918. At the Comintern congress in 1922 were the military mobilised in Moscow to create siege around the areas of the congress so the foreign delegates were prevented to get in touch with the masses.

…

John Riddell:
“The Second Congress took place in Moscow fifteen months later, in July–August 1920.[2] The three-week event brought together 218 delegates from 37 countries to lay down the International’s basic programmatic and organizational principles. The need for centralism was often cited in the congress, usually with reference to the International as a whole. Many delegates stressed their desire that the Comintern function as a single, centralized party, directed by a general staff based – at least initially – in Moscow. But some of the forces seeking to join the Comintern were unfamiliar with or resistant to concepts of organizational discipline.”

Bjorn-Olav Kvidal;
Lenin and the Bolshevik party did not accept any opposition in the party and it was the same in Comintern. Parties which did not submit to the 21 thesis where fought and their leaders exposed to slanders. This control was necessary for the new state-capitalist class which had full power of the means of production and its surplus had already in March 1921 used military forces to massacre workers and sailors at the Kronstadt city and its naval base. In Rapallo April 1922 had the Bolshevik regime signed a treaty to rearm Germany. Reichswehr and Luftwaffe were accepted to train its military officers in Bolshevik Russia. The German military was given access to develop its military aeroplanes, tanks and poison gas with gruesome payback 22 June 1941. This Bolshevik act of betrayal against proletarian internationalism manifested the regime’s entrance to the imperialist world market.

John Riddell:
“Lenin set the tone for the congress on this issue through a short passage in his pamphlet, “Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder. Written for the congress, the pamphlet was provided to the delegates in translation when they arrived in Moscow. Lenin called on Communist forces to build:

a rigorously centralised party with iron discipline, [with] the ability to become masters of every sphere, every branch, and every variety of political and cultural work.[3]”

Björn-Olav Kvidal:
This is the ideology of state-fascism where all democratic rights the masses had won in 1917 were abolished and destroyed. The first decree the Sovnarkom, the government, tried to implement 8th of November 1917 was to forbid all newspapers which did not accept the October revolution. Later all opposition newspapers were forbidden under stern and strict supervision of a state machinery where some 90% of all top positions were people recruited from the Tsarist state apparatus and elites from the former capitalist factories – invited into the Bolshevik party state through the back door.

The non-Russian parties had an obligation to complete submission to all decisions by Comintern. Their right to engaged in any internal opposition was not tolerated and those who tried were of course ousted. However, Comintern embraced a good relationship with Tyrkia under Ataturk while Trotsky claimed support to the proletarian masses had to be abolished not to be any burden to the foreign policy of Bolshevik Russia. As Deutschland’s military was given assistance to rearm was also the bourgeois Guonmandang under Chang Kai-shek in China supported and armed which ended in a massacre on workers and students in Shanghai 1927.

A new International will be build based upon workers and popular democracy with no fatherland. Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin raised the slogan in defence of “the socialist fatherland” but the working class masses has no fatherland at all – only an international world to win.

Bjorn-Olav Kvidal,
Stockholm

Thanks, Alexander, for the pointer to the Prometheus Reseach Library translation of the Comintern organizational theses.
The Comintern Publishing Project has always had a policy of doing new translations of Comintern documents, making comparisons where possible with different language versions. We’re interested in learning of significant discrepancies in the existing translations of various resolutions. Sometimes the differences are crucial — such as regarding the workers’ government demand.
See https://johnriddell.com/2011/08/14/the-comintern%E2%80%99s-unknown-decision-on-workers%E2%80%99-governments/.
The PRS is among the many research institutes that have helped this project at various times and whose assistance has been acknowledged in our volumes.

Did the translation team for the 2015 volume on the Third Congress which you cite consider this translation in its own work on this document?

Would you have a view on the merit of that older version? Thanks for any insight.

PRS Series No. 1: Guidelines on the organizational structure of communist parties, on the methods and content of their work : resolution of the third congress of the Communist International 12 July 1921 : new translation of the final German text including reports and discussion from the congress

https://archive.org/details/guidelinesonorga00newy

“…it is important to observe very strictly the statutes of the organization — regular meetings of the rank and file, discussions before conventions, regular conventions and the right of the minority to express its opinion (there should be a comradely attitude and no threats of expulsion.) You know that was never, *never* done in the old [Russian] party. Expulsion of a comrade was a tragic event, and was done only for moral reasons and not because of a critical attitude.

“We had some comrades in opposition after the revolution. We had comrades who became specialists in criticism, not in principled matters but in minor ones. There was Stukhov, an intelligent man and a courageous one, as well as witty, and at every party meeting he found something to say, prefacing with a joke, and he had applause. Imagine during the civil war — there were many things to object to the leadership, and he took advantage of it. But nobody proposed to expel him, but from time to time we explained to the members and he began to lose his audience, and after a while Stukhov became a ridiculous figure.”

Trotsky goes on to explain how criticism he terms “opposition only for the sake of opposition,” can become more of a problem when the social composition of the organization is not “a workers organization”. The entire discussion is worth reading in full.

As is the entire bulletin which has bearing on the issue of the application of the concept of democratic centralism — not in an abstract sense, but in the framework of the actual situation that existed in the U.S. movement at the time.

Also of interest is the introduction written by Fred Feldman and based on a class he presented to a Socialist Workers Party branch in 1978. It includes this useful and in my view important point:

“The fact is that while a combat party like the SWP operates on the basis of firm centralism, it is primarily teamwork and collaboration that counts in making day-to-day decisions. Political leadership authority comes from the ability to contribute to and guide this process.”