Thank you for these important comments. I suggest you go back to PART ONE of this series and check out the discussion there of how to define democratic centralism. (https://johnriddell.com/2020/11/08/party-organization-in-lenins-comintern/) In that article, I note that the organizational culture of Lenin’s Comintern was more democratic in several important ways than what became common later on in organizations looking to the Comintern example. I give a link to an article that spells out this point. Please have a look. I would then like to continue this conversation. John Riddell

Neither do you address the really important issue of what I call the separation of powers, that is to say, the issue of administrative functions and those of political decision-making (normally made, and CONTROLLED by the ‘central committee’).

Virtually all Communist parties that I’m familiar with merged these two functions (and not only communist parties, I saw it at work so-to-speak, inside the African National Congress). Thus the fundamental democratic idea behind democratic centralism becomes merely a slogan controlled by the party hierarchy who also control not only the decison-making apparatus but also the actual administration of the party’s structure (the bureaucracy).

An example of this that illustrates just how undemocratic communist parties are, can be seen at work in the example of how a Party Congress works (or doesn’t) when the administrative functions that regulate how a congress works are controlled by the Central Committee which, for example controls who may or may not, propose policy issues, resolutions from the floor (the delegates) of the Congress.

When the party elite control the process of how the Congress (Party) is administered, they de facto control how political decision-making is controlled in THEIR favour. I saw this at work myself when I was delegate to the Young Communist League Congress in the 1960s. The Central Committee not only decided which resolutions (from the dlegates) were permitted to be debated, they also actually controlled the decision-making MECHANISM, the sub-committee that dealt with those proposals from the floor, going as far, for example, or locating that sub-committee in ANOTHER BUILDING and not informing delegates where it was! Call that democratic centralism? My arse!