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Democratic centralism is the organisational principle of communist states and of most communist parties to reach dictatorship of the proletariat. In practice, democratic centralism means that political decisions reached by voting processes are binding upon all members of the political party. It is mainly associated with Leninism, wherein the party's political vanguard of revolutionaries practice democratic centralism to select leaders and officers, determine policy, and execute it.[1]
Democratic centralism has primarily been associated with Marxist–Leninist and Trotskyist parties,[2][3] but has also occasionally been practised by other democratic socialist and social democratic parties such as South Africa's African National Congress. Scholars have disputed whether democratic centralism was implemented in practice in the Soviet Union and China, pointing to violent power struggles, backhanded political maneuvering, historical antagonisms and the politics of personal prestige in those states.[4]
Socialist states, such as the former Soviet Union and present-day China, have made democratic centralism the organisational principle of the state, and the political power principle being unitary power.
- ^ Lenin, Vladimir (1906). "Report on the Unity Congress of the R.S.D.L.P." "VIII. The Congress Summed Up". Marxists Internet Archive. Retrieved 14 February 2020.
- ^ Lih, Lars (2005). Lenin Rediscovered: What Is to Be Done? in Context. Brill Academic Publishers. ISBN 978-90-04-13120-0.
- ^ Sunkara, Bhaskar (15 January 2020). "The Long Shot of Democratic Socialism Is Our Only Shot". Jacobin. Retrieved 14 February 2020.
- ^ Torigian, Joseph (2022). Prestige, Manipulation, and Coercion: Elite Power Struggles in the Soviet Union and China after Stalin and Mao. Yale University Press.