>>32440
> I agree with him, which makes me wonder why you post something that disagrees with your own take? Have you not read the series you are referencing?
Uhh what? Nothing I posted contradicted him or the articles. I think maybe its a miscommunication as when I refer to Democratic Centralism I am refering to the post civil war Bolshevik model of the party.

"Communist parties need a slight update to the Democratic Centralism model since western communist parties aren't under the same conditions as the Bolsheviks in civil war Russia when the democratic centralist model was developed."

>"That article was directed to helping to rescue the phrase from ‘misuse’; but, as I indicated there, this ‘misuse’ goes all the way back to decisions taken in the Russian Communist Party and Comintern in 1919-22, which were understandable in the (very difficult) circumstances of the time, but turn out in hindsight to have been mistaken - and now serve merely as ideology for ‘left’ versions of managerialism. To reclaim ‘democratic centralism’ therefore requires us to go back to its earlier history."
>"With the benefit of hindsight, all of these decisions were mistakes. They were mistakes made under conditions of war, counterrevolutionary foreign intervention and civil war - and in an overwhelmingly peasant-majority country. "

First world countries are obviously not peasant-majority countries so the decisions required to maintain control of a peasant-majority country immediatly after a civil war and the creation of the NEP are not neccessarily relevent.

" which is somewhat due to the fact that capitalists do not want to hire full time communist revolutionaries so full time staff in Communist Parties try their hardest to keep the gravy train rolling"

>"But the control of information flows by the party centre remains present in these organisations, and the factions function as in bourgeois political parties: that is, the full-time apparat usually remains undislodged.
Behind this phenomenon is both a practical problem and an ideology. The practical problem is the equivalent of two prongs of a fork. The first prong is that capital generally offers workers the choice between overwork, on the one hand, and serious poverty, on the other. The result is that it is hard to do the work required to publish papers, run campaigns, organise meetings, and so on, without full-timers. To the extent that we do do without full-timers, we are generally forced to rely on people who have other advantages under capitalism - with the same risk of inequality as when employing full-timers. The second prong is that capitalists are generally unenthusiastic about employing people whose CVs include periods of full-time work for left organisations (or even trade unions).
Between these two prongs, there is, therefore, a natural pressure of capitalist society on workers’ organisations to employ long-service full-timers. The larger the organisation, the more these long-service full-timers are needed, and also the more they are drawn into the common political culture of capitalist-bureaucratic managerialism."

"I''m not saying completely abandon the model but update it for modern conditions and iron out the flaws that exist in current Communist Parties."
>" all of which could be addressed by a properly democratic centralist system."

This is a point that I think we both agree on, I think first world parties should have a properly democratic centralist system but one which would resemble the SAP,SDAP and SPD or similar to the Bennite proposed model of the Labour Party.
>"SDAP unambiguously rejected the model of being run by a directly elected president with unlimited powers. Instead, it was run by an elected committee. It was also an organisation composed of local branches, and so on, with their own extensive powers, especially the power to publish their own press - a noteworthy feature"
The problem with modern Communist Parties is the fact that they're labour monarchs controlled by either one person or a small clique such as Alan Wood in the IMT or David Avakian in the RCP, who prevent local branches from having their own lines or even being able to communicate with eachother because of factionalism which Macnair mentions. I recall hearing from current and former PSL members on bunckerchan's leftypol that branches are tightly controlled by the top and branches are not able to communcate with each other.
>"‘permanent factions’ (existing outside the formal pre-conference period) were banned; with the effect that horizontal communication beyond the single local branch, though not formally banned, was liable to be treated as ‘factionalism’."
Having parties controlled from the top and not allowing branches having their own lines is what encourages splits as if a person has a theoretical disagreement with the party line theres not much for them to do but split off onto their own party. This was something I saw encouraged by a PSL member on a PSL thread, that if a person disagrees with a party line they should just leave. Which is a view Macnair disagrees with
>" The first is that - as I have already said - disagreement is normal. The watchword is ‘Freedom of discussion, unity in action’. The existence of disagreements and efforts to persuade others do not constitute undesirable ‘factionalism’. Nor are sharp expressions of disagreement ‘abuse’ or ‘sectarianism’. A party should seek to draw out and clarify its disagreements in the decision-making process. Conversely, dissentients have a duty to raise their views within party channels, rather than merely walking out."


I believe western communist parties should adopt the SPD-style democratic centralist since wester communist parties aren't clandestine parties like the Bolsheviks were in Tsarist russia, and it is a model that works for the reason Macnair describes in
https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1252/reclaiming-democratic-centralism/
and
https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1253/negations-of-democratic-centralism/

If you still believe my views contradicts Macnair I would be more than happy to hear why from you