12 Facts About Democratic centralism

Democratic centralism is a practice in which political decisions reached by voting processes are binding upon all members of the political party.

Democratic centralism has been practised by social democratic and democratic socialist parties as well.

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 regimes.

However, Vladimir Lenin's model for such a party, which he repeatedly discussed as being "democratic centralist", was the German Social Democratic centralism Party, inspired by remarks made by the social democrat Jean Baptista von Schweitzer.

Lenin described democratic centralism as consisting of "freedom of discussion, unity of action".

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Doctrine of democratic centralism served as one of the sources of the split between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks.

Group of Democratic Centralism was a group in the Soviet Communist Party who advocated different concepts of party democracy.

Democratic centralism argued that factionalism leads to less friendly relations among members and that it can be exploited by enemies of the party.

Democratic centralism combines central leadership with local initiative and creative activity and with the responsibility of each state body and official for the work entrusted to them.

Much of the time between the era of Joseph Stalin and the 1980s, the principle of democratic centralism meant that the Supreme Soviet, while nominally vested with great lawmaking powers, did little more than approve decisions already made at the highest levels of the Communist Party.

Leninist practice of democratic centralism has been introduced during the Republic of China era to the Kuomintang in 1923.

Democratic centralism is stated in Article 3 of the present Constitution of the People's Republic of China:.