As socialists build political organisations, we must critically examine the structures we inherit and the forms our organisations take. How should decisions be made? Who should have the power to make them? To what extent must leadership be transparent and accountable? Leadership will inevitably emerge, but the key question is how to ensure it remains answerable to the organisation. Rather than simply accepting structures passed down by the workers’ movement, we must critically assess them, ensuring they serve the struggle rather than reproducing unaccountable hierarchies.

In socialist politics there is a major tendency towards organisations that are dominated by permanent leaderships and unelected bureaucrats. Amongst the Marxist left, this kind of party, one that is rigid and uncompromising in its treatment of opposition from below, is often called a sect. Amongst the broader socialist left, this often manifests as more and more control being invested in elected representatives or the parliamentary party. In both cases, the rank and file is kept from the levers of power through visible and invisible barriers, whether it’s via the election of leadership slates, bans on factions, the appointment of unaccountable bureaucrats or the centralising of decision making power in untransparent leadership bodies. Despite this tendency being negative for a party’s development and internal culture, it is an approach to party organising that is often defended rigorously by socialists and communists of all shades. In this article, I will instead argue for the right of the rank and file membership to have control over its leadership, to the right of the workers to be in charge of their workers parties, and in short, the right of the rank and file to democracy. Only with a socialist party controlled from the bottom up can we make a reality Marx’s declaration that; “the emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves”.¹

On Leadership

If we are to make the case for democratic control over the Party’s leadership, we first must take a step back and make the argument for why such a leadership is necessary in the first place. Some anarchists will ask why leadership is necessary at all. Why allow the formation of a leadership if it serves as a danger to the democratic functioning of a political organisation? A valid question in one sense, though a notion that must be put to bed. 

Whether leaderships or centres of power form within organisations is not within the membership of said groups control. Where people gather, networks form. These networks, often friendships and cliques, will form simply due to the social nature of humans, and where formal leadership structures don’t exist, these informal networks will become the informal leadership forms. Jo Freeman, in her well-known article The Tyranny of Structurelessness, outlined how informal leadership structures naturally emerge in groups.² She argued that truly leaderless groups are a myth. The lack of a clear leadership structure, and in particular a formal opposition to such structures existing, only serves to mask the actual centres of power and leadership that exist, and make it impossible to hold them to account.³ This lack of transparency often turns political disagreements into personal conflicts, undermining the organisation’s political culture.

We can see, therefore, that clear and formal leadership structures are necessary. Freeman rightly states that no matter what, informal networks and centres of power will exist, however if an organisation rests the real power of decision making and control within a formal structure, then these informal networks will need to compete with one another if they wish to wield that formal power, and so be accountable to the rank and file through elections. 

On The Party

Similarly to the question of leadership, one might wonder whether this tendency of stratification and bureaucracy within socialist parties is not just a symptom of the political party form, with its more rigid structures and operating procedures. One may question why we need a political party at all. If the working class is to be the revolutionary subject, why can’t it simply play out its historic role simply as it is, or as it tends to spontaneously organise in times of struggle: committees & councils? Once again, a valid question, and one with a fairly clear answer. 

The 1871 Paris Commune was a defining moment in working-class struggle. After France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War and the fall of Napoleon III, Paris endured a brutal siege. The Republic’s surrender and the German Empire’s proclamation at Versailles fueled worker unrest. Backed by mutinous National Guards, they seized the city and established the first fledgling workers’ state – the social republic. Lasting just over two months, the Commune was crushed in a bloody crackdown, with over 10,000 communards massacred.

The Bolsheviks came to power under somewhat similar circumstances. Russia, weakened by war, famine, and deep contradictions, was on the verge of collapse. Unlike the Communards of the Paris Commune, however, the Bolsheviks were not crushed; their Republic survived the initial waves of reaction.What was different about the October Revolution that allowed it to survive? One key reason was that the most advanced layers of the workers and their allies amongst the peasantry were organised in the Bolshevik, and the Left Socialist Revolutionary Parties, and these parties were able to coordinate actions outside the immediate circumstances of Moscow and St Petersburg.⁴ All across Russia, the Bolsheviks and their allies were able to seize control of the cities, towns, and railway stations, without first getting the approval of the Soviets.⁵ The Bolsheviks were able to put conscious direction on to the popular wave of discontent amongst the masses, their party was able to act as a conduit, and thus become the instrument of the working class, which it then used to resist the attempts to quash the uprising, and take proactive steps to consolidate what had been won. Ultimately, it was the existence of these mass political organisations that allowed the working classes of Russia to not be isolated and disoriented when the moments for uprising emerged, and socialists todays correctly draw this lesson from our shared history and so organise in national parties. 

It follows then that if we take the above as being true; that is that the party form is the necessary form of working class political organisation and is necessary for our conquest of political power, and that such a party and broader movement will require and will inevitably produce leadership, then our task becomes how do we ensure that this leadership remains under the control of the rank and file. In order to figure out the answer, we must first understand what it is about the leadership and bureaucrats of a party that often make them, as a grouping, such a threat to the democracy and radical programme of the party. 

On the threat represented by leaders and bureaucrats 

As we have already established, leaders and structures will arise in parties and political organisations, regardless of whether they are formalised or not, so it’s best that they be formalised, so that they can be held accountable. However, simply formalising the existence of structures and thus leaders does not do away with the threat they can represent to the democratic functioning of a party. Similarly, while bureaucrats (in the case of political parties, staffers/fulltimers/paid party functionaries) by their very nature are formalised, they too can as a group threaten the democratic functioning of a party if further measures are not taken. 

While elections are necessary for advancing a socialist programme, they also make a socialist party particularly vulnerable to these pressures. However, parties that do not engage in elections are in no way immune, as is evidenced by the undemocratic abstentionist parties that exist within the Irish and international socialist political scene. Nevertheless, electoralism does present a unique set of circumstances and heighten the triggers for the threat. 

The more a party becomes embedded into the electoral system, the more a party can become economically reliant on getting re-elected. In particular, the party representatives in the Dail, the councils etc. feel this pressure quite acutely. When their income is reliant on whether they are returned to their seats at each interval, the incentive to take measures to ensure one’s re-electability at the expense of the radical programme of the party is very much present. There are two ways this can concretely manifest. Firstly, the elected representatives can take measures to centralise more and more of the decision making power in the hands of  some unaccountable body(often a parliamentary party). This is so that party policy can be decided by the representatives themselves, rather than the rank and file. Secondly, they can orient themselves away from radical messaging for working class communities in an effort to appeal to the “middle class”(that is a section of the less hard pressed proletariat and the petit bourgeois) vote. Depending on the constituency the middle class can be more numerous and reliable in their voting patterns while more easily “spooked” by radical socialist messaging. The working class on the other hand outside of periods of struggle, and as a result of living under a political system that acts directly against their interests, are less likely to turn out to vote. . This creates a strong incentive to build up one’s support in middle class communities rather than working class ones, if your sole goal is to get re-elected, which as we have outlined, is what the objective pressures push representatives towards. 

Like elected representatives, a party’s staffers, functionaries, and full-time organisers depend on its electoral and financial success for their livelihood. In Ireland, the State funds political parties who have reached certain thresholds of vote share. This, alongside the share of their earnings that the elected representative of a party tithe to the organisation, can make up a significant portion of the funding a socialist party has, especially if it is small. Whether the party gains access to these vital funds is entirely reliant on how successfully it does in any given election. Once again, the pressure to conform to establishment politics is there, and weighs heavily on the party and on its staff. The public representatives and staffers economic interests thus become separated from the workers they have been chosen to represent/work for. 

Strong, committed, cadre candidates and staff can resist these pressures. Of their own volition, they will put the interests of the party and the radical program it espouses, over their own immediate economic interests. However, unless the party is only to contest a seat in an election, or to hire a new employee when the ideal candidate is lined up, this solution is not viable. We cannot simply rely on the character of the candidate. Structural measures need to be put in place to ensure that the elected representatives of the party are accountable to the rank and file membership and to their democratically elected leaders and bodies. 

What can these measures look like?

In The Civil War in France, Marx analysed the events of the Paris Commune, and its short but eventful existence.⁶ Within its shell he recognised the embryo of the workers state, of the social republic. In his study of the events of 1871, he moved past many of his previous positions and ultimately concluded that the working class would be unable to lay their hands upon the ready-made instruments of the capitalist state. In order to truly take political control of society, the working class would have to smash the old state and build anew. 

Among the most important measures outlined by Marx, was the principle of elections at all levels of government. Not only were the peoples representatives to be directly elected by universal suffrage, hold their positions for short terms and to be at all times recallable by their constituents, so too were the civil servants; the bureaucrats. Everyone from the post office clerk to the Supreme Court Justice was to be elected by the people and thus accountable to the people. This would ensure that the state would truly remain the servant of the working class; the instrument of their class rule. These bureaucrats and the public representatives were to be paid a working man’s wage, so that they too would be of the working class, not above it. 

From the ashes of the Paris Commune we too can take lessons and measures to address our own situation. Like Marx, we can recognise that the principles the Parisian workers drew up have broad applicability. If, like the workers in the Commune, we are to control our leaders and the necessary bureaucrats our parties employ, then we need to make sure they are accountable to the rank and file membership, and to the rank and file alone. All committees, on the national and branch level, must be elected by a democratic process that engages the active membership within the relevant constituencies. They must be recallable by their constituents at any time. Full-time staff and elected leaders must be paid no more than a skilled worker’s wage. And when these candidates and committees are elected, the delegated power must rest in their hands alone, and not in secret or unaccountable interest groups outside the control of the membership.

We must also recognise that these measures of democratic control are not only important to the present functioning of our parties, but also to ensure that the party remains democratic and accountable to its working class base as it takes political power. As the Bolsheviks learned ultimately too late, most revolutionary states by necessity have a party as its backbone. The Commune state, as supposedly fully realised in The Civil War In France, and as more clearly thearised in State and Revolution is not alone, a model for the transitional period; the dictatorship of the proletariat.⁷ While some of the measures outlined in it are still important for the transitional period, the state that the workers will have to build to weather the inevitable wave of reaction that follows a revolution will still be a state, and will likely still need a standing army, bureaucracy etc.⁸ This state will also necessarily be backed and defended by the party, i.e. a state whose backbone is the workers party, and those organisations won to its radical vision (Unions, Co-ops etc) and its allies. This is why the party being genuinely democratic, and genuinely controlled by the rank and file (and so the working class) is so tremendously important in the long term. If the future workers state is to be democratic, then the party that will serve a key role in said state will too need to be. In a way, we must begin to build the democratic, rank and file controlled structures of the future state today, in our parties.⁹ 

As a final point, it is also worth noting that as part of the overall democratic functioning of the socialist party, the rank and file must have the right to form factions. The right to factions flows directly from the right to criticise and control the leadership. If an incumbent leadership is to be challenged, the membership must be allowed to organise to do so within the party, and this will inevitably result in factionalising.¹⁰ In this way factions play an important role in politicising the struggle within a party, drawing disagreements into the view of the membership and preventing disagreement on strategy from disintegrating into interpersonal squabbles. Any attempts to suppress the right to factions, either through limiting the times when their formation is allowed, as the British SWP does by only allowing factions to form prior to conferences which then must be disbanded afterwards, will only damage the workers ability to maintain control over their parties.¹¹ This position is one that tends to be unpopular amongst the more isolated Marxist left for reasons that are mostly hollow and indicative of a defensive culture, however it is often the parties that permit factions that have the most vibrant internal culture, and thus have the ability to grow beyond the limited scopes of the many sects. This right to factions of course must be tied closely to the responsibility of said factions members to ultimately build the collective project and advance the democratic decisions of the wider party.  There is always the potential that factions within a party may seek to break away and take members with them, however we must have faith in the project we are building and our ability to convince workers and party members of the importance of a mass pluralist socialist party over narrow ideological grouplets. Such an argument would only be damaged by any attempt to do away with the party’s pluralist structure. Fundamentally, the benefits of having permitting factions within a party greatly outweigh the downsides, and only enhance the other measures that keep the power in the hands of the working class. 

Conclusion

Undemocratic leadership and bureaucracy are among the Marxist Left’s biggest challenges today. To rebuild the workers’ movement and reclaim the hope capitalism tried to bury, we must build parties capable of achieving it. And if we are to build such a party; one that does not fall into the same potholes that so many others have over the last number of decades, then we will need to ensure that once and for all the power and control remains squarely in the hands of the rank and file membership of said party. This will only happen if we enshrine the right of the rank and file to control the leadership and bureaucrats. Only then can we create a workers movement by and for the working class, ultimately capable of carrying out its self emancipation.

1. Marx, Karl “General Rules, October 1864”, Marxist.org, Unknown, https://www.marxists.org/history/international/iwma/documents/1864/rules.htm ↩︎
2. Freeman, Jo, “Tyranny of Structurelessness”, Disrupt Now, Anarchist Workers Association, (1970) https://disruptnow.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/The-Tyranny-of-Structurelessness-Jo-Freeman.pdf ↩︎
3. ibid ↩︎
4. McNair, Mike, “Control the Bureaucrats”, The Weekly Worker, Communist Party of Great Britain, (2004) https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/552/control-the-bureaucrats/ ↩︎
5. Ibid ↩︎
6. Marx, Karl “The Civil War in France”, Marxist.org, Unknown, (1871), https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/ ↩︎
7. Ibid ↩︎
8. McNair, Mike, “Control the Bureaucrats”, The Weekly Worker, Communist Party of Great Britain, (2004) https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/552/control-the-bureaucrats/ ↩︎
9. Ibid ↩︎
10. O’Cathail, Brian “In Praise of Factionalism”, Rupture Magazine, R.I.S.E, (2021), https://rupture.ie/articles/in-praise-of-factionalism ↩︎
11. Bhattacharyya, Anindya “Duncan Hallas on permanent factions”, RS21 (2013),
    https://revsoc21.uk/2013/07/19/duncan-hallas-on-permanent-factions/
    ↩︎