Theory of the Governance of a Communist Party

Lenin’s remarks on how the Communist Party should govern the country, i.e., lead the state affairs.

The socialist state is ruled and led by the vanguard of the working class. This question is as indisputable as the fact that the state of the capitalist countries is always held and governed by bourgeois parties. After the October Revolution, there was the critique both in public and in the All-Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), which accused it as practicing “single-party dictatorship”, and “single party autocracy” and raised the slogan of “Power to the Soviets, not to the parties!” and shouted “No communists in the soviets!” The opposition within the Party proposed that the leadership of the Supreme Soviet of the National Economy should be given to the “All-Russia Congress of Producers”, etc. Lenin, on the other hand, insisted on the basic principle that the dictatorship of the proletariat must be implemented during the transitional period after the victory of the proletarian revolution, but also there was a process of understanding and practice as to what kind of political system should be adopted. He originally wanted to implement the “direct democracy” system of the Paris Commune, in which the people themselves would manage the state. Later, due to the economic and cultural backwardness of Soviet Russia and the complicated class situation, it was impossible for the masses to know how to run the state immediately, correspondingly, the Soviets were in fact organs that were administered for the workers through the advanced strata of the proletariat rather than through the working masses. Later, the system of administration by the masses of people was transformed into an administration system wherein the party began leading the people. Let us look at this party system. After the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks, who made up the majority of the Soviets, formed a new government and became the ruling party. In order to unite the masses, especially the peasants, representatives of several parties participated in the government as People’s Commissars (ministers), in effect exploring a multi-party cooperation system under the leadership of the Communist Party. By the end of 1922, the Soviet Union had formed one state and one party and was replaced by a system of alliance between parties and non-parties.

Here the leadership of the Communist Party was “the general leadership of the work of all state organs”, rather than an excessively frequent and trivial intervention. The resolution adopted by the Eighth Congress of the Russian Communist Party stated that in no case should the functions of the party organization be confused with those of the state organ, the Soviets. Because the party leads the Soviets but does not represent them. Lenin emphasized the need to clearly delineate the responsibilities of the Party (and its Central Committee) and the Soviet authority, to increase the responsibility and initiative of the Soviet officials and the Soviet organs, and to solve the problem of the lack of separation of party and government, the substitution of the party for government, or the phenomenon of the excessive party and government positions. The task of the party is to “exercise the general leadership over the work of all state organs”, which means that the Party’s political leadership for the state organs depends on its political strategy and tactical correctness, not on its interference in day-to-day administrative affairs. Lenin advocated that the ruling party should carry out its decisions through the Soviet organs within the limits of the Soviet Constitution, and never allow the party organizations and members at all levels to have a special status and special powers above the Constitution, let alone undermine it.

The ruling party must always represent the fundamental interests of the masses and maintain close ties with them. Lenin warned the party that for the vanguard of the working class leading a large country, “one of the most serious and terrible danger is to be detached from the masses”. At the Ninth Congress of the Russian Communist Party in 1920, Lenin proposed that there should be a link between the Party Central Committee and the trade union masses, without which we could not govern. Thus, the “trade union affiliation theory” replaced the “nationalization of trade unions”. In December of the same year, the concept of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” was proposed. This system consisted of the Communist Party, the Soviets, the trade unions, the cooperatives, the Young Communist League, and the women organizations. In this system, the party was like an engine that organized the whole society through ties and made the whole system function. A unified political system of the party, the government, and the masses were to be formed in this way. It, consequently, strengthened the class and mass bases of the ruling party.

Lenin emphasized that the party is the vanguard and the leader of the proletariat in leading the political power. Only in this way can it crush the resistance and attacks of enemies at home and abroad during the transitional period, maintain and consolidate the dictatorship of the proletariat, successfully carry out socialist transformation and construction, realize the great historical mission of the proletariat, and at the height of the development of world communism, with the final abolition of classes, the state, and the party also diminish on their own. This is where the Communist Party’s governance is fundamentally different from that of other ruling parties.