“Freedom is always and exclusively the freedom of those who think differently.”
—Rosa Luxemburg
How We Run the Party Today Reflects How We Will Run Society Tomorrow
This text starts from the conviction that a left party is a miniature of the society it seeks to build and to run and that its bylaws give an early picture of the kind of administration it would offer if it came to lead the state. The way decisions are made inside the party, the place of the rank and file in making them, the limits on the powers of the leadership and the way it is elected, and the degree of respect for dissenting opinion all give the masses a practical answer to an essential question. Will power in the society we aspire to rest in the hands of the masses themselves and under their continuous oversight, or will it be concentrated in the hands of limited bodies, however good their intentions?
To take one example, a party whose rank and file elect its leadership and hold it to account, in which positions rotate and the right of the minority to express itself openly is protected, offers a working picture of a state in which the people elect those who govern them and hold them to account, in which power changes hands and the rights of the opposition are protected. Hence the importance of bylaws that embody, starting today, the values of democracy, participation, transparency and rotation that we promise society for tomorrow.
The idea for this text came from a debate now under way in the Iraqi left, after the Iraqi Communist Party put its draft bylaws up for public discussion ahead of its Twelfth National Congress.
What I put forward, however, is a view of left organisation in general, and it concerns all parties and organisations of the left, in the Global South and in the West alike. I have written from personal experience in the ranks of the left movement since the 1980s, in which I knew clandestine work and the strict centralism it imposed, a centralism that was at the time a condition of survival and whose historical necessity I fully recognise.
The question carries particular weight in the Middle East and the countries of the Global South, where many organisations of the left still reproduce organisational mechanisms that were shaped under conditions of clandestine work and persecution by dictatorial regimes. Those mechanisms served the forces of the left in their time, and some of their elements may remain necessary wherever repression persists, yet many of them have become outdated and unable to keep pace with the times. Left parties in Europe and North America face similar questions of their own, from declining membership to the drift of the new generation away from traditional party forms. Capitalism, meanwhile, renews its mechanisms of work and its forms of organisation by the minute, and it may prove hard to confront it with organisational structures that have not developed adequately for decades.
The renewal I am calling for rests on four pillars.
The various socialist ideas and experiences, past and present, are approached through an open and critical reading that benefits from their strengths and achievements and learns from their shortcomings and failures, at the intellectual and the organisational level alike.
Knowledge, which is now open and widely accessible and no longer the preserve of a particular group that monopolises the interpretation of reality.
Rights consciousness, which has advanced greatly on questions of freedom of expression, full equality for women, human rights, the rights of minorities, the environment and personal freedoms.
The digital revolution, which has reshaped the way people communicate, organise and express their views.
The text draws on the concepts of the digital left, by which I mean developing the left intellectually and renewing its mechanisms of organisation and leadership on the basis of these pillars. I regard putting party documents up for open public debate as a positive democratic practice, and I hope it becomes the approach of every party of the left. This text is limited to the organisational side and does not deal with party policies and programmes, with which one may agree or disagree on particular points, since the complex conditions the world is living through today leave room for a range of left approaches.
I believe that many of the rules inherited from the organisational model that took shape in the wake of the October Socialist Revolution and that largely prevailed in the twentieth century need today to be developed from within, without breaking with them. Rosa Luxemburg warned early on of the dangers of this model in her book “The Russian Revolution”, which she wrote in her prison cell in 1918 and in which she criticised Lenin and Trotsky. She wrote as a defender of the Russian Revolution against its opponents, and this gives her criticism double value.
Luxemburg held that broad democracy is a condition of building socialism from its very first day and that the real participation of the masses is what corrects mistakes and renews institutions. She wrote that without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of the press and of assembly, and without a free contest of opinions, life fades in every public institution until bureaucracy is the only element left active in it. She described what party organisation comes to in such a case. A few dozen party leaders direct and govern; only a small number among them truly lead, and an elite of the working class is summoned now and then to applaud the speeches and approve the resolutions unanimously.
Her well-known conclusion is that “freedom is always and exclusively the freedom of those who think differently.” This criticism of hers holds today for every left organisation that lacks free elections and open competition among opinions, where the role of the base shrinks to ratifying what limited bodies decide.
The Party Base as the Source of Authority
Just as the left insists that the people are the source of authority in society, the party base should be the primary source of authority inside its organisations. The test of whether this principle has been realised goes beyond the presence of texts that praise participation, which most bylaws contain, to the presence of specific mechanisms that allow the base to take the initiative itself.
In many organisations of the left, in the Global South and in the West alike, members, women and men, have the right to debate, to propose and to object, while the main instruments of initiative, from the referendum to the extraordinary congress to decisions on alliances and more, remain in the hands of the leading bodies.
I therefore believe that a set proportion of the membership, ten per cent, for example, or one third of the local organisations, should have the right to call an extraordinary congress or a binding internal referendum, in the same way that the left demands popular initiatives and public referendums in society at large. The result of such a referendum of the entire membership would have the same standing as a congress decision.
This right is complemented by a mechanism for withdrawing confidence from anyone in a leadership position between two congresses and by electing leaders through a direct and secret ballot of the whole membership, something that today’s technologies have made both possible and inexpensive.
In this way the base holds a key to initiative alongside the leadership, without weakening the position of the elected bodies, and the organisation moves gradually from a hierarchical structure to a horizontal one in which the leadership coordinates the work of the base and supports it, without acting as its guardian or its substitute. Horizontality here does not mean the absence of leadership, coordination or political responsibility. It means redefining the role of the leadership so that it draws its legitimacy from the base, works in its service and remains under its oversight.
From Hierarchical Belonging to Alliance, Flexible Membership, a Plurality of Platforms and Freedom of Expression
The digital revolution has changed the way people communicate, express their opinions and organise themselves. People now access information directly, voice an opinion within minutes, and take part in horizontal networks and campaigns with no intermediary. In this reality the very meaning of membership is changing, from belonging to a hierarchical organisation with strict rules to a voluntary alliance among individuals who share specific goals or some of them.
I therefore believe that membership gains a great deal when it opens up to tiered forms of membership that accommodate the diversity of people’s circumstances, among them active, supporting, temporary, partial and online forms, on the understanding that every member, woman or man, is a treasure for the organisation. In this way the organisations of the left turn into broad alliances with multiple platforms, bringing together individuals, blocs and diverse currents of the left that share specific goals, and opening their doors to the many energies that are close to them today without finding a place for themselves in them.
An alliance in this sense rests on a plurality of platforms and intellectual currents, and I therefore believe that the organised recognition of this plurality is among the strongest guarantees of unity, because an opinion that finds a legitimate channel inside the house stays in the house. It is a right exercised openly and in an organised way, with representation in the bodies in proportion to the size of each current, without parallel organisational structures, and with a commitment to carrying out decisions once they have been adopted.
Freedom of expression is bound up with this. Confining it to party platforms made sense when the party newspaper was the only platform. Today every member has several pages on social networks that reach thousands of readers, and the more useful course is for the bylaws of left organisations to recognise this reality and regulate it, on condition that opinions are presented as personal and that nothing internal by nature is disclosed. Constructive public dialogue leaves a positive impression on the masses and involves them in developing the policies of the left through interaction and feedback.
Internal Justice and Reform Instead of Punishment
The justice the left calls for gains double credibility when it is reflected inside the organisation. In my view, a left organisation therefore needs a judicial body that is elected and independent of the leadership, that publishes its decisions and the reasons for them, whose decisions are binding on all bodies including the leading ones, and that provides an independent appeals process. Among the conditions of its independence are a ban on combining membership in it with any executive leadership position and the publication of its decisions in a way that protects the privacy of individuals so that internal case law accumulates and the sense of injustice diminishes.
I believe that the purpose of any system of sanctions is to correct behaviour and to keep members inside the organisation, especially at a stage in which the left faces a decline in its presence, a stage that calls for its organisations to attract members and never drive them away. I therefore call for intermediate tools such as dialogue, mediation, correction and guidance; for procedural guarantees such as the right of defence and the presumption of innocence; and for a reconsideration of the penalty of expulsion, which I regard as a form of political and organisational death sentence, replacing it with suspension.
Collective Leadership and Rotation of Positions
I believe that the principle of leadership renewal is realised through a ceiling of no more than two electoral terms for any leadership position and through a gradual move toward a distributed collective leadership, away from the personalisation of decisions.
In this model the organisation is run by a collective leading body made up of coordinators, women and men, for each field of specialisation, such as youth, women, the economy, trade union work, external relations and digital work, with no president or general secretary, and it has spokeswomen and spokesmen who speak in its name in the different fields. Tasks are clearly divided among the members of the body, which keeps any single area from being concentrated in one pair of hands and prevents the coordinating posts from becoming centres of real power above the base.
Collective leadership in this sense is a transparent distribution of responsibility and never an absence of it. Every coordinator, woman or man, is accountable to the collective body and to the base for their area, is subject to periodic evaluation, and can have confidence withdrawn from them individually without waiting for the congress. Major decisions are taken collectively, by consensus whenever possible and by vote where there is disagreement, with the decisions and their reasons published.
The principle of rotation is applied gradually so that part of the leadership is renewed in each term instead of the whole of it being replaced at once. This preserves institutional memory and accumulated experience, and it comes with a gradual handover of tasks, training programmes for the new faces, and an advisory track for those with long experience.
Rotation thus becomes a tool for renewing the faces and widening the circle of talent without weakening performance. It prevents positions from turning into personal or permanent property, opens the way for women, youth and new talent, and makes the leadership a coordinator and supporter of the work of the base, without exercising tutelage over it or substituting for it.
Workers, Working People and the Independence of Trade Unions
I believe that workers and other working people, all those who labour by hand and by brain, are the backbone of any left organisation, and that their representation where decisions are made needs mechanisms that support it and go beyond theoretical affirmation alone. These include strengthening their presence in the leading bodies, assigning women and men coordinators from among the workers themselves to labour and trade union affairs, leadership training programmes for them that cover the use of digital technology, public speaking, campaign organising and negotiation, and making their participation easier through digital tools that run on smartphones and allow them to attend and vote without disrupting their work or placing extra burdens on them.
As for the relationship with trade unions and with professional and rights associations, its basis in my view is support and coordination, far from supervision and tutelage. The independence of these organisations from all parties, including the parties of the left themselves, is in the interest of the left before anyone else, because it gives the trade union movement wider credibility and greater popular and social strength, and its strength and independence reflect positively on the left and on its role in society. Members of a left organisation who are active in them must work with full respect for their democratic decisions and their mass character.
Women, from Principle to Parity
Equality inside a left organisation requires, in my view, gender parity in all leading bodies, including the highest executive bodies where daily decisions are made, because it is its application there that gives it practical effect. Where organisations start from low levels, as many do in the Global South, they can begin with a minimum of no less than forty per cent for each gender, rising toward parity over two terms.
It is useful for parity to be a condition of the candidate lists themselves instead of remaining a result one merely hopes for, and for everybody to have a shared leadership of two coordinators, a woman and a man, who divide the responsibility between them or alternate in it, which embodies equality in the very position where decisions are made. To make sure that numerical presence turns into a real role in decision-making, the quota should be accompanied by a clear and continuous plan for empowerment and capacity building that includes leadership training programmes, mentoring in the field and the gradual assignment of tasks, with a periodic evaluation of its effect.
Youth, from Participation to Leadership
An age quota for youth in the leading bodies, including the highest ones, is necessary. For discussion, let it start at no less than one quarter of the seats for those under thirty-five, rising toward one half. The new generation has grown up with modern tools and digital applications and uses them with ease in communication, organising and campaigning, and it is more open to change and more flexible in dealing with rapid developments. Its presence in the leadership gives the organisation a greater capacity for renewal and for addressing society in the language of the age.
It is a generation close to the values of the left, one that looks for collective, horizontal forms of organisation that value their role and give them real responsibility and room for expression, and when organisations are slow to offer this, it quietly leaves them a short time after joining. This calls for easing the seniority requirements that delay the arrival of new members at congresses and in leadership positions and for training and mentoring programmes designed for them. Older members and those with long experience can contribute as advisers to this generation, which secures continuity between the generations and preserves accumulated experience.
Alliances and Participation in Governments
Decisions on alliances and on participation in governments are among the most sensitive decisions inside the parties of the left and the most consequential for their relationship with their public. They have often been a source of decline and of deep splits for which the left paid out of its popular standing, and the experience of the left in many countries is rich in examples.
The safer course is therefore to put these decisions up for organisational and public dialogue and then to a general internal referendum, which gives them broader legitimacy, protects the party from polarisation around them, and lightens the burden on the leadership itself. It is necessary for the bylaws to rule out alliances with forces that are despotic or corrupt or that have a direct role in human rights violations, out of concern for the party’s independence and integrity and for the trust the toiling masses place in it, and to give priority to alliance and joint work with left and progressive forces.
Digitalisation and the Permanent Congress
Bylaws written in the age of the digital revolution deserve a separate chapter on digital work. It would regulate remote meetings and electronic voting with guarantees of secrecy and integrity, protect members’ data in an environment where intelligence services and surveillance companies are active, and adopt free software as far as possible in order to avoid dependence on monopoly capitalist corporations.
This work would be entrusted to an elected digital work committee that brings together women and men specialists and representatives of youth and of the different intellectual currents. The committee would make sure that the organisation’s platforms and accounts remain its institutional property, independent of the individuals who run them, preserve its digital archive, and make its documents and decisions available to members. Participation in person and paper ballots always remain available, alongside effective training at every level of the party.
Digitalisation and social media groups also make it possible to turn the interval between two congresses from a void into something like a permanent congress, in which policies and documents are put up for collective dialogue at every level and in every body of the party before they are adopted. The collective mind of the organisation thus stays active and involved in decision-making throughout the year, instead of this being confined to particular bodies or individuals or to a congress held once every few years.
Conclusion
It is no secret that the left in many countries of the world has seen a decline in recent years. There are many reasons for this decline, objective and subjective, yet organisational structure and the forms of work and leadership have played a large part in it. I therefore believe that this stage requires a gradual shift from a hierarchical structure to a horizontal one, in which the base, the new generations and women have the greatest role in shaping policies and choosing leaders, and in which the leadership supports the base, backs it and coordinates its work.
These concepts draw on a range of left experiences in different countries. They are useful and illuminating, yet applying them requires careful adaptation that takes account of the particular character of each society and its complex conditions, and they cannot simply be transplanted. Even so, the forces of the left in any society remain a reflection of its level of development in knowledge, rights and democracy, and they are expected to be at the forefront of that development and a driving force for it. This is what makes the renewal of their organisational mechanisms an urgent necessity in the Global South and in the West alike.
Learning here runs in both directions, for the experiences of the left in the Global South, with all they contain of work and organizing under repression, have in turn something to offer the left in the advanced countries.
I end where I began. A party that practices democracy, justice, transparency and collective leadership within its own structure gives the women and men who work by hand and by brain prorganisingactical proof of its ability to practice these values in running the state and society.
