This article was first published by a commercial publisher. marxsite reprinted it in full; this archive does not.
Marcel Liebman on the democratic side of democratic centralism, from Monthly Review in 1970. Before 1905 Lenin had been occupied with building the instrument of revolution — the vanguard party, its centralisation, its discipline, its cadre of professional revolutionaries able both to survive police repression and to resist opportunism — a conception Liebman calls frankly elitist, and the first coherent one of its kind. The revolution of 1905 was its first encounter with events, and Liebman reads that encounter as the test of Lenin's flexibility: his capacity to see what new facts had destroyed in analyses long taken for granted, including his own, and his willingness to learn from the masses. marxsite carried it for the light it throws on what Lenin called "committee men".
Précis by Red Mole.
Read it at the publisher or the archived copy of the marxsite page.