democratic centralism¶

On the necessity of democratic centralism:

We must imagine the project of eliminating capitalism and building a new society in the way we imagine building a rail network. The goal is to provide everyone with transportation, not just within a city, but across many cities. This process must be democratic, in that it is the needs of the people that will determine where stations are needed, what capacity is needed, and what destinations are needed.

However, it must also be centralized. The rail network will not function without central direction. If the individual cities and towns are to have "full autonomy," they will have to decide how wide the rails are, how to build the trains, when to send them, how fast they can go, what routes to take. The trains would not be able to run under this level of decentralization. Trains would run off the tracks. They would collide with each other. They would fail to reach their destinations at the proper times. The tracks would run through settlements or protected natural reserves or sovereign land or other infrastructure projects. Under democratic centralism, it is the individual communities that determine their needs, and it is the central body that figures out how to fulfill those needs. Through this process, our individual struggles become united into an indomitable solidarity.

And capitalism will die.