Single-Party
Communism: Features of Comunist States Single-Party Rule
In communist states, the communist party held complete and unchallenged political power. All other political parties were banned, except for minor procommunist parties in several Eastern European countries. The name of the governing party differed from country to country. Rather than calling themselves the “communist party,” some parties adopted variations like the “socialist unity party” (as in East Germany), the “people’s democratic party” (Afghanistan), or the “party of labor” (Albania).
Ultimate authority-subject to external audit from Moscow, in the heyday of Soviet power-was vested in a self-perpetuating leadership of perhaps 15 to 25 high officials in the party. The senior person in the ruling group wielded disproportionate influence over policy and personnel decisions. A single-minded leader-such as Stalin, Mao, Tito, or Castro-could wield supreme power over the entire political scene for decades on end. Organized factions within the top leadership were strictly forbidden. Stretching downward from the apex of the hierarchy was a sprawling and multilayered state bureaucracy. Owing to governmental stewardship of economic activity, public employees did almost all jobs, including those, such as selling newspapers and designing jet aircraft, that in Western societies would be the preserve of private business.
Communist parties often shared a similar organizational structure. The highest decision-making body, usually called the Politburo, consisted of a small group of senior party officials. Typically, the Politburo met weekly under the chairmanship of a top party leader to discuss high-level policy. A larger committee, usually called the Central Committee, included top executives of the government ministries, the military and police, and the party itself. Reporting to these high-ranking bodies was a separate administrative hierarchy composed of full-time officials of the party, grouped into departments in the capital city and at local and intermediate levels. Individual members of the party paid their dues and were subject to party directives in party cells (local organizations) nested in factories and other workplaces. Communist parties invariably judged control of personnel to be the crux of their control over society. In the Soviet Union, people appointed to important government positions were required to be vetted by party officials, a procedure known as nomenklatura. This system was copied throughout the communist world.
Communist states possessed elaborate pseudo-democratic processes for formalizing and publicizing political decisions. In the national capital, a parliament met once or twice a year to rubber-stamp laws and ratify selection of the members of the government. The legislators were chosen in elections in which the outcome was usually predetermined; with rare exceptions, the nominee of the communist party was the only name on the ballot. Similar rituals were replicated at the regional and local level. Three communist countries had federal systems in which the constitution divided formal powers between a central government and the governments of constituent republics: the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and, after 1968, Czechoslovakia. The federal republics were designated as the homelands of ethnic groups and were named after them. For example, Czechoslovakia consisted of the Czech and Slovak republics. (1)
In this Section about Features of Comunist States: Comunist States, Marxist-Leninist States, Centrally Planned Economy, Single-Party and Freedom Restriction.
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