A Comparative Study On The Reforms Of Marxist Ruling Parties

The birth of political parties was a milestone in the evolution of the world's political civilization. Just as the famous British historian, Geoffrey Barraclough, claimed that political party was not just a form but the core of modern political organizations. However, any political party that wants to play a part in modern politics must not rest on its laurels or stick to its old traditions, but have to reform itself with the changing external environment. Resistance to reform or a failed reform can only weaken the party or even lead to its demise. In a sense, the evolvement of a political party lies exactly in its reform. A higher level of civilization through self-reform and borrowing successful experience from emerging parties is the common pursuit of all the parties in the world. Marxist party came into power and established the first socialist regime in1917. For nearly a hundred years after that, Marxist parties have always been on the road to reform to keep up their advantages, to better represent the interests of the majority of their people and to maintain long-term governance in the constantly changing world.This dissertation is an integrated and macroscopic research on the reform of Marxist ruling parties. It takes CPSU, CPC, and communist party of contemporary socialist countries as the subjects and adopts a comparative approach to study how Marxist ruling parties adapt and reform themselves on their ideology, governance foundation, inner-party democracy and modes of governance for their own survival under different historical conditions. It probes from a macroscopic perspective into the issue of reform of Marxist parties through comparing the experience of CPSU, CPC and other communist parties in contemporary socialist countries to figure out the regularity and provide theoretical guidance for CPC to strengthen and improve its construction in new historical conditions.The first four chapters discuss the four major aspects of the reform of Marxist ruling parties, specifically, the ideology, class and mass foundations, inner-party democracy and mode of governance respectively. Chapter Five discusses the eternal pursuit, orientation, driving forces, principle guidelines, fundamental strategies and essential requirements of Marxist ruling parties from a macroscopic perspective. Introduction elaborates on the background, significance, subjects of the present research and their status quo, clarifies two of the most important concepts:political party reform and Marxist ruling party self-reform, and introduces the methodology, organization of the dissertation, major findings and limitations of the present research.Chapter One maintains that ideology provides theoretical guidance and therefore ideology reform is principal in the reform of Marxist ruling parties. Based on a comparative study on the ideology reform of CPSU, CPC and communist parties in other socialist countries, it holds that self-reform should start with the reform of ideology with the changing world. Only the advanced Marxism can provide us with theoretical guidance to direct the self-reform of the party and the system reform of the country. Therefore, how to emancipate our minds, inherit and develop, localize its theories and make it suitable for the current world and infuse new vigor to it should be the priorities of the ideology reform.Chapter Two discusses the importance of consolidating the governance foundation in the reform of Marxist ruling parties. The governance foundation here includes the class foundation and mass foundation. Marxist ruling parties must unceasingly consolidate its working class foundation and enlarge the mass foundation to enhance the advantages of both classes and integrate these advantages to enhance the legitimacy of their governance if they want to keep their edge and long-term governance. The definition of class foundation and mass foundation varies with different historical circumstances. In a system of socialist market economy, the diversity of classes makes it harder to draw a clear demarcation of them. Therefore, Marxist ruling parties should accept and absorb new members to enlarge its class foundation and mass foundation based on a comprehensive assessment of the changing situation with a dynamic, updated and open mind.Chapter Three argues that enhancing inner-party democracy should be the key purpose of Marxist ruling party reform. CPSU, CPC and communist parties of other contemporary socialist countries have many successful experience and lessons in developing the inner-party democracy. Marxist ruling parties must put great efforts in promoting inner-party democracy, respect and guarantee the rights of their members, carry through democratic centralism, and strengthen system construction and grass roots democracy development to promote political and social democracy through promoting inner-party democracy.Chapter Four discusses the importance of the mode of governance in the self-reform of Marxist ruling parties because it is closely related to the legitimacy and efficiency of a ruling party. The governance of CPSU, the first Marxist ruling party, was highly centralized and the party dominated the government, which was an important factor resulting in its fall. However, the CPSU mode of governance greatly influenced most of the other Marxist ruling parties. To adapt to the unceasingly changing world and fit in the tide of informationization and democratic reform, Marxist ruling parties have to transform their modes of governance and get rid of the influence imposed by the CPSU mode. A scientific, democratic and legitimate mode of governance should be the right direction for the reform of Marxist rulings parties.Chapter Five is an overall analysis. It illustrates on the ultimate theme, values, driven forces, basic guidelines, strategies and the requirements of Marxist ruling parties in their self-reform, and proposes measures to realize it based on the analysis. It includes:(1)Reform is the eternal pursuit of Marxist ruling parties;(2)Maintaining their advantages is the goal of self-reform for Marxist ruling parties;(3)Active response to the changing situations of the world, country and Party is the fundamental driving force of Marxist ruling parties;(4) The principles that guide the governance of Communist Parties, socialist construction and social development are the guidelines of the self-reform of Marxist ruling parties;(5)A comprehensive and integrated development with special emphasis in key areas is the basic strategy of the self-reform of Marxist ruling parties;(6)Strengthening communication and cooperation between Marxist ruling parties and learning from other parties are indispensable in the self-reform of Marxist ruling parties.In spite of the difficulties of this research, the present study is innovative in its selection of subjects and methodology. It studies the successful experience and lessons from a macro perspective into the self-reform of CPSU, a party who had long-term governance but stepped off the historical arena, CPC and other contemporary communist parties which have various complexities of their own and tries to generalize the regularity from them. Much of the previous research on Marxist party reform focuses on the research of certain party, such as CPSU, or CPC; others focus on certain aspect of reform, such as the ideology or governance foundation. The present research holds that research on the reform of a certain party or certain aspect of reform is necessary but a synthetic research is more important, because it can better reveal the overall regularity. This research is an attempt for this purpose. Methodologically, it adopts a comparative approach to sort out the success and failures in the four aspects of ideology, governance foundation, inner-party democracy and mode of governance of CPSU, CPC and other contemporary communist parties and generalize the regularity in self-reform of Marxist ruling parties.It is no doubt that this research has some limitations due to the constraints of the author's knowledge and capability, such as:the research into the reforms of each party in each historical period is not deep and detailed enough; the reforms of the Marxist parties of the eight Eastern European countries are not discussed. These limitations of the present study are strongly recommended for future study.