u/ROMEROoscar - originally from r/GenZhou
As a US citizen it seems more and more every day that the time is now to join a Party.

I must admit though my uninformed view of being in a party is basically “go to zoom meeting, tweet out pamphlet the graphic’s team created, go to education meeting, join the biannual street demonstration, repeat”

What has your experience been? Has the practical application of theory lead to deeper understanding?

Archive.org Links:

Jmlsky on Why Marxists Should Be in a Party: http://web.archive.org/web/20220306190039/https://old.reddit.com/r/GenZhou/comments/t7hwl4/what_is_being_in_a_party_like/hzhtvg5/

Jmlsky on Party Structure: http://web.archive.org/web/20220306193233/https://old.reddit.com/r/GenZhou/comments/t7hwl4/what_is_being_in_a_party_like/hzhx27u/

  • @archive_botOPB
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    22 years ago

    u/1notis - originally from r/GenZhou
    Thank you for the very in-depth response! One question though, what party are you a member of? Because I suspect that things might be different for different parties.

    • @archive_botOPB
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      22 years ago

      u/Jmlsky - originally from r/GenZhou
      Wait the result of the arbitration commission and I may tell you, until then I would rather not.

      Hint, it’s not a trotskist nor a maoist party but a ML one 😉

      Also no, things aren’t that much different for différents parties. Sure, since bolchevism is “revigorated jacobinism”, the name or the strata will take the structure or name of differents national-state structuration, in France we have the territorial organisation Commune-Departement-State which is specific, maybe it’s Town-County-Region or idk, but the principle are the same. There’s also always the same structure in the party, aka a CC, a Bureau/Politbureau, or a national/general secretary, etc etc. The name can differs but the concept are always the same, it’s the basis of democracy in Democratic Centralism, without all these strata there’s no democracy possible.

      That’s why I can read a North Korean Party Congress (which can be called National Conférence or whatever other name that comrades will fancy elsewhere) and understand many things that would look vacuous for a non party member. You know, it’s all the jargon, oftenly with numbers and very long title. It make actual sens for me despite the name difference.

      I am not saying that I understand the WPK just like a Korean, I’m saying there’s some universal organisational principle that you will find in every marxiste-léniniste party, such as a général secretary, a “head” of the Bureau, and so a Bureau, etc etc.

      As for this structuration I wrote here, it is not the one of my party, it is the one of the PCF when it was in the third internationale and after, when it was still the great PCF. I’m speaking about the post-bolshevisation PCF, Thorez one and after.

      Of course there will be difference in name, or how the articulations between the strata is organized due to the difference between countries, etc. But there is no way to not have company cells, or town section, or territorial chapter, etc. There’s no way to not split those three role (org, prop & coordination) or to not make one scale a gathering of all scale composing it, one way or another, or to not have things akin to a GA. Those are the principle Lénin and the bolcheviks took from the jacobin to organize themselves, it is de facto part of leninism. Also in this description I am refering to the local chapter, the unit that consist in the basis of the party, so that’s where there gonna be the more diversity.

      And this is not only for my local chapter, this is how the whole PCF was structured. Back then, even company cells managed their newspaper comrade, no joke I have some old newspaper in the party library of divers cells, even things such as fishers, or dock workers one, or mettalurgy workers one, etc etc. The same concept could even be applied to a newspaper btw, as it has been done by Lénin himself, ofc with differents structure but the idea were the same.