u/Jmlsky - originally from r/GenZhou
Absolutely. Any real marxist, who fully understood marxism should be in a party, period.

And if there’s no proper party, then your duty as a marxist, and I mean it, your duty is to work to create one. One step after another, but still.

Marxism take its full depth the moment you begin to apply it. I can’t even begin to explain it because I don’t want to spend hours, but for real marxism take all its sens only when you begin to use it.

Marxism can’t and isn’t made solely for analysing things, it is made for the working class and the progressist element of a country to organize in order to fight back the ruling class in the class struggle, in order to change the social order. Ofc, to do so, analysing phenomenon is needed, but even this analysis shouldn’t be devoid of its end-mean, which is to take action.

As Marx said, it’s time for philosopher to begin to change the world. And this is probably my main issu with nowadays “marxist” in América who use Marxism as an identity.

Also, party life is just so fucking awesome man, for real. I dig it, I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the worlds, I love my comrades and my work in the party. It is so enriching, intellectually and humanly speaking.

For a bit of background, I’m French, so we do have a long communist and révolutionary tradition and culture compared to the US, but I am not in PCF and I myself work for rebuilding a proper marxiste-léniniste party “from scratch”. I have rebuild my town section, and I am the secretary of my chapter, which cover two department, so over a millions person, and after 2 years+ (for me) of hardwork we are finally a real political force that people knows, and it feels great, especially because I am putting myself in my town’s communist legacy path and I am proud to pay such a tribute to those who came before me too.

I am about to leave the party tho, because of massive disagreement with the new leadership and others problem, but even then, we will continu our work.

If you have any question, feel free to ask me comrade. If you want I can give you the concret basis of a proper party and how it work and what it does.

u/Jmlsky - originally from r/GenZhou
I write another comment for visibility purpose, but here’s how we structure our local chapter based on the traditionnal marxist leninist organisation.

There’s the Bureau of the chapter which is composed of 4 people :

• The Secrétaire, who’s job is to coordinate.

• Propaganda Secrétaire, who’s job consiste in dealing with communication

• Organisation Secrétaire, who’s job consiste in organizing the party’s life and its action

• The accountant, who’s job is to deal with money and funding.

This Bureau is elected in and by the GA, general assembly, which gather all party member regularly (summoning it is Sec/OrgSec job) and is where most of decision are taken collectively. This GA give mandate to the Bureau but is also here for general political decision, that’s where democracy is. The Bureau isn’t all powerful and have to “rendre des comptes”, to do what the GA give him mandate to do, and when there’s big decision to be made, it shall be decided in the GA, and the Bureau role is also to organize the GA in order for it to be able to decide properly (order of the day, introductory/political rapport, sending all needed element beforehand to all members, etc…)

The Bureau elect itself a secrétariat, which gather more often than the Bureau and who’s task is to deal with mundain affairs and to keep track of ongoing tasks. Two or three member of the Bureau are part of the secrétariat.

In addition to this, I recommend you to have an association, to organize popular éducation event, and à blog or à newspaper, to diffuse propaganda. That’s the bare minimum.

Edit: omg I forgot the principal !!! The principe is to have section, towns section, one per town if possible, and then company cells in every town, cells in big company, factory if possible. Each of them have the same structure everytime (Bureau+GA) and the principle of a local chapter is to be a federation of town section (made of every section of every town of a department/région, and every town section is made of every company cells of this town gathered too). So it goes like that:

Departmental chapter>Town section>Company cells

Everytime, repeat the structuration, there’s OrgSec/PropSec etc. (So a Bureau+GA) of X town section or of X company cell. And the local chapter is the federation of all town section, and a town section is the federation of all company cells of a town.

All those town sections and company cells shall strive to have their own association and newspaper if they can too by the way.

And that’s it, that’s the basis of a local chapter.

Coming to the agenda, here’s how we’re doing:

• Once per month, the Bureau gather to manage affairs.

• The month after, it’s General Assembly, which the last month Bureau has organized and summoned.

• Once per week, it’s secrétariat.

All this burocracy is needed to manage everything, from production of propaganda, to organizing action (strike, protest, election, tracting phamplet, organizing popular éducation session, sticking posters on walls, etc…), and most importantly, to organize democracy. The whole point is the following :

We debate collectively, we decide collectively, and we act/apply the décision collectively.

I know I will sound biased, because I’m a SecOrg myself, but it is the most crucial post if you ask me. Without a proper OrgSec job, everything’s go to shit very quickly. In France, a lot of General Secretary of the PCF were SecOrg before becoming SecGen, and there’s no wonder why.

This is the basis of a local chapter, not of the party, there’s much more to cover if you want the organigram of the party, and also have in mind that I learnt all this from one of the best human I have met, an old militant that teach me everything I know, and who has 50years of party membership, and moreover who learnt himself from old party member from the time when PCF was Marxist-Leninist and à proper class party.

This is communism, all those organisational strata and structure are some of the roots of communism that need to be produced by socialists. This is the roots of socialism that need to grow under capitalism, just like how capitalism grew under the feodal era. It can’t be avoid no matter what, this is why I spoke about your duty as a marxist, which is to be a communist, a proper party member, to do the job, to create and organize these things, for when time come, the working class will have all this under its hand to fight the bourgeoisie.

You could have more role in the Bureau if need be, but this triptic “GenSec-OrgSec-PropSec” is the nuclear core that everyone can set up in his town to begin to work on marxist-leninist principles. This is the trio that was used by communist during Nazi occupation of France, and it is effective as fuck.

Also, sorry if this is not the proper terminology, I guess there’s English words for secrétaire and secrétariat but I don’t know it.

u/Arch_Null - originally from r/GenZhou
Its a lot more fulfilling than being an online commje.

You can actually see the fruits of your labor come to life. Talking to the people in the streets and hearing their problems. Them being receptive toward our ideas. Its great.

u/afghanboy1100 - originally from r/GenZhou
From one American to another in the heart of the imperial core, join the CPUSA. I have my disagreements with them, but they are the only communist organization in the nation with international ties. They are in the international meeting of communist and workers parties. The same cannot he said of PSL. My advice to you comrade is to join the CPUSA or PSL. Anything else is a splinter or a liberal organization. CPUSA and PSL are the only organizing doing principled communist work.