Marxism-Leninism is just scientific socialism. It would be a great mistake to uncritically mimic what happened in one place and time and expect it to work in different conditions. That said, even across space and time, there are certain wisdoms and best practices that are figured out by years of hard earned experience, which are condensed into theory.
There is nothing about the conditions in the US that imply that a party following democratic centralism would be ineffective, in fact it was very effective in the early 20th century when hundreds of thousands of people joined the CPUSA. After that period came the brutal state repression (McCarthyism, HUAC purges, etc.) and bribery of American workers (New Deal) that drove the communists underground and prevented them from shaping most of the social movements of the latter half of the 20th century. If anything, the history after the heyday of the CPUSA has proven that a party apparatus like that is necessary to not only prevent the kind of rollback of concessions we saw starting in the 70s, but to be able to make a cohesive strategy for the seizure of power in this country and replacing it with a democratic institution capable of taking over the task of governing.
Without a party, none of this is possible and we are simply twiddling our thumbs hoping that it will happen spontaneously, or at least get "figured out" at some later time.
I mean, I am willing to believe you might be right, but I am just saying how it comes off to me.
Maybe I am just jaded, because it seems like we only see parties like these prop up with a few hundred or thousand people and then nothing comes of it.
But I guess you have to start somewhere, just seems like they should meet the people where they currently are, and maybe they are idk, but it just seems like these things just kind of preach about the validity of Marxism-Leninism and get soundly ignored.
I understand where you're coming from, I definitely wasn't always ML and I've been in many orgs with more ecclectic politics and "horizontal" ways of organising. It was that experience that drove me to read theory and made me realise the necessity of the party, but it took me a long time to settle on a specifoc party precicely because I was jaded and was worried I'd join some tiny ML sect that is content doing low-grade praxis and being irrelevant.
As it turns out though, the US just doesn't have a real communist party, a historical development with a lot of causes, culminating in Sam Web becoming chairman of the CPUSA in 2000 and more or less gutting the organisation and grafting what was left to the hip of the Democrats. This forced the MLs still in the party to split off and rebuild from scratch as the PCUSA, which is incredibly difficult and unideal, but necessary. The intention isn't to be a tiny sect but to actually gain the confidence of the masses the way the CP had in its prime (by meeting them where they are at now, not mimicing the old party's tactics and strategy), which will allow the party to galvanise the masses in strategic action for better material conditions and more working class power. That is the vision, but before we get there we need to (re)build the party.
Marxism-Leninism is just scientific socialism. It would be a great mistake to uncritically mimic what happened in one place and time and expect it to work in different conditions. That said, even across space and time, there are certain wisdoms and best practices that are figured out by years of hard earned experience, which are condensed into theory.
There is nothing about the conditions in the US that imply that a party following democratic centralism would be ineffective, in fact it was very effective in the early 20th century when hundreds of thousands of people joined the CPUSA. After that period came the brutal state repression (McCarthyism, HUAC purges, etc.) and bribery of American workers (New Deal) that drove the communists underground and prevented them from shaping most of the social movements of the latter half of the 20th century. If anything, the history after the heyday of the CPUSA has proven that a party apparatus like that is necessary to not only prevent the kind of rollback of concessions we saw starting in the 70s, but to be able to make a cohesive strategy for the seizure of power in this country and replacing it with a democratic institution capable of taking over the task of governing.
Without a party, none of this is possible and we are simply twiddling our thumbs hoping that it will happen spontaneously, or at least get "figured out" at some later time.
I mean, I am willing to believe you might be right, but I am just saying how it comes off to me.
Maybe I am just jaded, because it seems like we only see parties like these prop up with a few hundred or thousand people and then nothing comes of it. But I guess you have to start somewhere, just seems like they should meet the people where they currently are, and maybe they are idk, but it just seems like these things just kind of preach about the validity of Marxism-Leninism and get soundly ignored.
I understand where you're coming from, I definitely wasn't always ML and I've been in many orgs with more ecclectic politics and "horizontal" ways of organising. It was that experience that drove me to read theory and made me realise the necessity of the party, but it took me a long time to settle on a specifoc party precicely because I was jaded and was worried I'd join some tiny ML sect that is content doing low-grade praxis and being irrelevant.
As it turns out though, the US just doesn't have a real communist party, a historical development with a lot of causes, culminating in Sam Web becoming chairman of the CPUSA in 2000 and more or less gutting the organisation and grafting what was left to the hip of the Democrats. This forced the MLs still in the party to split off and rebuild from scratch as the PCUSA, which is incredibly difficult and unideal, but necessary. The intention isn't to be a tiny sect but to actually gain the confidence of the masses the way the CP had in its prime (by meeting them where they are at now, not mimicing the old party's tactics and strategy), which will allow the party to galvanise the masses in strategic action for better material conditions and more working class power. That is the vision, but before we get there we need to (re)build the party.