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.
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.