What is the role of a political party? What is its purpose for being? What is it that it should be doing in order to achieve their goals? What are some examples from history of successful methods that other communist parties have used (whether or not these methods lead to full blown revolution).

some ideas;

The role of a communist party should be to educated and spread propaganda about its idiology and politics. The party work in two ways, trough mass organizations and direct propaganda. Massorgs like unions, social and economic movements etc.. Directpropaganda is things like agitation, newspapers, magazines, open meetings, flyers etc..

Goal for a communist party,
* Revolution(suprise suprise)
But before that..
* Help build independent and radical labour unions, buildt on strong grassroot democracy.
* Establish itself and its youth organization as the leading idiological center of the revolutionary left, and estalish branches in every part of the country. Providing alternative educational input to the bourgeois education(propaganda) system.
* Fight for social, judical and economic rights for all workers.
* Promote democratic solutions contra bureaucratic solutions.

The role of a political party of socialism is to educate, agitate and organize the working class on the political front while simultaneously agitating for the creation of economic organization/s prepared to take, hold and operate democratically the economy of the country (and the world, hopefully).

Wherever possible, the assault on capitalism must be made on two, well-coordinated and powerful fronts: The political power of the capitalist class and their economic power-base.

If we achieve the latter aim, aided by a political victory against the capitalist state, we'll be able to dispense with the state and the political party that helped overthrow it.

Possibly paraphrasing from Engels', Daniel De Leon warned that if a political party of socialism prolonged its existence beyond the accomplishment of its goal, the revolution would be usurped (1905).

http://www.marxists.org/archive/dele...905/050710.htm

http://www.marxists.org/archive/deleon/index.htm

http://www.slp.org/De_Leon.htm

Yeah, good post old chap. I think a party in the Leninist sense has been a bit of a failure over the past century or so (I might get shouted at for this, sorry for any offense caused). I see it as a fine balance between self-emancipation of the proletariat and a group (maybe a CP or something) carrying out revolutionary tasks on the working-class' behalf. I definitely see a necessity for some sort of organisation, but you don't want to "over-organise", so to speak. I believe the vast masses are perfectly capable of, (and if everything is to pan out smoothly they should be) doing mostly everything themselves, but there is the old axoim: united we stand, divided we fall. There needs to be some sort of catalyst to "unite" the masses into action. Like New Tet said: educate, agitate, organise. I like a lot of what Luxemburg says but to rely on "spontaneity" doesn't quite cut the mustard for me.

Footnote: maybe I don't fully understand the Luxemburg spontaneity thing, it'd be nice if someone could clear me up on that one.

I feel like there is a deficit in proper political action in communist parties these days. Don't you think that a political party is sort of a government in waiting? Shouldn't they organize themselves in a way in which they can assume the role of government and even serve the purpose of effective government even while the capitalist state still exists? That's what happened in Russia. The organs for workers democracy grew under capitalism, and by November 7 they already had a functioning government with different departments and a formal hierarchy. I think also that political parties spend too much energy on propaganda and flyering. That seems like all some of them do. They should be fulfilling the tasks of a government that the government is not doing. If the people are being exploited at the workplace, you should be working to actively unionize them. If the people are hungry you should feed them. If the people are sick you should heal them. If the people are ignorant you should teach them. If the people are angry you should amplify them. If the people are being attacked you should put guns in their hands.

bt_pund, I'm not sure how familiar you are with them but lot of the theoretical structure of Maoist Marxism stresses the impoirtance of praxis over theory, of formulating and executing organized efforts against reactionary and counter-revolutionary policies. "THe gun can only be defeated with the gun, and so, in order to defeat the imperialists, we must take up arms against them." This was big in the initial stages of the Communist struggle agains tthe Kuomingtag (?) in 1949, when armed Red Guards sabotaged and took control of ever greater regions of the country. Now, this tenet was greatly undermined after the failed Cultural Revolution, have you, but revolutionary praxis definitely serves a central role in Mao Zedong's writings, Rosa Luxembourg's writings, and theorists like Georg Lukacs's writings. Now, you have to wonder how all of this theory can be put to use in an organized, succinct manner. The CPUSA was once a formidable entity in this country, but the blacklists and mass trials shook things up considerably. We have to get back on our feet and organize mass meetings and hold demonstrations in keeping with the fundamental princples of Marxist ideology in this country, and this is something you don't see enough of in the least.

I agree Mr. Bush, but I think your argument undermines itself. The interests of building a revolutionary proletarian movement would be better served not by preaching on street corners and handing out pamphlets (although that is necessary to a degree) but by exercising their base within the people to gain a stronger base. This is best done by practicing what they preach. They should be actively unionizing the major workplaces in the city in which they live. They should be standing up against the capitalists and speaking out for the people by staging demonstration, direct action, and running candidates for office. They should be organizing food drives in poor areas so the people can eat. By flexing their mussel as a political force in their community they will draw much more people to their cause than by just talking about it, and the people will start looking to them for help instead of the capitalist government. You can't expect people to give up they way they are going unless to provide a practical alternative. Look at the Black Panther Party. They gained their following not by talking down to the people about changing their way of thinking, but by showing the people what socialism looks like and getting them to actively participate in its construction. People see that and say, "These guys over here see our problems and do nothing about it and they call themselves capitalists. These people over here see our problems and are promoting action and they call themselves communist. I think I like communists." Too many parties are dispensing the theory of practice, instead of the practice of theory.

You might also read this:

Lenin - What Is to Be Done

RED DAVE

Party: host, band. see: Hostis, Partisan

The Party, better known as the communising Party or the Party of Insurrection, is an imaginary totalitarian apparatus which tends to become real. From a vulgar reading of Marx, the Party is merely the material force through which the proletariat organizes its violence and faculties. It is the single necessary structure which through its invocation, reveals the world civil war, and positions the proletariat as such. Whereas it is possible the class is the call, the Party is not so much the response, but the reverberation.

The Party's only task is the political, by other means: war,
and war always carries the meaning of self-negation. Thus, the Party, which communises everything by immediately returning all which is governed by the law of value to the free use of human kind, has no positive project, but is the organization of all forces which negate capitalism and cancel (aufheben) society.

If capitalism produces the general conditions for communism, the Party must be the organization of proletarian intelligence with a particular attention to the details of its conditions. It can have no other task than the that of proletariat, self-abolition, because the party, is not a substance.

Because communism is not the result of movement, a progressive leap forward, but rather the redemption and aufheben of history (i.e "Man"), it must be understood that there can be no communist society; there is communism. The Party is thus a communising party, because it does not do politics as state-capitalism did, nor simply do military territorialization as the mystics from Lenin to Mao would have it, but rather produces communism as the careful dissolution of capitalist society.

From this perspective a strategist of the Party must ask "if the Party is imaginary, and thus its power acts on the imagination, in what ways do ruptures with capitalist time correspond to each other? How does the party tend to become real throughout history: from the experiments by early christian heretic sects, to the commune, to revolution in Russia, to the civil war in Spain? Or more ontologically, in what ways, and by what means, can the events of rupture and micro-rupture--the riots which plague security calculations, the naughty practices of sexually ambitious youth, the antagonistic survival practices of historically marginalized peoples, the desperate and strange suicidal acts of alienated youth, workers, and military and even the disruptive acts of "nature"--build the party?

We might say everything else is merely infantile conjecture. Have we not bored ourselves with pathetic demands for integration, and foolish acts of self-policing?

Red Dave: WITBD is a great read.

I'd point to the Constitution of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, for a simple and scientific explanation of why a communist party is needed and what its principal tasks are - both under capitalism and under socialism while struggling towards communism worldwide.

They parties should dispand themselves and see how fascist the idea of a controlling party is. But instead should teach workers and promote conciousness through organizations that dont seek power, unlike a party.

The idea of a 'revolutionary elite' coming from a Communist/Socialist party is a bad idea to me.

Elitism = class distinctions

A communsit party should not, necessarily, be excluded. But it's goal after the revolution should not be this idea of democratic centralism as Lenin had.

A Party ought to organize, educate, and lead.

A party should organize the people in a revolutionary manner and execute a civil war on the state. The state should then be temporarily replaced by said vanguard party until Communism has rendered the working class able of sufficiantly running themselves.

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A Communist party is a stupid idea, at least one of our present definition of a political party. Our elections are too undemocratic, no point for us really.

A Communist "party" should exist for the sole purpose of distributing propaganda and educating the masses on the ideals of the revolution. They should be a centralized authority meant for ease of organization and communication between the revolutionary militias.

Read: Couping all left wing political movements and drain all revolutionary currents until only a few caricatures of what once was are left, and turn itself into a force that can at best beg our oppressors for some crumbs, or at the worst turn into ruthless oppressors themselves?

Lead what? An army? The working class as a whole? Lead existing social movements to fit your particular taste in revolutionary struggle, and your particular set of dogmas you view the world in?
These phrases are only words, and words alone don't make our fantasies come true.

A revolution must and can only be the work of the oppressed classes themselves.

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"A Communist party is a stupid idea, at least one of our present definition of a political party"

I don't believe trying to establish communism through our current electoral system will ever work. I hope you realize that when I afterward referred to a communist "party" it was with that distinction in mind. This "party" would merely be the organization and the liaison between the revolutionaries and the public. They would not run in election.