"Peoples tend to gather in their traditional reformist parties"

[ñángara]

I've read this statement in some Trotskyist texts. From this it follows the justification of Entryism and the goal of building the massive Communist Party as a precondition for seizing power.

What does this mean? People regularly don't choose Communist Parties as their own Parties? Are Communist Parties doomed for not being "tratidional" and/or reformist?

[Jimmie Higgins]

I've read this statement in some Trotskyist texts. From this it follows the justification of Entryism and the goal of building the massive Communist Party as a precondition for seizing power.

What does this mean? People regularly don't choose Communist Parties as their own Parties? Are Communist Parties doomed for not being "tratidional" and/or reformist?

Probably this can mostly just be seen in practice. The massive working class populated parties in the 20th century tended to have strong reformist pulls. It makes sense because workers have to reproduce themselves within capitalism, generally there is a tendency for anyone to first try and negotiate the terms of capitalism rather than jumping to revolutionary conclusions (there is also a bureaucracy that develops in Unions and Labor/Socialist parties, but that's a whole big topic by itself).

The point is that most people will begin to fight in their class interests, first just to lessen their exploitation and oppression. This process creates reformists and sets the stage for reformist parties, but it also can help create new areas of power within the class, new worker-organizers or populations of workers who have learned how to fight and have varying degrees of class consciousness. But the difficult part is then how to organize the people who have then made revolutionary conclusions and how do they help convince others that reforms will only go so far and ultimately the abilities workers learned through striking, organizing their co-workers, organizing in their communities and organizing against oppression can also be used to fight for something totally different and independant.

So revolutionary formations will tend to be small... until there is a massive amount of revolutionary consciousness and skills among workers. If there is a mass party with revolutionary consciousness and popularity among a chunk of the working class, but no revolution - well that would be strange.