Members of a Political Party - What Should They Do?

Members of a political party have to take on the role of a representative of people. No doubt members of legislative assemblies are the formal representative of the people elected by the people.

But each member of a political party has voluntarily come forward to represent the people and when a political party admits him into the party, it has approved his voluntary action and gives him the right to represent the party to the people whom he wants to represent.

I advocate that each member of a political party has to be given the responsibility of contacting 50 households to carry out the task of representing people as well as that of a party member. To fulfil this responsibility, the member has to meet each of the households at least once in a year formally. In this interaction, he has to find the desires and wishes of the household in the area of social issues, public works and public policy. He has to inform them his party's current stand on various issues and his party's programmes. He has to report to the party machinery, the issues raised by the households. The inputs given by the members based on such visits will be very useful information to the party to undertake local tactical issue based activities and to develop policies and programs on large scale.


Lenin on Party Members

It is our task to safegaurd the firmness, consistency, and purity of our party. We must strive to raise the title and significance of a party member higher, higher and still higher.

We communists, (implying party members) are looked upon as a model in everything - n work and behavior. We have to live and work in such a way that the working person coud say: Yes this is a real communist...

Unaffiliated working people often judge the party by the behavior of its members. Every party member is the party's representative in any work collective, and he acts not only be explaining party policies and by proclaiming slogans, but by primarily by showing a good example in work, social and political activities, and everyday life.

In work collectives, everyone sees the communists' (party members) attitude towards their work: whether they are exacting of themselves and their party comrades, how irreconciliable they are toward, say self love, avaric, hard drinking and other infringements of discipline and the law and order and toward indifferent attitudes to people's needs and doings.

(Source: Yevgeny Bugaev, What is The Party?, Progress Publishers, Moscow,1986