@Bob no, I don't take all party labels at face value, thanks for giving my words the idiot spin. Do you always simplify the words of your interlocutors to the point of absurdity and then belittle them for absurdity? I never suggested anything like the words you put in my mouth. If you go back to my third post in this thread you can see I clearly refer to "the corruption of communist China". Obviously, Maoism is a recognized form of Communism and he is the father of the Chinese system. That corporate interests have insinuated themselves into their system and converted the whole kit and caboodle into a bunch of graft-taking whores I do not doubt. But ridiculing me for referring to a "communist China" does not get you anywhere when the whole point of everything I've posted in this thread which is asking for a definition of communist party is that there are different flavours of communism and different theories about how it could best be put into practice and that therefore the broadest definition possible should be the accepted one and if anyone wants to get down to the nitty gritty of a particular system real or theoretical, and what exact gradient shade of grey it might represent, let them define their terms further at that point. Is that clear enough?

'Current' definition of "communist party" would be a label used by leftist-extreme leftist parties. These parties usually label themselves as "anti capitalist" also. They are never in majority or close to majority in any country. They do some small protests occasionally. In some countries they might be claimed to be related with some -probably cold war rooted- terrorist organizations. Yet they are usually far away from influencing the policies and government.

They may still defend the communist values in a either Leninist, Stalinist, Maoist or Trotskist way or if the country has its own history with communism they may defend their own local ideology.

Briefly on communism, I think Trotskism was more close to "ideal communism". Stalinism and Leninism didnt have any intention to create a communist state but a socialist totalitarian regime. They were far from creating a "stateless international commune" on the contrary they were actually promoting their own state, say either Russia or Soviet Union...

"I think Trotskism was more close to "ideal communism"."

Ask the Kronstadt sailors about his 'idealism'. It's always easy to pretend people who aren't in power would have been more 'idealist'. Trotsky couldn't accept that people didn't want him in power, so he decided to sabotage his own country in the middle of a war for survival.

The Hungarian uprising was a fascist putsch, these Arrow Cross types had been trying to restore the White Terror pro-Axis Horthy regime since immediately after the war. Guys like Gyula Gombos ,Miklos Kallay Andras Szentivanji ,Balint Arany ,Bela Verga.
One of the leading forces of the violent riots was the independent small owners, a Horthy-construction.

It is sort of weird that people champion Gandhi and MLK in one breath, and then write sympathetic notes about mob violence and anti-Jewish lynchings in Hungary in the next....
To say the Hungarian workers opposed communism is a little rich too, considering thousands were slaughtered in 1919 trying to establish a Soviet republic.

Are you serious about the Hungarian Revolution being a fascist putsch? Surely it's impossible the people of Hungary were opposed to Soviet domination and oppression.

Pravda means truth.

Oh, and what's a communist party? A party that calls itself communist. Picking it apart much further than that leads to Judean People's Front/People's Front of Judea nonsense.

That's a ridiculous statement. I could call myself whatever I want, but that wouldn't make it true. A party that calls itself communist, but acts in a way that is direct opposition to established communist beliefs is not a communist party.

It's more ridiculous to expect a part calling itself communist would be anything but.

wow, you could cut the sexual tension with a knife in here!

@Invictus: haha yeah because no political party ever tries to deceive people /sarcasm
If you're looking for a single definition of "communist party" you can't judge it based on any single example of a communist party. You have three options: 1) give several definitions; one for each different type of communist party, 2) study all the different communist parties and create a definition based on their common features, or 3) create a definition of a communist party based on generally agreed upon principles of communism.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb_qHP7VaZE

If they call themselves a communist party, then they are a communist party.

As much as I love Monty Python, that video does nothing to prove anything. Do you have anything to back up your point at all? If anything, that video just shows that the beliefs of an organization mean more than what they call themselves.

Nice, if somewhat comical, attempt at revisionist history.

The smallholder’s party: Wasn’t a party at all in 1956 having been dissolved in 1949 not to be reestablished until 1988. Regardless none of the people that you mentioned are recorded as being leaders in this party. It was established in 1918 and grew in prominence until being absorbed by the Hungarian Peoples Workers Union (a communist party) in 1949.

Gyula Gombos: My personal favorite, he’d been dead for twenty years when the 1956 revolt took place. I think we can absolve him of any active part in the revolt.
Miklos Horty: Not a big threat as he was 87 at the time and would only make it three month into the next year. Probably had bigger issues than reestablishing fascism in Hungary, but that’s just a guess.
Miklos Kallay: This one’s good too. He was in exile in the United States and had been since 1951. The Nazi’s had had enough of his refusal to round Jews up for the concentration camps and sent him to Dachau and then to Mathausen. He was liberated by the US 5th Army and was nowhere near the Hungary when the Revolt took place. The Nazi’s big complaint about him was that he wasn’t fascist enough as he spent a lot of time in contact with the Western allies promising to surrender the whole country to them as soon as they reached Hungary.
Bela Varga. He moved to New York City in 1947 and didn’t step foot into his homeland again until after the collapse of the communists in 1991.
Andras Szentivanji: no links at all, where did you dig him up?
Balint Arany I did find a Balint Arany, but since he’s 32 I guess he had nothing to do with the revolt since he wasn’t born until twenty years after the fact.

But I'm sure the ghost of Gyula and the, near to being a ghost himself, Horty, somehow arranged meetings with the "much more liberal than portrayed" Miklos and the somewhat nondescript Bela Vargas to engineer the Hungarian revolt. All of this being brought about by using a defunct political party to bring their sinister plot to fruition. It makes perfect sense.

" To say the Hungarian workers opposed communism is a little rich too, considering thousands were slaughtered in 1919 trying to establish a Soviet republic."
I’m sure they did but that was 1919, and they didn’t know what they were getting themselves into. The people that revolted in Hungary in 1956 had lived under communism for nine years and knew exactly what they were opposing.

Using the same rationale thousands were slaughtered in 1956 trying to overthrow a soviet republic. People change their minds; this surprises you?

"But I'm sure the ghost of Gyula and the, near to being a ghost himself, Horty, somehow arranged meetings with the "much more liberal than portrayed" Miklos and the somewhat nondescript Bela Vargas to engineer the Hungarian revolt. All of this being brought about by using a defunct political party to bring their sinister plot to fruition. It makes perfect sense"

I was referring to the attempted coup in 1946 (hence immediately after the war).

"Miklos and the somewhat nondescript Bela Vargas to engineer the Hungarian revolt."

Bela Vargas was one of the founders of the smallholders party. Hardly "non-descript"

"All of this being brought about by using a defunct political party to bring their sinister plot to fruition. It makes perfect sense. "

You haven't a clue what you're talking about. The smallholders was reconstituted in '56, under the leadership of Bela Kovacs, during the uprising. Kovacs even admitted that Nazis and extremists were part of the movement, but insisted they were a "small part".

http://www.hungarian-history.hu/lib/unreport/unreport.pdf

Tildy, the first party leader of the Smallholders, was elected minister of the coalition government during '56. But of course, more proof they had nothing to do with it.

Okay so you brought up an attempted coup in 1946 and tried to relate it to the 1956 uprising? Without telling anyone that you were talking about an event that occurred ten years prior to the event. You just thought you'd let us believe the two events were one in the same? This just gets better and better. So you deliberaltely try to smear me as if I was in favor of a coupe, that I never cited, when I brought up a revolt merely to show you that communists could be quite nasty in putting down revolts.

Given the unnreliability of your first attempt I'll go and check up on Bela Kovacs as well. A small part hardly constitues the driving force that you intimated earlier. I'd be willing to bet the anti-Semitic lynchings were part of this earlier coup, and not part of the '56 revolution, right? You know the one that I quite clearly cited?

Nagy was leader btw, he was a communist until the Soviets executed him.

As I suspected, not much on Kovacs to support your notions. He remained a member of the Hungarian parliament until his death in 1959. Not exactly the treatment a fascist would get given that 40 other people were executed for their part in the revolt. Not to mention that he'd just gotten out of a ten year stint in SIberia.

You're making this up as you're going along aren't you? Nothing you say holds up to scrutiny.

As I thought the anti-Semtism in Hungary (in 1946 I might add) was actually falsely attributed to the Smallholders and the communists actually added to the anti-Semitic mood.

Excerpt from Anti-Semitism in Post WOrld War II Hungary- Violence, Riots, and Communist Party Policy

by Peter Kenez

"Although there were anti-Jewish demonstrations, and attacks on individual Jews at least in a dozen places in 1946, the bloodiest and worst manifestation took place in Kunmadaras in May and in Miskolc in July. [15] The Kunmadaras affair even included the ancient anti-Jewish calumny of blood libel, which, especially among the ignorant peasantry was still widespread all around the country. The rumor spread in Kunmadaras, that Jews made sausage out of Christian children, and it was said that in the nearby town of Karcag several christian children had mysteriously disappeared. The pogrom, however, against the tiny local Jewry (out of a 250-person Jewish population before the war only 73 survived) began only when the police arrested and attempted to transfer to Karcag, a popular person, who had collaborated with the Nazis. The crowd prevented taking the man to court, and the aroused people beat up the local Socialist party secretary. The socialist functionary later reported: "When the crowd kicked out my teeth I suddenly realized that I was beaten not because I was a socialist, but because I was a Jew." Next day the crowd attacked localJews, killing two and wounding 15. Here, just as in Ozd, violence against Jews quickly turned into looting. Although in this instance the Communist Party could not be held directly responsible for the events, the Communists attempted to make political capital out of the pogrom, by unjustly blaming their political enemies, members of the Smallholder Party for it.

The situation was different in Miskolc. Here the Communist Party was directly responsible. Miskolc was an industrial town, where the working class was in particularly dire straits. The communists crudely used this disaffection for their own political purposes. They attempted to mobilize the people and make speculators and black marketeers scapegoats for genuine problems. In the summer of 1946, misery was the greatest and inflation reached unheard of proportions. Plans called for the introduction of a new and stable currency, the forint, and, it must be admitted, that in the work of financial stabilization the Communist party played a major role. InJune and July prominent communist leaders came to Miskolc and harangued the workers. Gero said: " why have you not hanged a single black marketeer?" Rakosi himself came to Miskolc and in his speech demanded death to those who speculated, and were therefore the enemies of the new, stable currency. The complexity of the situation, and the inherent dangers for the Communist Party for its policies is shown by the fact that before Rakosi's arrival in the town anti-Jewish graffiti appeared in the wall calling Rakosi a rotten Jew. Instead of attempting to calm the crowds, the communists' policy was to demonstrate that it was not a "Jewish party." The local communist organization was aware of the antisemitic mood of the workers, and instead of attempting to combat this antisemitism, it decided to remove party functionaries who came from the Jewish bourgeoisie."

The author also cites the policy of the Hungarian communists of recruiting low ranking Hungarian Nazis. That's exactly what you claim of the Smallholders.

"Most reprehensibly, the top leaders openly courted low ranking members of the Hungarian Nazi Party (Nyilaskeresztes Part). The party needed new members in order to penetrate into Hungarian society, and also to be able to assume a nationalist mantle. Rakosi explicitly stated that in his opinion it is easier to make good communists out of the little Nazis (kis nyilasok) than out of Jewish intellectuals. [8] Rakosi, Gero, Revai, and indeed most members of the top leadership came from precisely those social circles in which the top leader of the party expressed no confidence. "

This from the 1956 Institute:

"Independent Smallholders’ Party (FKgP): Named in full the Independent Smallholders’, Land Workers’ and Citizens’ Party, it was founded on October 12, 1930 as an agrarian party by peasants meeting in Békés, to represent the interests mainly of landed peasants. After merging with Gaston Gaál’s Agrarian Party, it styled itself the Independent Smallholders’, Land Workers’ and Citizens’ Agrarian Party, but reverted to its earlier name in 1943. The ~ was the biggest left-wing bourgeois opposition and parliamentary party in the 1930s, acting as an umbrella for people ranging from wealthier landed peasants to the village poor and some urban strata, advocating ® land reform and other liberal democratic demands. Its anti-fascist and anti-Arrow-Cross stance meant that it was banned during the German occupation."


Wow, they say that the Smallholders party was anti-fascist and anti-Arrow Cross. But you say they were fascist and tied up with them. Funny how the communists seemed to snap up the fascists not the Smallholders.

Curioser and curiouser....

Still no mention of Bela Vargas and since he was in the USA in 1956 and had been since 1947 it's hardly an issue.