Mass membership served as the party’s only needed proof of legitimacy

Evidence

Having successfully emerged from domestic competition, the party’s leaders considered the party’s structures and members the mainstay of their power. As Central Committee members argued, “the strength of our party rests in organization, whereas the strength of other parties rests on tradition.” A large, loyal membership was both an enormous political resource and the only proof that the party needed of its legitimacy. It was also a way of “crowding out” other political forces – other political parties had also sought mass party membership, and the KSCˇ saw its gains as their losses. — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 176

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the distinct organizational logic of these ‘mass parties’: legitimacy through saturation rather than electoral or ideological validation — a useful contrast against which to test threat-based solidarity accounts.
• QUESTION: If membership saturation, not an external enemy, legitimated this regime, does the manufactured-threat hypothesis for group solidarity apply at all to it? Or did the party’s external US/imperialist threat serve this function later?
• XREF: connects to: Establishment parties admitted populists to government only once populists were safely weak — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment: The Left After the…, 161; Siyad’s new party added legitimacy without broadening real power; The mass party once defined the boundaries of social belonging itself — Anton Jäger, Hyperpolitics: Extreme Politicization…, 90 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Siyad’s new party added legitimacy without broadening real power #exemplifies (0.85)
• Totalitarian party rule works through exclusion, not mass membership #contradicts (0.85)
• The mass party once defined the boundaries of social belonging itself #expands (0.80) — Anton Jäger, Hyperpolitics, 90
• Establishment parties admitted populists to government only once populists were safely weak #complicates (0.75) — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment, 161