I want to join the Dutch communist party, the NCPN. I’ve had this idea for a while now but never made it definitive because of some doubts.

Currently I’m a part of a party called BIJ1, which is an anti-capitalist party with a large focus on intersectionality and antiracism. I still think the party does good work, so I don’t think too negatively of them. But I still feel like there’s not much potential in the party anymore. Because this party attracted people from every brand of leftism from social democrats to anarchists to some MLs there was not a clear vision of what type of socialist society they wanted to work towards.

I joined at a time when I wasn’t an ML yet, so that vision wasn’t clear for me either. Because of this lack of vision and personal differences fights broke out. This led to people being banned from the party, elected members leaving the party and keeping their seat as an independent or with a new party. This all eventually led to us losing our only seat in the house of representatives in the last election. I’m not sure what we can do to regain that trust. I still feel that we could climb back up and regain that trust but the only way to know is after the municipal elections, which are a year away.

I feel like that lack of vision makes them unsure of their strategy. We call ourselves a party for the streets, but I feel like we focus the most on electoralism. We don’t work that much with unions, we don’t organise strikes or protests. BIJ1 WILL be absorbed by the system if this continues. I heard calls for governing in coalitions with socdem parties when we’re big enough We did succeed though, in stopping our racist house of representatives speaker from appearing at an anti-slavery remembrance. There needs to be more of a focus on class struggle in BIJ1, otherwise they’ll lose the socialist views. And to be honest it is a problem since the beginning of the party.

Like I said there were social democrats who joined the party who liked the intersectionality but not the socialist views. Some joined thinking it was only an anti-racist party. Some of them were elected members, like the municipal coucil member who left the party for the christian zionist Christian Union. The electoral candidates aren’t screened that well, with a very short list of questions that don’t reveal too much about their ideology. There’s also no background checks. We’ve had electoral candidates who are cops, who were transphobic. But it’s hard to screen when you don’t have good vision what you want your party to be. We don’t school our members, like other organisations either. We don’t have a book club or something like that.

I thought that maybe I could help change all this by steering the rest of the party towards Marxism-Leninism but you can’t do much on your own. I’ll have to be upfront about being an ML, which I haven’t yet for some reason. I’ve come across some people who say very anticommunist things, including the story about the Trotskyist I shared a couple months ago and I feel like I could never be able to push back against that. I know that a lot of other MLs have left the party and have joined mostly NCPN. I feel like BIJ1 should work together more with parties like NCPN but it doesn’t make BIJ1 suddenly communist. BIJ1 also never uses the word communist, only socialist. And even then they mostly opt for using the word anti-capitalist instead.

At this point it makes more sense to join a communist party. They know what they strive for, focus a lot on extraparliamentary work, vet their incoming members, and has a lively youth organisation, which I want to join. BIJ1 is pretty old now and their youth organisation is abandoned. With BIJ1 I sometimes feel left out because a lot of the time I’m one of the only young people. And I feel like I can’t do much for the party and what I do isn’t that useful.

Like I said, I’ve been thinking about this for a while now but a few things were holding me back. I firstly didn’t want to join another party until I was fully out as a trans woman so I wouldn’t deal with coming out again. But then I also didn’t want to join until I was on hormones for at least a couple months, since I don’t want to look like a man to them.

I still have some good connections from BIJ1 and I don’t want to dissappoint them. Last meeting I felt really included and I’d love to keep working with them. And I don’t know anybody from the communist party and my social anxiety makes me fear that I’ll become lonely. I kinda feel like I have to connect to someone who’s already a member before joining to stop this feeling. But I actually think that I could make more connections, also with people my age. But there’s still a fear that I won’t be admitted to NCPN so I would leave for nothing. But I could always join another organisation like RSP.

The only thing I have left to do is think about how I’m going to leave the party. Does anybody have some ideas how I should do that?