Lou, it is interesting that you picked this metaphor of the salesman (of the party as commodity) at about the same time I was writing, re anti-communist discussion of "alternatives," that both such anti-communist ideology *and* sectarian marxist positions were expressions of the deeply rooted assumptions in bourgeois society re the free-floating individual and re social systems as themselves packaged goods to choose among. Sectarians (not only Hugh by any means) do regard "The Party" as a pre-packaged commodity to be "sold" to free-floating "customers." Both abstract, of course, from the historical reality of (usually but not always blind) collective (and messy) struggle.
Of course, it is *also* always necessary to remember your recent point re the unavoidable separation of internet debates from the concrete practice of the participants, which gives a whiff of the sectarian to all of us.
Carrol