It can be pretty vague, but roughly the idea of pulling together grouplets, old parties, scattered people into a new unified Party. Or it can be a "new" party tht gathers the fragments aroudn it. Mark Jones & Jim Hilliard (Hillyer?) formed a shortlived Party called Communist Party (Refoundation). It lasted a few months, the two quarreled, and the thing collapsed.
Disciplined parties run into an impossible contradiction. If you keep the theory pure, the discipline tight, you remain tiny and keep fragmenting. The number of Trotskyist parties around the world must run into the thousands. If you make real efforts to grow, you have to loosen your "standards," and pretty soon you are jut another mass party. Any kind of formation of course runs into similar problems, but not in such acute forms.
I still tend to think that multiple parties and organizations will not only work best but will simply happen wily nilly. If Dean gets her Party, it will be just one more grouiplet in a big stew. Probably the best bet for lovers of left order would be to join some existing loose organization and form a caucus inside it to argue for their programs. That's what they will be anyhow, a *Caucus in a much more varied left.
Carrol
P.S. The Stalinist/Trotskyist form of The Party more or less worked in nations fighting wars of liberation. But it is important to note that cr ucial to the CPC was "two-line struggle." The Party would unify around a certainline; conditons would change, there would be a party faction that wanted to stick to the old line, a party faction that wanted to develop a new line, and they would fight it out. In Europe or the U.S. the factions would split and form two parties, or one faction would be expelled, after which it would split, and you would end up withthree parties, each of which would split and pretty soon.....