Communism
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I don't get why you're being downvoted for this. To say they are failures is a relative view with a very specific definition of failure, as far as I can tell. The implication it's now getting simplified into in this thread seems to be that because they haven't tried or succeeded at a revolution, they are failures. If that's someone's standard, that's their standard, but there are other metrics to measure, like what kind of influence they've had on the political landscape of the given country as a whole; whether they have made a difference as opposition or not (or another way to look at it: would the given country be more reactionary/fascistic/etc. without them in the picture?). I don't think the Black Panther Party in the US ever got to the stage of attempting revolution, but they still made strides toward their goals and no doubt had an impact on things. Just comes across as reductionist to me.
The goal of a communist party is to bring about communism.
If they exist for 75 or 100 years without even trying to bring it about, then they're a failure. It's not reductionist to recognize that these parties are more interested in collecting dues and funneling their members into doing electoralism. It's something the parties need to sort out; whether they will or even can is a different thing.
All I can say is, I'm not trying to imply the opposite, that they have no fundamental problems. What I take issue with is sweeping proclamations. I know some things are broad some of the time, but I'd argue for something as serious as an assessment of a broad spectrum of parties across up to a century and numerous countries needs far more nuance and investigation than a couple of sentences worth of a vaguely applied principle. I made a specific point to emphasize "in this thread" because I don't think your original thread was being reductionist; I think it was digging into detail more so, and I don't expect academic paper length stuff on Lemmygrad just to have a discussion about these things. My criticism here was specifically about reducing it to the principle of "they haven't tried or succeeded at a revolution." I also think it's worth nothing here, the meaning of "tried" may need clarity. If a party has never "tried" in the sense that it never even did anything in the direction of revolutionary work, I'd agree it's a clear failure. But if "tried" only means "made a direct attempt on the state with force", that's a different meaning.
I know this kind of linguistics stuff can be annoying to some, so I get kind of self conscious at times about even calling attention to it, but nevertheless, I think it matters for something as weighty as an assessment of so many parties over such a long period of time. For example, some people can read "failure" and extrapolate from that as "throw the whole thing out, it has no value in it", which is a different takeaway from "it's intractable as a vehicle for forming a dictatorship of the proletariat, but might be useful in other ways." Still others might read it as a moral thing, like "failure" is something to be taken personally or dismissively, as ignoring what else happened with it that could be considered beneficial in some regards but fell short of revolution, and that last one seems to be the cause of some contention in this thread.
Yes to be clear, my issue is with these parties, but I also think we shouldn't be giving them excuses (they should be making these excuses themselves, so that we can then criticize them directly). If they are truly communist they will welcome the criticism anyway.
But, you are also right that this is straying from the topic of OP which is the organizing guide.
Yeah, the BPP wasn't a failure.
In addition, most Western parties are still around despite fierce repression and propaganda. The org I was apart of lasted 105 years so far despite it all.
Neither was the IWW a "failure."
Or the CPUSA during its heyday.
Or the anti-war peace movement for Vietnam.
Or NAARPR and NAIMSAL