Analysing the IMT’s ‘record-breaking’ growth

The Revolutionary Communist International (RCI), formerly known as the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), is boasting of record-breaking growth. Let us see how ‘record-breaking’ this growth truly is. The easiest indication of how big the organisation generally is are the admittedly unreliable reports of membership attendance at the yearly international conventions that are put on their website. In 2004, they boasted almost 300 attendees. In 2005, they reported a slightly more modest figure of 250. In 2006, they boasted of 320 attendees, a notable increase on the year before. In 2007 they reported a similar figure. In 2008, they boasted of 350 attendees. In four years the organisation had barely grown. (Again, I stress, these are their own figures. The reality is almost certainly worse.) Nothing can be found for 2009. Perhaps a tactical decision was taken not to hold one in view of the disputes in the international that would see the Spanish, Venezuelan and Mexican sections split a year later. It would be another nine years before such figures were reached again. Due to the splits that occurred after 2008, their numbers plummeted. In 2010, they reported 250 people present at their World Congress. That is a collapse of almost 30% from 2008. The following year, this fell slightly to 225 members present at their World School. In 2012 it went back to 250. This figure was unchanged for 2013 and 2014. We can see a clear decline from the giddy heights of the 2008 congress. Between 2004 and 2008, and again between 2010 and 2014, the organisation was practically stagnant as far as membership is concerned. All of those explosive world events simply passed the organisation by. A decade of decline and irrelevance.

In 2015, 270 people were reported as being in attendance. This coincides with the excitement generated by Corbynism in the UK and Sanders in the USA, with an aggressive return by the organisation to Labour Party entryism in the former, combined with a turn towards recruitment on university campuses. A similar figure was reported in 2016. In 2017, it was reported that over 300 were in attendance. In other words, it took them seven years to recover from the disastrous post-2008 splits – this during a period when the global economic crisis was driving political radicalisation that should, according to their theory, have bolstered their ranks exponentially. In the end, they were right back where they started. In 2018, the figure was 370. In 2019, the cult reported 400 attendees. Skipping over a few years of pandemic-related disruption, we come to the next reported in-person international event, which was in 2023, with over 400 attendees. Their most recent event, the founding congress of their new organisation, which took place this June, supposedly had 500 attendees. This therefore gives them, if one would like to be charitable, a record of seven years of apparently uninterrupted growth, balancing out the seven years they spent recovering from self-inflicted splits.

Between 2015 and 2024, therefore, we can see that the organisation has almost doubled. This is superficially impressive, then you realise that it is a mere increase of about 26 people every year on average who are attending these international conventions, and that much of this ‘growth’ is simply recovering from past splits. (There were almost certainly more members during the initial split in the 1990s, but over the years, the attrition of factional in-fighting and demoralisation would have worn down that figure.) Out of that number, a good chunk will leave the organisation due to heavy turnover rates within a couple of years of their membership. If one takes 2016 as a benchmark instead, the year of Trump and Brexit, which should have driven massive radicalisation among all layers of society, we can see that the figure of 500 attendees at the latest congress is an increase of a mere 66% on the close to 300 who attended in 2004. It is a mere 42% increase on the figure of 350 they had in 2008.

It is also clear that much of the growth is concentrated in the British section, the leading section of the organisation. Thanks to the aggressive recruiting campaigns conducted on college campuses, the British cult now claims to have over 1000 members. Needless to say, a good chunk of these members are certainly inactive and will abandon the cult before too long. Despite boasts of their newfound size and influence, a mere 160 out of the supposed 1000 comrades could be bothered to turn up to an RCP ‘summer camp’ that took place this month. Not only that, but when they ran a candidate in the elections that took place this July, they gained a pitiful 1791 votes, coming second-last out of all the candidates that stood.

There is no flood of people signing up to join the IMT. The people who attend the international events are among the most fanatical and self-sacrificing – people who are willing or able to book time off work, to pay the (admittedly subsidised) fee for going and spend an entire week sequestered in a hostel with no one to talk to who isn’t a member of the cult. That is why these numbers, though imperfect and undoubtedly exaggerated for propaganda reasons, are a useful figure to go by. Rest assured, sharp splits and sudden changes are on the horizon.