A common refrain by IMT cultists in response to any criticism they receive online is ‘At least we’re organising.’ The mere fact that they are in a political organisation and are carrying out routine activities associated with being part of a group is to them sufficient proof that they are doing something meaningful or effective in terms of advancing their political goals. No further reflection or assessment is required. Being part of an organisation, which is to say, their organisation, is the key criteria one must fulfill to be considered a true communist. People who describe themselves as Marxists but are not in an organisation are seen as poseurs. When I was in the organisation, we labelled such people disdainfully as ‘academic Marxists’, people who weren’t willing to put their money where their mouth was and subject themselves to the discipline of being part of a collective entity working towards the goal of socialism. A tactic we loved to use when I was in, and is still used by these people, is to manipulate those hesitant about getting involved with an organisation by accusing them of hypocrisy for not wanting to be part of the sect. If they were real Marxists, they would join an organisation – our organisation – and join the fight for socialism. If they were already members, they were pressured to show their loyalty by committing more time, more money and more energy to the cause.
The fetishising of being in an organisation is ludicrous. It is worth pointing out that Marx and Engels did not spend all their time building organisations. The First International was dissolved after several years of ineffective existence when Marx and Engels decided that the conditions were not right and their time was better spent on other things. If Marx had spent every waking hour on purely organisational activity, he would never have found the time to do all the research he needed to do to write Capital and the many other things he did over the course of his long life – things which made just as much of a contribution, if not more so, than ll the time he spent building political organisations. The great African-American civil rights activist and historian, W.E.B. DuBois, spent ten years on hiatus from the NAACP after political disagreements caused him to break with them. (Another ‘petty-bourgeois intellectual’ that the IMT would have expelled as a troublemaker had he been in their ranks.) He spent that time doing valuable research on the life of blacks in Reconstruction-era America.
Activism takes many forms, and not all of them involve sinking hours of your life in pointless meetings and bureaucratic activities that serve only to create a sense of importance for the wastrels and parasites that call themselves ‘full-timers’ in these Trotskyist cults, and waste everyone else’s time. Most of this activity is utterly ineffective and does nothing for their ‘movement’. I would like someone in the Centre to do a scientific study of all the hours wasted on paper sales every month, and calculate how much this actually gives the organisation in terms of contacts, and out of those, how many are successfully recruited, and out of those, how many are retained. What they will find is that these outings represent time wasted that could have been spent doing more productive things like, I don’t know, reading thinkers that aren’t Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky.
This mystical belief in the need to be ‘organising’ at all costs, and the definition of ‘organising’ as creating a party-like sect that enjoys a parasitical existence on the fringes of the actually-existing mass movements and parties, is among the many cultish aspects of Trotskyism. There is a lot of virtue-signalling around the idea of belonging to an organisation, a belief that belonging to this special group of righteous warriors for equality and justice makes you better than everyone who isn’t part of this special circle. This sectarian tribalism does a good job of cutting these people from all those they could possibly hope to influence. One gets the sense that it isn’t really making a difference in the real world that animates these people, but wanting to belong to a club or a friendship group, and enjoying the warm glow of approval and in-group validation that results from their membership.
Organising is not always the answer. Sometimes the answer is to take a break, to take a step back and take stock of reality, and then, and only then, decide the way forward. Mindless activity in the name of ‘doing something, anything’ is not healthy. It is not always better to do something rather than nothing. That was the attitude of the advocates of individual terrorism in 19th-century Russia, who blew themselves up in futile efforts to bring down the old order. It got them nowhere. It was also the attitude of Alan Woods and his cronies after the split from Militant. Instead of taking some years out to calm down and coolly analyse where Militant had gone wrong and where to go next, they immediately threw themselves into building another organisation, in the narcissistic belief that the fate of the world hung upon the existence of their sect with its pathetic printing press. The obsession with non-stop organising is an example of milieu control, a key aspect of cults. The more time you are spending on mindless activity, the less time you have to actually think critically about the group’s doctrine and tactics. Being part of such a group gives you the illusion that you are making a meaningful contribution to society when you are doing no such thing.
Here is my remedy to all those out there trapped in these sects. Take a week out of activity. Do something else. Go on a date. Read a book not approved of by the cult. Watch television. Go and see a musical. Spend some time not engaged in cultish activity, and you will be much happier and healthier for it. And do not be guilted into giving yourself to a group that does not deserve your sacrifices.