Things that IMT members secretly hate though they will never admit it

Those of us who are ex-IMT members (and ex-members of other Trot sects) all have things we secretly hated doing, but would never admit to so doing in front of other ‘comrades’, for fear of losing face. Here are all the things that IMT members secretly hate (and that ex-members secretly hated) but will never own up to so doing:

1. Paper sales. I was an anomaly because I actually enjoyed paper sales. It felt good to proselytise the doctrine and demonstrate my dedication to other comrades, and it was nice to be out of the echo-chamber and to have a chance to talk to ordinary people (even though our conversations were technically being monitored by other comrades). In general, paper sales are probably the least popular aspect of sectarian activity, and is one for which Trotskyist organisations are roundly mocked by those not in their ranks. The justification for paper sales largely rests on tradition – this is how the Trotskyists of the 1930s spread their message, and so, even in the days of the Internet and social media, this method must be upheld. Never mind that there are better ways of reaching people. Moreover, it is argued that paper sales are psychologically healthy for revolutionaries because it gives them a chance to interact with actual workers in the flesh rather than simply operating anonymously online. This is a fair point, but the fact remains that talking to random people in the street will not give you a representative sample of workers. In my experience, most people would simply walk by without buying a paper. Those who did show a passing interest would not necessarily purchase any merchandise. It is unlikely that many of those that did buy a paper bothered to read much if any of its poorly-written contents before throwing their copies away. Even those who were sympathetic to us and would stop to chat about socialist politics were hardly ever contact material, and even those that became contacts rarely took the final leap of joining the organisation. And the organisation’s heavy turnover means that even the few that joined through this method would end up leaving when they found out what life in a sect was really like. Now and then the odd eccentric, seeing that we were a captive audience, would stand in front of us bellowing about God knows what whilst we all stood there and tried not to burst out laughing. Getting these people to go away so we could talk to other people was incredibly difficult. Shier members cannot have enjoyed these public displays of militancy. We were dragooned into standing around like lemmings for a good hour or more, holding the paper and bellowing our slogans and trying to look like we were trying hard to sell something so as not to lose face with the others. Paper sales were utterly ineffective as a means of reaching people, but they were a very good method of controlling our time (milieu control, a key aspect of cults) and reinforcing our loyalty to the doctrine. It’s a paradox of our psychology that by getting us to do outlandish things like proselytising in the street, our brain convinces us that we must be truly dedicated if we are willing to go this far, and this has the effect of reinforcing our loyalty. It certainly did in my case. In the case of many others it must have driven quite a few of them out of the sect. My branch secretary was fond of saying that holding the paper in public was, if effective for nothing else, useful as a sort of ‘uniform’ which symbolised our political loyalties. In other words, the paper is a means of further regimenting the members of the organisation and suppressing their individuality and their critical faculties. No wonder more individualistic members hated and still hate paper sales.
2. Contact work. My God, contact work. This is what I hated more than anything else in the organisation. These ‘contacts’ were invariably a waste of time, people we were forced to interact with because of the sect’s mania for recruitment. Hardly any of them joined, and those who did were of dubious reliability. Moreover, it always concerned me that they didn’t seem to know what they were getting themselves into. I was present at multiple contact meetings, mainly with my branch secretary, Thomas, who I would allow to do most of the talking and persuading. After every contact meeting, he would nit-pick over my methods of persuasion – I should have phrased it in this way as opposed to that way, I shouldn’t have said this because it might put them off joining. I politely nodded and wondered how seriously to take him. I hated the feeling that we had to deceive people into joining. The idea that some information was to be kept ‘internal’ and separate from our ‘external’ line bothered me during the whole of my membership. It felt like we were tricking people into joining. Which is exactly what we were doing. Lying in the name of recruitment. I felt that if people were serious they would join without us having to put much work into it. I felt like a used-car salesman every time I was tasked with ‘contact work’. Needless to say I never admitted to this when I was a member.
3. Fundraising. I was a very loyal comrade and happily gave over my money to the sect. Only in hindsight do I realise how much of this money was wrung out of me by deception. Every opportunity is taken by the sect to wring money out of the hapless membership. Seasonal fundraising drives, ticket prices for socials, conferences – it was utterly ridiculous. Every conference or congress would have a fundraising portion of the event where people would be encouraged to stand up and pledge ridiculous amounts of money, thus setting off a chain reaction as the branches sought to out-compete one another as to who could pledge more money. This is no different to the fundraising tactics used by the Pentecostal churches I was dragged to growing up. Members who were reticent about giving so much of their money to the cult were shamed. Despite the lie that members are only expected to pay subs and subscribe to the paper as a minimum requirement for membership, every member finds themselves paying through the nose over the course of their membership. How many members secretly despise this wheedling approach, yet sit quietly at every national conference and grin and bear it as they watch their fellow comrades being tricked into giving over all this cash?
4. Political education. The organisation’s idea of ‘political education’ is reading the same old texts approved by the leadership, written by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky and the organisation’s bureaucracy/priesthood of ‘full-timers’. Expensive editions of Marxist classics published by Wellred, with little or nothing added but a glossy cover and a useless foreword by Alan Woods or Rob Sewell or some other goon, are forced upon the membership. These are available online and even physically for much less money. (The covers are nice and the font is nice and big, so I’ll give them that.) Anything even slightly outside the sacred circle of approved texts, even works by other Trotskyists who were not Grantites, is strictly verboten (with some exceptions, like Cannon’s infamous sequel to In Defence of Marxism, The Struggle for a Proletarian Party, which contains useful justifications for bureaucratic expulsions of anyone the organisation deems ‘petty-bourgeois’). CLR James, the great black Trotskyist (indeed, the only black Trotskyist of any real significance) is written out of history because he broke with the Trotskyist movement. People who suggest alternative readings are bullied out of the organisation. I was shamed for liking Nietzsche and other un-Marxist philosophers when I was a member. In two and a half years of membership, besides my university reading I read almost nothing that wasn’t published by Wellred. I am now making up for lost time by reading lots of literature instead of all the useless Trotskyist trivia I filled my mind with. (By the way, it is worth mentioning that Woods’ texts suffer from a serious lack of editing. His book on Spain, which I read shortly before leaving, is full of entire paragraphs where he simply repeats himself. But it is akin to the word of the Lord and therefore cannot be chopped or edited in any way.) Upon joining the organisation, members are overwhelmed with a daunting reading list that puts a lot of people off. People compete as to who has read more, and those who struggle to keep up with the reading are shamed. The average member, who only has so much time on his or her hands, will thus always be in a position of intellectual inferiority to the ‘full-timers’ who have read all of the key texts multiple times and have all the quotes at their fingertips (invariably taken out of context) ready to shoot down any criticism of their organisation’s position on anything. The illusion of omniscience at the top is thus created. It is yet another means of controlling the time of the members – all that time spent reading only IMT-approved material, in the form of books or articles published on the website, is time not spent engaging with other works outside the group’s canon, thus suppressing their critical faculties.
5. Alan Woods. Again, I am an exception here. I revered Woods greatly when I was a member. I will always remember our very first meeting, when I was a contact of the organisation, at the October Festival in London. He told me in no uncertain terms that the only people I needed to read where Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. I don’t think he was entirely joking. I found him charismatic, intelligent and approachable. I suspect I might have been in a minority. Even many loyal members secretly detest Woods and find him creepy, eccentric, overbearing, dull and senile. The fact that he has been publicly accused of sexually harassing a teenager at a social held by the organisation is just one of many reasons why people are wary of this individual. (When I was a loyal member I dismissed the allegations as slander.) He has been at the helm of the organisation since its inception, when he co-founded it with Ted Grant, and has shown no tolerance for rivals or critics of any kind. He has thrown entire sections overboard for not doing his bidding. He is able to publish whatever he wants on the organisation’s website, and his articles are not subjected to any real editing. His monumental arrogance is legendary, and he truly believes that only he and his cronies are keeping the flame of genuine Marxism burning. Word has it that Fred Weston is his chosen successor once he leaves the scene. He isn’t getting any younger, after all. Why a man approaching eighty years of age is still running a political organisation is anyone’s guess. Needless to say, any attempt to remove this egomaniac will likely result in an ugly split, and so his cronies have probably deemed it best to keep him in place.
6. The organisation’s position on the Big Bang. Many loyalists loudly defend it, yet many secretly think it is utter insanity. I overheard more than one member ridicule it when I was in.
7. Socials. Socials in the organisation were a tool of social control, fundraising and recruitment, not innocent gatherings of friends, as the organisation wants you to think. They are yet another example of milieu control being exercised on the members to make them more conformist. The more time you are spending with other ‘comrades’, the less time you are actually thinking for yourself. (The heavy drinking that takes place at these socials has provided cover for rape, sexual assault and other horrors, covered up by the leadership.) It is no surprise that when members move to an area of the country without a branch, they either build one themselves or end up leaving the organisation once time and space from their ‘comrades’ allows them to think critically about their involvement.
8. Branch meetings. Branch meetings are long, boring and bureaucratic affairs – a whopping two hours in length. When I was a member, the only aspects of branch I enjoyed were the lead-offs and subsequent political discussion, which comprised the latter half of the meeting. The first half was taken up with admin. I invariably zoned out during this part of the meeting. Even the lead-offs are invariably intellectually stultified and bland repetitions of the party line. The political discussions are simply a contest to see who can be more conformist. The whole charade involves everyone agreeing with one another and affirming the correctness of the line. No real ‘education’ is taking place here. Hardly anyone dares to utter a point of dissent, for fear of being hounded and shouted down by the others, or of outing themselves as a dangerous petty-bourgeois element that needs to be purged. Any criticism or objection is swiftly reported to the full-timer in charge of that area, who then bears down on the individual or individuals concerned. Entire branches have been expelled from the organisation for daring to disagree with the party line, like the Portland branch of the US section, which was recently disaffiliated via email for minor criticisms of the organisation’s line on identity politics. Despite being lied to when I joined that branch was where we were to raise political disagreements, I was told shortly before I left that in fact this was considered ‘disruptive’ and that it was discouraged. When I was in, the rare person who did raise objections was invariably slandered behind his or her back.

There are probably so many more things I could add, but I think this will be sufficient. So many people find themselves experiencing this double-think within the organisation. The psychological damage of having to do or participate in things we secretly hate is incalculable. I can only hope that more people will see what this organisation is and desert it.