Last August, the IMT came out with a couple of stinging articles condemning Paul Mason as a ‘renegade’ and apostate from Marxism. The dispute is too boring to go into detail about, but anyone who is interested can go here and here. Mason foolishly gave the cult more publicity than it deserved by linking to … Read more
When I was in the IMT, we boasted endlessly of our democratic credentials. We compared ourselves favourably with Peter Taaffe’s organisation, which hounded out dissidents mercilessly. We replayed the trauma of the 1991-2 split over and over again. We convinced ourselves that we had much higher standards for our organisation. Little did I know that … Read more
When I joined the IMT, I found myself in this strange environment with which I was both personally, and, as it would turn out, politically incompatible. It was inevitable that it would all end in tears and that, as with so many other times in my largely depressing life, separation, ostracism and anger all round … Read more
I touched on this in my very first post on diamat, but at least two aspects of dialectical materialism which boggle the mind to no end, are the ideas that (a) one’s social class background is necessarily connected to one’s thought and (b) that human thought exists as part of an organic, homogeneous, dialectical whole, … Read more
One of the biggest philosophical questions is the problem of evil. Needless to say, it is a problem that Marxists wave aside. The whole notion of ‘good versus evil’ smacks of ‘bourgeois idealism’. Such moralism is to be avoided as much as humanly possible. One can only speak of ‘class struggle’, the forces of progress … Read more
I have been sitting in my living room, looking through ancient bank statements and scrawling through with a fine tooth-comb the cold, expressionless figures that appear on every page, searching for the payments I made to the International Marxist Tendency over two and a half years. I have calculated that I spent over £1000 – … Read more
Chris Williamson, former Labour MP for Derby North, Corbyn supporter and anti-Semite extraordinaire, just made this bizarre retweet of an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory: Now when some lefty loony on Twitter brings up the Rothschilds, you know it’s something bad. But Williamson, who is either an ignoramus or an anti-Semite who knows exactly what he is … Read more
I have just read Tony Aitman’s obituary of Ted Grant from 2006. Aitman is a member of Peter Taaffe’s Socialist Party (which made off with the majority of the organisation after the split in Militant between Taaffe and Grant). In the obituary, Aitman is respectful but notes Grant’s many flaws, in particular a tendency to … Read more
In the IMT, I was always taught that Lenin and Trotsky had conducted a heroic battle against anti-Semitism, and that it was revived by the evil Stalin as part of the ‘bureaucratic counter-revolution’ that reversed many of the ‘gains’ of the Russian Revolution. I had no idea of the Bolsheviks’ early efforts to stamp out … Read more
Like everyone else in Britain, I heard the sad news of the death of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. His passing has been marked by a reflection on his life, legacy and the institution of monarchy that he did so much to uphold. Likewise, it has also been an opportunity for the worst far-left cranks … Read more