The essence of totalitarianism is the desire to remake all of society into a gray homogeneity. Islamism, communism, fascism – all seek to impose on society a stultifying sameness and uniformity of opinion, dress, manners, culture and language. The Islamists seek to impose on everyone strict adherence to their fundamentalist interpretation of Islam, and force … Read more
The 1991-2 split in the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI) brought about the demise of Militant, the CWI’s British section, and gave birth to the two main organisations that came out of it – the Socialist Party under Peter Taaffe, and Socialist Appeal under Ted Grant, Alan Woods and Rob Sewell. When I was … Read more
When I first joined the IMT, the organisation was in the middle of developing its social media presence. This is at the heart of the organisation’s cultish nature. This is what the cult expert Lifton called ‘milieu control’. Against my better judgement, I was persuaded to get Facebook for the first time in order to … Read more
Louis Proyect’s death was announced just this week. Having just found out the news, I feel duty-bound to write something in tribute. A well-known and well-respected online Marxist commentator, with a blog that attracted millions of hits over many years, he is one of the people to which I am indebted for rescuing me from … 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
How I became a Corbynista It is the end of an era. Jeremy Corbyn’s time has come and gone. Despite all of the fire and fury, the optimism and exuberance, the tumult and turmoil, the Corbyn movement appears to have collapsed as quickly as it began. That is not to say that the Corbyn movement … Read more
Introduction A central feature of Marxism (and indeed, Trotskyism) is dialectical materialism. Marx developed his theory of dialectical materialism from his re-interpretation of Hegel’s philosophy. Hegel borrowed the concept from Heraclitus, an ancient Greek thinker, who famously argued that the world was in flux and contained contradictions. On this basis, he stated that ‘No one … Read more
Introduction Today marks exactly a year since my resignation from the International Marxist Tendency. I republish here in full my resignation letter, which most members of the organisation have not read. These things are naturally withheld from the membership. It will help set the record straight about my departure, since all sorts of lies are … Read more