Dennis Tourish, Professor of Leadership and Organisation Studies at the University of Sussex, has written at length about cults. Like many cult experts, he was in one – he worked as a full-timer for the Militant Tendency in Northern Ireland in the 1980s. In 1998, he wrote a paper entitled ‘Ideological Intransigence, Democratic Centralism and Cultism: A Case Study’. This was followed up by a book he co-wrote with ex-Trotskyist Tim Wohlforth, On the Edge: Political Cults Right and Left (2000), with a chapter dedicated to the CWI/Militant Tendency, the forerunner of the IMT. Another book, The Dark Side of Transformational Leadership: A Critical Perspective (2013) also had a chapter covering life in Militant. Tourish has described Militant and other Trotskyist sects as being political cults. It was reading Tourish’s 1998 paper on Militant as a cult that helped me to realise what on earth had happened to me. A couple of weeks later, I had left the organisation. The methods used to recruit people, and the internal regime of the organisation, is identical to that which I experienced in the IMT. When I came to the realisation that mind control techniques had been used on me, such were my feelings of anger and betrayal that continued loyalty to this loathsome organisation was no longer possible.
In his 1998 article on the CWI/Militant, Tourish lists six criteria which apply to political cults, all of which in my opinion apply to the IMT:
1. A rigid belief system. In the case of left wing political cults this suggests that all social, natural, scientific, political, economic, historical and philosophical issues can only be analysed correctly from within the group’s theoretical paradigm – one which therefore claims a privileged and all-embracing insight. The view that the group’s belief system explains everything eliminates the need for fresh or independent thought, precludes the possibility of critically appraising past practice or acknowledging mistakes, and removes the need to seek intellectual sustenance outside the group’s own ideological fortress. All such thinking is dismissed as contaminated by the impure ideology of bourgeois society.
In the IMT, as in the CWI, we held Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky to be the four great teachers, who had provided all the knowledge that was necessary for any analysis of the world. Any Marxists outside the canon of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Ted Grant and other IMT ‘theoreticians’ were disparaged and described as ‘academic Marxists’ or ‘Stalinists’. Go on the IMT website and you will find hardly any mention of Louis Althusser, E.P. Thompson, C.L.R. James, Raya Dunayevskaya, Erich Fromm or Perry Anderson. It is as if they didn’t exist. To my shame, I went along with this bigotry, against my better judgement. Aside from disparaging other Marxist theoreticians, we relentlessly demonised academics as ‘postmodernists’ and corrupted by ‘bourgeois ideology’. At party meetings, Alan Woods would blast ‘these idiots in universities’, and make all sorts of snide remarks and jokes about the stupidity of intellectuals and professors, and the pointlessness of higher education. The irony is that Woods himself did a PhD as a young man. It is unclear if he finished it. Perhaps his own thwarted academic ambitions, combined with his ideological prejudices, are behind his disdain for academia.
2. The group’s beliefs are immune to falsification. No test can be devised or suggested which might have the effect of inducing a reappraisal. The all-embracing quality of the dominant ideology precludes re-evaluation, since it implies both omniscience and infallibility. Methods of analysis which set themselves more modest explanatory goals are viewed as intrinsically inferior. Those who question any aspect of the group’s analysis are branded as deviationists bending to the “pressures of capitalism”, and are driven from the ranks as heretics.
In the IMT, we would bang on endlessly about ‘the Marxist method’, the ‘science of Marxism’, and variations on that theme. For us, Marxism, like any science, had predictive power and could anticipate all the twists and turns of events, unlike the stupid bourgeois ’empiricists’, who could only see what was in front of their nose. A popular cliche in the cult was ‘Marxism is the triumph of foresight over astonishment.’ If this was indeed the case, it is unclear why Ted Grant and Alan Woods were unable to anticipate the restoration of capitalism in the USSR in the 1990s, or even avert the degeneration and collapse of the CWI. Believing that Marxism, or our rigid interpretation of Marxism, was alone able to interpret and make sense of the world, we would disparage less dogmatic approaches as ‘eclecticism’. This buzzword, in normal language, refers to a combination of different intellectual approaches as opposed to a purely Marxist analysis.
In the run-up to the 2019 election in the UK, we were all out for a Corbyn victory. We simultaneously predicted a crushing Corbynite victory on the one hand, whilst acknowledging the possibility of defeat on the other. If the latter happened, then we already had a ready-made excuse – it would be because of Blairite sabotage, Brexit, the right-wing media, etc. If Corbyn did win after all, it would be because his bold, left-wing manifesto was able to bridge the divisions within the working-class caused by Brexit. Whatever happened, we were right. No outcome could be regarded as falsifying our belief system.
3. An authoritarian inner party regime is maintained. Decision making is concentrated in elite hands, which gradually dismantles or ignores all formal controls on its activities. Members are excluded from participation in determining policy, calling leaders to account, or expressing dissent. This is combined with persistent assurances about the essentially democratic nature of the organization, and the existence of exemplary democratic controls – on paper.
When I joined the IMT, I was assured that we were a democratic organisation which encouraged dissent, discussion and debate. I was told that the best place to raise disagreements was branch. Yet when I raised my doubts about the Trotskyist interpretation of the Russian Revolution to my branch secretary shortly before my departure, I was told not to raise my differences in branch. The reason was that it was feared that I would mislead and ‘miseducate’ the newer comrades who had joined. The regional full-timer was of the same opinion, and warned me that I was under ‘party discipline’ to keep my disagreements to myself and promote the party line – in other words, lie about what I actually believed. When I was in the organisation, I would hear other comrades gossiping about and backbiting against those comrades who did raise ‘incorrect’ ideas in branch – they were seen as ‘disruptive’ and ‘miseducating’ the newer members. So much for branch being a place where dissent and debate is welcomed. In practice, branch meetings existed to get members to further internalise the doctrine and confirm their pre-existing beliefs. The best branch meetings, from our point of view, were those which involved complete agreement on every question. We secretly had contempt for new members – they could easily be led astray, and therefore had to be kept away from any criticisms of the doctrine and made to internalise the ‘correct ideas’. So much for a democratic organisation which encouraged dissent and disagreement.
‘Unanimous’ agreement in branch was a microcosm of ‘unanimous’ agreement in the organisation at large. Our national conferences, as explained elsewhere, were stage-managed affairs in which the leadership presented its agenda for the ‘unanimous’ approval of the entire membership. The slate system saw the same leadership re-elected every year, with no prospect of removing them. The Central Committee and full-timers formed a de facto permanent faction, which controlled the organisation with an iron fist. Of course, no ordinary member could form a faction – anyone who did would be expelled.
4. There is a growing tendency for the leaders to act in an arbitrary way, accrue personal power, perhaps engage in wealth accumulation from group members or in the procuring of sexual favours. Activities which would provoke censure if engaged in by rank and file members (e.g. having a reasonable standard of living, enjoying time off, using the organization’s funds for personal purposes) are tolerated when they apply to leaders.
Abuse of power and arbitrary behaviour was not exactly unheard of in the IMT. A couple of years before I joined the IMT/Socialist Appeal, a few prominent members left the organisation, accusing leading figures of inappropriate sexual behaviour. Also, in the organisation, there was immense pressure on ordinary members to raise their disputes through the ‘official structures’ of the organisation (where any dissent could be killed off more easily). However, ‘leading comrades’ did not have to worry about silly things like that – they could do what they jolly well pleased. So whereas I was under ‘party discipline’ not to tell anyone about my doubts about certain aspects of party doctrine, more senior members of the organisation were allowed to gossip about me behind my back and discuss my ‘disruptive’ attitude.
5. Leader figures, alive or dead, are deified. In the first place, this tends to centre on Marx, Trotsky or other significant historical figures. It also increasingly transfers to existing leaders, who represent themselves as defending the historical continuity of the “great” ideas of Marxist leaders. In effect, the new leaders are depicted, in their unbending devotion to the founders’ ideals, as the reincarnation of Marx, Trotsky or whoever. There is a tendency to settle arguments by referring constantly to the sayings of the wise leaders (past or present), rather than by developing an independent analysis. Even banal observations are usually buttressed by the use of supporting quotations from sanctified sources.
In the IMT, Ted Grant was described as the ‘unbroken thread’ of Marxism, the only legitimate successor to the apostolic succession of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. Alan Woods was his loyal disciple, and after his death, became the new keeper of the flame. Grant was deified, his every utterance pronounced divine. Cliches like ‘recruiting the ones and twos’, ‘growing by leaps and bounds’ were his words, quoted like holy Scripture. Lenin and Trotsky were lionised as the two great leaders of the October Revolution, and they were quoted uncritically to back up every conceivable statement or point of view, no matter how banal. It wasn’t uncommon for me to see people at our national conferences walking around wearing Trotsky badges and T-shirts with the visages of the ‘great teachers’ on them.
6. There is an intense levels of activism, precluding outside interests. Social life and personal “friendships” revolve exclusively around the group, although such friendships are conditional on the maintenance of uncritical enthusiasm for the party line. Members acquire a specialised vocabulary (e.g. they call each other “comrade”), which reinforces a sense of distance and difference from those outside their ranks. The group becomes central to the personal identity of members, who find it more and more difficult if not impossible to imagine a life outside their organization.
Upon joining the organisation as a lonely and naive young university student, I developed an extensive social circle for the first time. Of course, it was all an illusion – these ‘friendships’ were based entirely on maintaining uncritical support for and obedience towards the organisation. I knew, deep down, that these friendships were superficial at best, but I tried not to think too much about the prospect of losing them if I left. I remember how, at a meeting of comrades in London, the full-timer for the region told us that we should aim to become the ‘best friend’ of someone we were trying to recruit. When they joined the organisation, he joked, they would realise that we weren’t actually their friends. We all laughed at this brazen cynicism. Needless to say, when I left the organisation, all those I had known over two and a half years of membership cut off ties with me. It was a very painful experience, but a necessary one. Shedding fake friends from the cult has opened up space for me to find real friendships with people who are not deluded conformists. It is all too common practice for cult members to cut off ties with ex-members. In Scientology, this is called ‘disconnection’, and among the Jehovah’s Witnesses, it is known as ‘disfellowshipping’.
Social interaction in the cult was genuinely bizarre. Our language was peppered with ‘dialectical materialist’ jargon and cliches. I never found the endless, cliquey in-jokes about dialectics particularly amusing, and always felt like something of an outsider. The endless banging on about dialectics, the drunken renditions of the Internationale, the clenched fists, the red flags – I could not avoid feeling like a LARPer, an imposter, a poseur. What the hell had I gotten myself into?
In the paper, Tourish interviews members of the CWI, who give accounts of their experiences. Here is an excerpt of one interview:
One interviewee (David) told me: “We were taught to absolutely hate every other political organization that there was. Anybody on the left who wasn’t a Marxist were called left reformists, and we were absolutely convinced that they didn’t have a clue. We looked on them as hopeless people. People outside left politics at all were dismissed as ‘liberals’, but we probably hated them more than extreme right wingers – we used the word liberal as a sort of political swear word. But other Trotskyist groupings were the worst. We just laughed at them in internal meetings. We called them ‘the sects’ and took the view that they were incapable of any development at all. They were good for a laugh at best, but really the attitude towards anybody else claiming to be Trotskyist was that they were the complete enemy of everything we stood for. If we ever had taken power God knows what we would have done to them.”
This accurately describes the internal meetings we had in the IMT. Whereas publicly we supported Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party, privately we disparaged the Labour left as ‘reformists’ and ‘petty-bourgeois’. They were irredeemably corrupted with identity politics and bureaucracy, and only our organisation could really bring about radical change. We were full of hatred for ‘liberals’ and other Trotskyists, particularly Peter Taaffe and the CWI. It would not be a stretch to say that the atmosphere in the room when Taaffe and his sect were mentioned was like the ‘Two Minutes Hate’ session in George Orwell’s 1984.
Tourish accurately describes the effect of ‘vanguardist’ delusions on the internal regime of the CWI (and by extension the IMT):
…an additional feature of Lenin’s conception of a vanguard party is that it was to be governed by the principles of what he termed democratic centralism. It would not be a loose federation, but a tightly integrated fighting force with a powerful central committee and a rule that all members publicly defend the agreed positions of the party, whatever opinions they might hold to the contrary in private. Between conferences the party’s leading bodies would have extraordinary authority to manage the party’s affairs, arbitrate in internal disputes, update doctrine and decide the party’s response to fresh political events.
As Lenin expressed it: “The principle of democratic centralism and autonomy for local party organizations implies universal and full freedom to criticise, so long as this does not disturb the unity of a defined action; it rules out all criticism which disrupts or makes difficult unity of action decided upon by the party” (Lenin, 1977, p.433).
Given what is now known of social influence this approach is almost certainly destined to prevent genuine internal discussion. Firstly, it is not at all clear when “full freedom to criticise” can actually be said to disturb the unity of a defined action. The norms of democratic centralism confer all power between conferences onto a central committee, allowing it to become the arbiter of when a dissident viewpoint is in danger of creating such a disturbance, normally presumed to be lethal. The evidence suggests that they are strongly minded to view any dissent as precisely such a disruption, and respond by demanding that the dissident ceases their action on pain of expulsion from the party. It should be borne in mind that the leadership of Trotskyist groupings views itself as the infallible interpreter of sacred texts which are seen as essential for the success of world revolution, which in turn is seen as vital if the world is to be saved from complete barbarism. This “all or nothing” approach to political analysis reinforces the tendency to view dissent as something which automatically imperils the future of the planet, and a justification (perhaps unconscious) of whatever measures are required to restore the illusion of unanimity.
The last paragraph brilliantly describes my own experience when I had the gall to raise criticisms of the Trotskyist interpretation of the Russian Revolution in the organisation. Looking back, I now realise that, despite all our talk of how democratic our organisation was, we looked upon any disagreement, no matter how small, as a threat. I remember a post I made on Facebook questioning an obscure aspect of Marxist theory (the Asiatic mode of production), something which was apparently such a cause for concern that the regional full-timer wanted to have a talk about it at our next regional ‘aggregate meeting (a meeting of all the branches in the Midlands). In the event, he forgot about it, but it was truly bizarre that it had worried him to such a degree.
In the IMT, nothing less than complete ideological homogeneity was wanted by the leadership. At national conferences, we would always pass resolutions ‘unanimously’. I still remember an unfortunate conversation I had with my branch secretary concerning my disagreements with the organisation. When I asked for a chance to write an article in the paper outlining my disagreements, I was told that this was impossible as the paper had to reflect the ‘line’ of the organisation and present an image of complete unity and agreement on all questions. When I continued to argue, I was told that everyone was in ‘complete agreement’ and that my opinions did not matter.
Tourish goes on to quote ‘perspectives’ documents of the CWI as evidence of the catastrophist mindset of members of the organisation:
This mode of analysis is the norm rather than the exception in Trotskyist circles. A 1981 CWI document, written by a leader with a penchant for death analogies, anticipates the closing decades of this century in the following terms:
“On a world scale capitalist economies not only find themselves in a crisis, they find themselves ensnared in an epoch of crisis, stagnation and decline … short-lived half-hearted booms, followed by downturn and recession in an ever tightening cycle – these are the characteristics of the new period of general decline of world capitalism … the search for lasting concessions and lasting reforms is now as futile as the search for flesh on an ancient skeleton.”
It is further held that this economic contingency will have enormous political repercussions. In particular, it is argued that it poses a “black and white” choice for society, in that there will be either a triumph for socialism or the planet will be engulfed by unprecedented barbarism. A CWI internal document from 1975 proclaims that the period of class struggle inaugurated by the 1973 oil crisis will “… end either in the greatest victory of the working class achieving power and the overthrow of the rule of capital with the installation of workers democracy or we will have a military police dictatorship which will destroy the labour movement and kill millions of advanced workers, shop stewards, ward secretaries, Labour youth, trade union branch secretaries and even individual members of the Labour movement”.
Such a toxic perspective poisons the internal atmosphere of the organization concerned. Firstly, it tends to black and white thinking in terms of prognosis, combined with a straining sense of urgency. Mutually exclusive and totalistic options for the future are assured. Either there will be a completely new form of society, hitherto unknown in human history, or there will be a relapse into forms of Nazism, this time threatening global nuclear destruction. No other options are available. The future is presented as a choice between imminent salvation or eternal damnation, and one which hinges on every action which party members take. Secondly, such a perspective is a classic cult means of extracting maximum involvement from people alongside a minimum critique of the group’s position. It imbues the organization’s routine activities with a sense of colossal urgency, purpose and conviction which normal politics can never hope to match. This reinforces a conviction on the part of members that they are destined to play a more vital and indispensable role than any previous group in human history.
In the IMT, we were not quite as catastrophist as the CWI of old. It is unclear what has caused this mellowing – perhaps the leaders came to see it as counter-productive. However, black-and-white, catastrophist thinking was still very much a feature of life in the IMT. Every national conference, we would go over ‘perspectives’ documents that were full of the most pessimistic reports from the Financial Times and the Economist concerning the state of the world economy. We would predict renewed crises, misery and economic turbulence, always leading to a revolutionary situation in which our sect would be poised to play a leading role – provided we buckled down and worked like donkeys to ‘build the Organisation’ before it was too late. This catastrophic mindset helped blunt critical thinking and create a hostility towards dissidents, since they were regarded as ‘wasting the time of the organisation’. The time that could be spent building the organisation could not be wasted on ‘petty-bourgeois’ freethinkers and other troublemakers.
Tourish observes that:
A passive membership uncritically adopted a political position handed down by the leadership. Structures, communication systems and organizational behaviours ensured a one way transmission of information and precluded the possibility of corrective pressure being exerted by the rank and file. Callaghan (1984, p.180), writing of the CWI, observed:
“… it is unclear what the contribution of the ordinary supporter can be. For a perusal of the group’s internal documents … reveals that these consist of unsigned articles carrying instructions, reports and, in general, attempts to co-ordinate or in some way organize the membership. There is no evidence of discussion and debate or of the involvement of the rank and file…. The national meetings which [CWI] does hold appear to be organized more like rallies than conferences with the audience playing a relatively passive role.”
Whereas Tony Cliff’s International Socialists (IS) at least had a section in its Internal Bulletin for criticisms and suggestions from the membership, our National Bulletin, which was sent out weekly, had no such thing. It consisted entirely of commands from above and reports from other branches. The national conferences we held every year were, as Callaghan accurately says, more like rallies than a place for the membership to actually shape how the organisation was run. In this respect, the IMT is identical to the CWI. Morale-boosting speeches and rigged, catastrophic ‘perspectives’ took the place of critical thinking and genuine democratic debate.
The question arises at this point: what did life within the CWI under such a regime feel like to the average member? How were they recruited and how was their compliance and then conformity to the group’s ideology obtained? The following comments on these issues from one interviewee is typical of the accounts gained from many former CWI members. (One told me that when meeting other former members he felt that they had all been through a shared religious experience together!) Ronnie spent a number of years working full time for the CWI. Much of his experience echoes the points made by Siegel et al. (1987) and Lalich (1992; 1993) concerning the DWP:
“6/7 day weeks for activists were common, particularly those full time. We nominally had a day off, but I can remember another leader saying to me proudly of another that ‘he uses his day off to prepare his lead-offs (introductory lectures) for meetings’. Full timers were also kept in poverty. Wages were virtually non-existent, and I found out recently that from 1985 to 1991 they got no pay rise at all!
“When we worked, the pressure was awful. Key committees often met Saturday and Sunday 9 to 5, on top of your normal week’s work. There would be different sessions, with a leader making an hour long introduction which laid out the line. Everyone else then would come in and agree. The more you agreed with the leader the more he or she cited your contribution in a 15-20 minute summing up at the end. If you disagreed, your contribution would be unpicked, but if it wasn’t sufficiently enthusiastic about the line it would – even worse – be ignored. In this way you soon knew who was in and who was out. There was a distinct tendency to promote the most conformist comrades to key positions, even if they were also the most bland.
“High dues or subs were extracted from members. A certain minimum sub per week was set, which at several pounds a week was far in excess of what normal parties extract. But people were ‘encouraged’ to go beyond this. At big meetings a speech would be made asking for money. Normally, some comrade would have been approached beforehand and would have agreed to make a particularly high donation – say £500. The speaker would then start off asking for £500, its donation would produce an immense ovation and people would then be pressurised to follow suit.
“Everything was also run by committees, and we had plenty of those. Branches had branch committees which met in advance of branch meetings to allocate all sorts of work, this went on to districts, areas and nationally and internationally. Very often it was the same people on these committees wearing different hats! But nothing moved without the committees’ say-so. This was accompanied by persistent demands for people to take more initiatives, but in practice there was no mechanism for this to happen. Also, at national conferences, leaders were elected by a slate system – i.e. the CC proposed a full list of names for CC membership. If you opposed it you theoretically stood up to propose a full list of new names, but needless to say no one ever did. New members were regarded as ‘contact members’ and allocated a more experienced comrade who was supposed to have weekly discussions as part of the ‘political education’.
“I do remember feeling absolutely terrified when I first left – what was there for me now, what would I do, where did I start? I eventually managed to get my life together, but it was a hard slog.”
I was not a full-timer, but I know that full-timers in the IMT were overworked and paid poverty wages. These meagre rations were supplemented with welfare payments from the state. The irony is that we would denounce the bourgeoisie as parasites, whilst our ‘leading comrades’ enjoyed a parasitical existence off the labour of the working-class! Being overworked further blunted the critical faculties of such individuals, as they simply didn’t have the time to read outside the prescribed literature, think beyond the narrow confines of the doctrine or engage in debate with dissidents, who were regarded as a drag on one’s time and energy. Those of us who were rank-and-file members still spent a lot of time on party-building – branch meetings, paper sales, ‘contact’ work and of course political education. It all added up to several hours a week. The conformist nature of branch meetings is something which I can readily identify with, as well as the high subs that were demanded of us. And national events were definitely the scenes of intense crowd manipulation to get branches volunteering more money for the ‘Fighting Fund’. The way in which the leadership was elected in the CWI is also identical to what I witnessed in the IMT.
Indoctrination began with the recruitment process. Given the CWI’s secret existence within the Labour Party, people who came into contact with it would not have immediately known that it was an organization, with its own annual conference, full time officials and central committee. Potential sympathizers encountered CWI members in the normal environment of the Labour Party or trade unions. Once their left wing credentials were established they would be asked to buy the CWI newspaper, make a small donation, and support CWI motions at other meetings – a process of escalating commitment. Only after a series of such tests had been passed would the person be initiated into the secret of the CWI’s existence, and provided with further internal documents detailing aspects of its programme. As many ex-members have testified, the effect of this was to create a feeling that the potential recruit was gaining privileged information, and being invited to participate in the transformation of history. Furthermore, they could only access more of this knowledge by escalating their involvement with the group. The excitement at this stage was considerable.
This is practically identical to the way in which we would go about recruiting Labour Party members in the IMT/Socialist Appeal. We advertised ourselves as the ‘Marxist wing of Labour’ and loudly supported Jeremy Corbyn and his movement. Internally, we acknowledged that this was in fact a ploy to win over the ‘best elements’ of workers and youth. Once they had gotten closer to our organisation, we would reveal more about our real nature. We would explain that whilst Corbyn was admirable in his own way, his reformism placed a limit to what he could accomplish. We argued that only our organisation could secure the revolutionary transformation that was so desperately needed to liberate the working-class from the jackboot of capitalist oppression. The real nature of the organisation was always concealed from potential members. I remember my branch secretary explaining that there were certain things we couldn’t be too open about until after they had joined. Once they were ‘in’, we could ‘educate’ them within the branch and correct whatever ‘confused’ ideas they may have had. In our arrogant assumption that we had the ‘Truth’, we placed ourselves in the position of ‘teacher’ to the ignorant recruits who arrived in our ranks, regarding them as in need of our tutelage. I was always uncomfortable with this, as it seemed like deception, but I rolled with it, like everyone else.
Once in, however, the picture began to change. More and more demands were placed on members. In particular, they were expected to contribute between 10% and 15% of their income to the party, buy the weekly newspaper, contribute to special press fund collections, subscribe to irregular levies (perhaps to the extent of a week’s income), recruit new members and raise money from sympathizers. Tobias and Lalich (1994) argue that cults have only two real purposes: recruiting other members, and raising money. These certainly emerge as central preoccupations of the CWI. Crick (1986, p.178) cites a former member as follows on some of these issues:
When I joined the IMT, I had no idea of how much money I would end up handing over to these people. I started with ‘subs’ payments of about £10-20 a month, increasing at one point to £40. Beyond that, I subscribed to the magazine and the theoretical journal and regularly bought literature from the organisation’s publishing house, Wellred Books. In the end, I must have ended up paying a fortune. Thanks to my rather generous student loans, this didn’t make too much of a dent in my budget, but compared to the amount a normal political organisation demands, it was insane. Members who joined the organisation would do so ignorant of what financial contributions they would end up being pressured to make. This was another way in which our cult deprived people of informed consent. This extended beyond just financial contributions. When recruiting people, we would downplay how much time they had to give to the organisation, but upon joining, they would find themselves enmeshed in an endless cycle of activity which deprived them of the time and space to think critically. As Tourish explains:
The recruitment process can also be interpreted as a means of indoctrinating new recruits by presenting them with an escalating series of challenges, or ordeals. Wexler and Fraser (1995) have argued that this is an important method of establishing the cohesiveness of decision elites within cults, thereby activating the extreme conformity known as groupthink. However, within the CWI, it seems that such methods were used on all new recruits in order to embroil them more deeply in CWI activities. Thus, the prospective recruit first expressed private agreement with some CWI ideas. They were then required to advance this agreement publicly at Labour Party or trade union meetings, then contribute money, buy literature, and sell newspapers on the street. This continued until their entire life revolved around the CWI. The process seems to be one of extracting commitment and then forcing a decision. The full extent of the group’s organization and programme would not be immediately made clear, and given the secretiveness of the CWI about its very existence would not be readily known via the media. Nevertheless, a commitment to some form of activity was obtained, and sounded on first hearing to have nothing in common with a life-transforming commitment. One interviewee told me:
“We would routinely lie to recruits about what their membership would involve. They would ask what level of activity we expected, and we would talk mostly about the weekly branch meeting and tell them that they could pick and choose what else to do, if anything. But once they were inside there would be systematic pressure to do more and more. Once they were in, very few could resist. But we knew that if we told them in advance all that was involved they would never join. I remember telling a full-timer once that I thought this new recruit we had met didn’t have any friends. He looked absolutely delighted, and told me that meant we would at least get plenty of work out of him!”
Thus, recruits soon found their initial levels of activity rising: “come to one more meeting”, “attend one more conference”, “read an extra pamphlet this week”. Whether they had consciously decided anything became irrelevant: a real commitment had been made to the organization. They often then found that their attitudes changed to come in line with escalating levels of commitment, and eventually reached such an intense pitch that a formal decision (if it needed to be made at all) was only a small final step – a classic demonstration of cognitive dissonance theory (Festinger, 1957).
The lying to recruits about what we demanded from them was a common feature of life in the IMT. My branch secretary would always insist that if a recruit couldn’t make it to anything else, they should at least attend branch. Of course, when they did join, they would find themselves under enormous pressure to dedicate even more time and energy to building the organisation. If a comrade disappeared from the radar, my eccentric branch secretary would take the expedient of going to their accommodation block to see what had happened to them!
Tourish then recounts the story of the CWI’s collapse, which brings us to its present state – an impotent sect of several hundred members at best, much like the IMT. The IMT has never been as big as the CWI was, and so has never undergone a catastrophic collapse in quite the same way. However, there have been splits and walk-outs that have occurred periodically from the organisations founding thirty years ago to this very day. Since according to Trotskyism, even the slightest difference of opinion is evidence of a ‘petty-bourgeois degeneration’, splits are a regular occurrence in these sects, as they are seen as ‘purifying’. The IMT is likely to remain in its present state of sectarian irrelevance for the foreseeable future. When I left the British section, Socialist Appeal, it had a pitiful membership of around four hundred, which is almost certainly less than when the split from Taaffe first occurred in the 1990s. Over time, older members have dropped out or walked out due to the authoritarianism of Woods and his half-brother Rob Sewell, the General Secretary of the British section. Their ranks have been replenished with fresh, young recruits who have time, energy and gullibility to spare. The organisation worldwide has around two thousand members (at least that is the tally we were given at the national conference/World School.). After thirty years, this is the record of achievement. All that party-building has led to nothing of substance.
The International Marxist Tendency (IMT) is a political cult. Its internal regime and methods of operation are identical to those that were practiced in the CWI, and it has followed its predecessor into the wilderness of politics, far away from all serious decision-making. The most damage it has been able to do is to its own members rather than the bourgeoisie it hates so fiercely. Tourish’s analysis is a must-read for all those considering joining the IMT or any similar organisation.
I’m going to leave this here http://www.whatnextjournal.org.uk/Pages/Back/Wnext17/Reviews.html
Explains pretty well the problems with Dennis Tourish’s analysis, and how calling the Militant, let alone the IMT a ‘cult’ is ridiculous, as they say ‘to describe such organisations as cults expands the definition of the term to the point where it becomes pretty well useless.’
In particular, this point is key ‘When it comes to the Militant Tendency, the authors’ attempt to apply the cult paradigm breaks down. A moment’s consideration would reveal that the notion of Ted Grant presiding over a regime comparable to Healy’s is laughable. Indeed, when Peter Taaffe, as the Tendency’s general secretary, began to develop an authoritarian leadership style (albeit of a much milder character than that in the WRP) Grant and his supporters reacted with outrage.’
As Tourish himself has argued, this objection is meaningless. Cults exist on a spectrum – there are extreme cults like Jim Jones’ People’s Temple and Scientology on one end of the spectrum, and at the other end are perfectly healthy organisations. Then there are organisations like the IMT, which are somewhere in the middle. No one is saying that Militant/CWI or the IMT are even close in severity to horrendous organisations like Gerry Healy’s WRP. In fact, I regard the IMT as mild compared to all the other Trotskyist sects. However, it can still be placed on the cultic spectrum, and cultic features can be identified in all of these organisations. The term ‘cult’ is not a random term of abuse – there are certain criteria that an organisation has to match to be regarded as one. These criteria have been designed by academics and intellectuals from across the political spectrum. The cultish aspects of the IMT and CWI as laid out in this post are difficult to find in a mainstream organisation. Do Conservative Party and Labour Party activists love-bomb potential recruits, compel them to attend endless meetings, paper sales and fund-raising activities, direct them to read from a narrow reading list and compel them to voice the exact same opinions on every conceivable issue? Are members forced out for minor differences, or manipulated into doing things they otherwise would not do? Are they made to spend all their time obsessively recruiting? Are their leaders deified? Do they claim that their ideology alone has provided the final answer to all human problems? No, because they are not cults. I could join any mainstream political organisation and get away with doing nothing more than paying subs. Trotskyist sects demand a high level of activity and commitment from their members, which from a superficial point of view sounds laudable, but when scrutinised in greater detail, is made possible only by the cultic techniques of mind control and undue influence exerted on said members.
Do you deny that the aspects of the IMT I have mentioned here are cultic in nature? And if not, then what are they?
I’ll quote from the review again: “Tourish and Wohlforth complain that Militant’s members were “expected to contribute between 10 and 15 percent of their income to the party, buy the weekly newspaper, contribute to the special press fund collections, subscribe to irregular levies (perhaps to the extent of a week’s income), recruit new members, and raise money from sympathizers”. Which suggests that a serious level of commitment was required, but no more than that. It is also argued that political culture in the Tendency was at a low level and that members had to go to a lot of boring meetings. Which sounds to me not unlike life in the broad labour movement.”
I don’t want to get drawn into a long fruitless discussion so I won’t reply again after this, feel free to say your piece, but I will just say that, like Tourish did, everything you claim is ‘cultish’ is a complete distortion of what is actually done, or just outright dishonesty. I mean here and elsewhere you have characterised having ‘in-jokes’ as cult behaviour, that’s not cultish that’s just being friends, friends have in-jokes, unless every friendship group is now a cult. That’s the logic of someone who is stretching and twisting the truth to fit their conclusion. You can disagree with us, and our method of organising, but calling us a cult is vulgar and dishonest.
p.s. In your latest blogpost you claim: “Presumably, the existence of lockdown has made things more difficult for the cult, which has been forced entirely online. There is nothing like personal, face-to-face interaction in terms of boosting the prospects of cult recruitment. The organisation has now been deprived of that.” I’m sorry to say the opposite is true, we’ve actually had our best year ever, I wonder if your view being falsified will make you consider if your analysis here is wrong?
“Which suggests that a serious level of commitment was required, but no more than that. It is also argued that political culture in the Tendency was at a low level and that members had to go to a lot of boring meetings. Which sounds to me not unlike life in the broad labour movement.”
Bullshit. You cannot say on the one hand that your organisation is indispensable to the salvation of the human race, and that all other organisations on the left are evil, incorrect, opportunist, reformist etc, and then turn around and say that you are no different to any other organisation on the left. That is called hypocrisy.
You are talking bollocks when you suggest that the sums demanded by Militant were no different than with the labour movement as a whole. People often gave up their life’s earnings and mortgages for this nonsense. There is nothing healthy about such an attitude. It is inherently cultish. Shame, guilt and peer pressure were the means by which such financial contributions were extracted. People would join thinking they only had to contribute x amount a month. Before they knew it, they would be handing over a fortune to the organisation, as I found. The broad labour movement does not demand such ridiculous contributions from its members. The Labour Party costs barely any money to join. Members are not under sustained peer pressure from leaders and other members to increase their subs payments.
It wasn’t just about the financial sacrifice. It was about making people’s lives revolve unhealthily around this all-important cause, which claimed to be the only organisation that could save humanity from impending destruction at the hands of capitalism. A heightened atmosphere of chiliastic fervour existed among Militant members, convinced that they were in a race against time to ‘build the Organisation’ before it was too late and capitalism plunged the human race into barbarism.
The meetings, beyond being boring, were also means of milieu control. The time of members was controlled and they spent hours listening to the same slogans, the same ideas, the same quotes, being repeated over and over again. Tell me that this isn’t cultish. Again, this is not the case in the broad labour movement at all. Instead, there is open debate and discussion concerning different points of view, rather than a ‘line’ being imposed from above and reinforced over and over.
‘p.s. In your latest blogpost you claim: “Presumably, the existence of lockdown has made things more difficult for the cult, which has been forced entirely online. There is nothing like personal, face-to-face interaction in terms of boosting the prospects of cult recruitment. The organisation has now been deprived of that.” I’m sorry to say the opposite is true, we’ve actually had our best year ever, I wonder if your view being falsified will make you consider if your analysis here is wrong?’
This is what you people claim every year. I still remember how Alan Woods would close every national or international conference by saying ‘This has been the best national conference/World Congress/World School/ever!’ It’s a bunch of bollocks. Just ten years ago the IMT had about three thousand members worldwide. It now has about two thousand. Moreover, after thirty years of ‘party-building’, you have a mere four hundred members in Britain – definitely less than when you split from Taaffe. You are running around in circles, like every other decrepit sect, proclaiming your own righteousness and virtue from the rooftops, and, of course, expelling and forcing out people left, right and centre for not agreeing with you over minor questions like the class nature of China. All the while, you remain in a state of impotence and irrelevance, like your brethren in the CWI and other Trotskyist sects. The obsessive, chiliastic and unhealthy optimism you see in Trotskyist cults is why they time and time again fail to show any introspection or self-criticism. ‘To admit that we have been approaching things wrongly for all these years would put the sacred cause in doubt. We cannot give in to pessimism and despair. We must retain blind faith no matter what.’ That is why Trotskyism, after eighty years, has utterly failed, and will remain in a state of deserved impotence and irrelevance for the foreseeable future.
ok this will be my last reply then but:
1. The ‘just like the rest of the labour movement’ is clearly in reference to the meetings, not the asking people to be actively involved in building a revolutionary organisation or the subs we ask people to pay, I never said the sums are the same. That is different because it has a different goal to the Labour party, we want people to be actively involved in building and shaping a revolutionary organisation, not just footsoldiers to passively just pay subs and be sent out doorknocking for careerist MPs funded by the capitalists.
2. Your figures are out of date, we have 4000 members around the world now, and over 600 in Britain now, but sure I guess we’re running around in circles.
‘1. The ‘just like the rest of the labour movement’ is clearly in reference to the meetings, not the asking people to be actively involved in building a revolutionary organisation or the subs we ask people to pay, I never said the sums are the same. That is different because it has a different goal to the Labour party, we want people to be actively involved in building and shaping a revolutionary organisation, not just footsoldiers to passively just pay subs and be sent out doorknocking for careerist MPs funded by the capitalists.’
The meetings are not ‘just like the rest of the labour movement’. They are carefully stage-managed and choreographed, in a manner not dissimilar from the way in which the Nazis, Stalinists and other totalitarian movements choreographed and stage-managed their mass meetings. A ‘party line’ is agreed beforehand. The speakers stand up and recite this party line, which is entirely unoriginal and a regurgitation of whatever was agreed behind closed doors at a Central Committee meeting. ‘Interventions’ are held in which members of the organisation stand up and reaffirm the line, to the approval of the ‘leading comrades’, and applause from the conformist audience. Contacts and new recruits are love-bombed and made to feel special. They are never given a moment’s time alone. People walk around proudly wearing T-shirts and badges with the visages of the ‘great teachers’ on them. Imagine if people at a Tory Party conference were walking around with badges and T-shirts of Boris Johnson. Pretty cultish to me. There are so many cultish aspects to these ‘party gatherings’, but I had best stop before I spend all day on this reply. It is good that you are partially conceding my argument that the subs demanded by your cult are nothing like the broad Labour movement (which is what you appeared to suggest earlier – apologies if I misinterpreted you).
‘2. Your figures are out of date, we have 4000 members around the world now, and over 600 in Britain now, but sure I guess we’re running around in circles.’
Let us assume these figures are correct. (And I know that Trotskyist cults love to falsify their figures. Actually, I recall a full-timer telling me around this time last year that we had set a target of doubling the membership within a year, in which case, you have actually failed to reach this figure.) 600 members in Britain and 4000 worldwide is still meaningless when the Labour Party has hundreds of thousands of members, when the electorate numbers the tens of millions and when your organisation has been around for thirty years now. In thirty years, all you have been able to achieve is a few hundred members in Britain and 4000 worldwide. That is well and truly pathetic. In any case, there are only so many members a group like yours can amass before they hit a plateau and collapse. That is the fate of every Trotskyist sect. The more members you get, the harder they are to control, the more differences open among the membership (necessitating splits and expulsions to restore revolutionary purity, etc). Also, I wonder how many members out of all the ones you have on paper are actually active, and how many of them have lapsed. Rest assured, your cult will not become a relevant player in British politics any time soon, if ever.
I’ll quote from the review again: “Tourish and Wohlforth complain that Militant’s members were “expected to contribute between 10 and 15 percent of their income to the party, buy the weekly newspaper, contribute to the special press fund collections, subscribe to irregular levies (perhaps to the extent of a week’s income), recruit new members, and raise money from sympathizers”. Which suggests that a serious level of commitment was required, but no more than that. It is also argued that political culture in the Tendency was at a low level and that members had to go to a lot of boring meetings. Which sounds to me not unlike life in the broad labour movement.”
I don’t want to get drawn into a long fruitless discussion so I won’t reply again after this, feel free to say your piece, but I will just say that, like Tourish did, everything you claim is ‘cultish’ is a complete distortion of what is actually done, or just outright dishonesty. I mean here and elsewhere you have characterised having ‘in-jokes’ as cult behaviour, that’s not cultish that’s just being friends, friends have in-jokes, unless every friendship group is now a cult. That’s the logic of someone who is stretching and twisting the truth to fit their conclusion. You can disagree with us, and our method of organising, but calling us a cult is vulgar and dishonest.
p.s. In your latest blogpost you claim: “Presumably, the existence of lockdown has made things more difficult for the cult, which has been forced entirely online. There is nothing like personal, face-to-face interaction in terms of boosting the prospects of cult recruitment. The organisation has now been deprived of that.” I’m sorry to say the opposite is true, we’ve actually had our best year ever, I wonder if your view being falsified will make you consider if your analysis here is wrong?
Accidentally didn’t reply to your reply the first time feel free to delete this comment if you’re able to
‘I don’t want to get drawn into a long fruitless discussion so I won’t reply again after this, feel free to say your piece, but I will just say that, like Tourish did, everything you claim is ‘cultish’ is a complete distortion of what is actually done, or just outright dishonesty. I mean here and elsewhere you have characterised having ‘in-jokes’ as cult behaviour, that’s not cultish that’s just being friends, friends have in-jokes, unless every friendship group is now a cult. That’s the logic of someone who is stretching and twisting the truth to fit their conclusion. You can disagree with us, and our method of organising, but calling us a cult is vulgar and dishonest.’
Your organisation is not a ‘friendship group’. Real friendship does not exist in a cult, as I found by virtue of my own experience in the organisation. You are a revolutionary organisation seeking to overthrow capitalism. You have certain cliquey in-jokes, phrases and cliches that you use as part and parcel of your cult membership, for the purposes of creating a sense of distance and difference from all those outside your ranks. You may not be conscious of this, but it is at the very least subconscious practice among cultists.
I completely agree with Ernest Jones this is full of distortions for a purely political purpose. While it is true the International Marxist Tendency has a political line it is developed democratically. The only reason your objections against the Russian Revolution couldn’t be discussed in the branch is it a basic prerequisite in joining the organization or at least becoming a full-member. There are simply some fundamental questions which are not up to discuss as they are so elementary for the IMT. This doesn’t mean there aren’t health disagreements between comrades. You took Asiatic mode of production for example there has been a lot of discussion over the years. The most recent thing was part of Swedish organization believed it wasn’t a class society but were proven wrong following discussion while showed both sides understanding of these society isn’t good enough. But even more important questions like the discussion with the Brazilian section which was recently published internally with everyones argument being sent to the membership. Also, when the IMT clarified its position on identity politics in 2018 there was a healthy disagreement. Quoting from memory Alan woods explained: “It’s the duty of every comrade to bring up political difference, so we can develop the political line”. Through the discussion basing ourselves on Marxist theory we came to a common conclusion. We are a revolutionary cadre organization hence there isn’t space for ideas which openly question the existence of that organization that would be prerequisite of joining. We are not a broad church like the Labour Party we are a revolutionary organisation!
I don’t know the details of your case except the little I have heard from British comrades and seen on social media. But honestly such elementary questions such as the Russian Revolution are dealt with quite early during the probationary period or the beginning of coming contact with the organisation. This tells me either whoever recruited you and schooled you politically didn’t do a good job or you should’ve never been in the organization in the first place.
Regarding new members: I don’t know precisely how it is in the British section but in the Swedish we do everything to ensure that someone interested in the organization takes the most informed decision possible. Going through basics of Marxism, the Russian Revolution, Stalinism, Marxism vs identity politics and perspectives though sometimes people just want to join right away. Even then they have to be on the same page politically and get a probationary period to answer any more questions. We are open with the amount excepted for subs I usually bring up my own as an example and explain they should pay as much as they can. I presume you are exaggerating again or possibly lying about a full-timer asking people to “aim to become the ‘best friend’ of someone we were trying to recruit” personal relationship from platonic to romantic are frowned upon with people interested in the IMT. For this reason it is common practise for a friend of a member to discuss with someone else who can be more objective. Though I can see how in the very social british section that some lonely people could join for the wrong reason. It is very different in the Swedish section where some branches have a one beer policy at socials and we would never have hard alcohol at events. All to maintain a clear political purpose of our activities. When it comes to internal jokes they are frowned upon by the whole IMT leadership including on the internet hence the ban on memes. Though it inevitable that comrades get close as they spend so much time together but these relationships are outside the organization and free to joke around or whatever as long as it doesn’t affect the organization. Also, it is not like all comrades are friends. We are always clear with our purpose basis of everything.
It is true Marx, Lenin, Trotsky and Ted grant have a special place as basis of the ideas of the IMT. Also yes they are emphasised for getting the foundation of Marxist theory though comrades often for speeches, historical, and theoretical articles are asked to read other material. I for example got a comrade to read Keynes for a lead off on Keynesianism. Comrades who written and spoken on identity politics have usually read some of their work. Just because we have a consistent theory we keep to does not mean we are a cult.
Also, the Russian Revolution is a very strange thing to leave the organization for if you were a committed socialist for your political convictions for the working class (ik you aren’t anymore). I think all the points you used to make us into a cult say more about why you joined the IMT and never should’ve been a member in the first place. Not for political ideas but for the social life and need to feed your ego but most people don’t join for that reason. You didn’t take in even the most elementary ideas of dialectis this formula for cults is pure formal logic. I know you will simply call me brainwashed and that dialectics is bullshit but you and me are very different. Not because i am brainwashed but to quote one of the clichés you hate “life teaches” in my case the living memory of my family which participated in two revolutions and has seen two counter-revolutions. I truly searched for years for an organisation like the IMT but none fitted my understanding of history and ongoing event better. That is the reason why most people join the IMT because we have the ideas that best fit their experience of capitalism.
p.s Honestly I find your blog and youtube channel very entertaining it is like watching a drama. (Except for the singing rather dull). It is hilarious how you twist the facts and bring up oldest slander against the IMT but didn’t affect us then and won’t affect us now. I even showed the blog to my whole branch at a social we had a good laugh about me brainwashing them.
‘I completely agree with Ernest Jones this is full of distortions for a purely political purpose.’
Funny how you ‘completely agree’ with your fellow cultist. Is this not more evidence of groupthink among cults?
I make no secret of my loathing for the IMT and my political disagreements with it. This does not stop me from making an objective analysis of your organisation as a cult, based on the methods of cult analysis used by academics such as Dennis Tourish, Janja Lalich, Steven Hassan, Robert Jay Lifton and many others. A common objection by yourself and your coreligionists is that criticising your methods of organisation is a ‘distraction’ from political debate, or is simply bourgeois slander. These trite objections have been answered in my article, ‘In Defence of Cult Analysis’, which I invite you to read:
https://extrotskyistrenegade.com/in-defence-of-cult-analysis-a-reply-to-imt-cultists/
I would also remind you of my demolition of your preposterous arguments on YouTube:
https://extrotskyistrenegade.com/imt-members-object-to-cult-analysis-a-response/
I should also say that I would still believe your organisation is a cult even if I was still a Marxist and considered myself in agreement with your political aims. There are plenty of Marxists who agree with me and consider the IMT and other Trotskyist sects to be cults. If my political bias against the IMT is to be given as a reason for why my cult analysis is incorrect (which is simply the genetic fallacy), then we must discount all of Marx’s criticisms of capitalism because of his profound hatred for the capitalist system.
‘The only reason your objections against the Russian Revolution couldn’t be discussed in the branch is it a basic prerequisite in joining the organization or at least becoming a full-member.’
I was not aware when I joined that uncritical agreement with all of Trotsky’s analysis of the Russian Revolution (or anything else for that matter) was a prerequisite for joining the organisation. So I was obviously lied to when I joined, and I suspect many others who were recruited were also victims of this scam. I was under the impression that nothing more than broad sympathy with what the Bolsheviks sought to achieve was required, not blind agreement with everything Trotsky wrote. When I joined the organisation I was still convinced that Soviet Russia was state capitalist (contrary to the orthodox Trotskyist position), and I do not remember this being seen as a problem.
It seems to me that depending on how ‘good’ a contact is seen as being, there is more leeway. I remember my branch secretary telling me not to press too hard if we disagreed with a contact on something – our response should be to invite them to branch, persuade them to join the organisation and then ‘educate’ them (i.e. apply peer pressure to make them change their minds) once they were in the organisation. My heresies on this or that question were likely seen as unimportant since it was believed that once I was surrounded by true believers and given the ‘correct’ texts to read, I would change my mind. (Which I did, for a brief while, before deciding that it made no sense.)
The fact of the matter is that I do not remember us ever recruiting someone on the basis that they uncritically agreed with Trotsky. I was personally at several contact meetings, and this was never brought up. All that was necessary was that they agreed on the need for a ‘revolutionary organisation’ to abolish the injustices of capitalism, and were willing to make the commitment of attending branch and paying subs. Of course, once they were ‘in’, they would be pressured to give more time, absorb more of the doctrine and conform completely to the ideal of a Trotskyist cadre. People did not have informed consent when they joined. This is a key feature of cults. People did not know what they were getting into. Before they knew it, they would find their entire lives and minds revolving around what the cult wanted. Unless my branch secretary, in his careless enthusiasm for recruiting people, acted wrongly or incompetently, I have reason to believe that this is the standard approach throughout the IMT and similar groups. Cults are NEVER up-front about what they require from their members, because if they were, no one would join. In my two and a half years of being in the organisation, I do not remember us EVER telling anyone, ‘You must agree with Trotsky’s analysis of the USSR as a workers’ state to join.’ If someone raised objections, but otherwise seemed like they had potential, our response would have been to get them to attend more meetings, attend branch, and consider getting involved, and then we would have the chance to interact with them more and ‘educate’ them.
As I speak, there are people in your organisation who have reservations about whether Trotsky was correct in his analysis of the USSR. They just keep quiet about their differences, because of peer pressure. If they had had a full awareness of what the organisation was about before joining, they would never have joined.
‘This doesn’t mean there aren’t health disagreements between comrades. You took Asiatic mode of production for example there has been a lot of discussion over the years. The most recent thing was part of Swedish organization believed it wasn’t a class society but were proven wrong following discussion while showed both sides understanding of these society isn’t good enough. But even more important questions like the discussion with the Brazilian section which was recently published internally with everyones argument being sent to the membership.’
The whole notion of ‘healthy disagreement’ is oxymoronic in a Trotskyist organisation, in which even the slightest differences of opinion are regarded as evidence of ‘petty-bourgeois corruption’ requiring splits and expulsions to restore revolutionary purity. If your organisation really does encourage democratic discussion and disagreement, why do you insist on having secret, ‘internal’ meetings in which the leadership is able to manipulate the entire process? Why do leading members of the organisation go into a room and debate in secret, coming out with a ‘unanimous’ position on whatever is being discussed at any moment in time? Why did Alan Woods drive out leading members who argued for a more transparent process of democratic debate:
https://sites.google.com/a/karlmarx.net/open/topics/democratic-centralism-1/reportfromthefebruary2010iecinfull
Why did Socialist Appeal’s turn towards Labour work involve throwing old comrades under the bus, slandering anyone who disagreed and driving them out of the organisation, the shutting down of discussion and withholding of documents from the membership? Why the obsession with projecting absolute, monolithic agreement to the outside world? Go on any IMT article about conferences and congresses, and you will find that everything was voted through ‘unanimously’. What healthy organisation does this? Even the Bolsheviks did not do this. They had their disputes out in the open, for all workers to know about. Lenin even mocked the Cadets for their excessive secrecy. That your organisation is even less open and honest in its work than the Bolsheviks, who were operating under a police state, is truly incredible.
You may well say, ‘We do allow disagreement, as long as those disagreements are only aired internally.’ Well, the evidence suggests that you do not tolerate real debate or discussion either externally or internally. But let us say that this is true. Let us say that the examples you gave are legitimate examples of different opinions being discussed and debated freely and without any pressure or manipulation by the leadership. (And I am sure that the picture you are giving is a very sanitised one.) Psychology tells us that if someone publicly advocates a particular position, they will bring their private beliefs into conformity with their publicly expressed ones. Publicly upholding the party line whilst maintaining different views in secret is impossible. It is corrupting, hypocritical and an insult to the integrity of anyone who is subjected to the ‘discipline’ that makes this necessary. That is what the 2010 rebels argued, and that is why they were driven out.
The truth is that whatever internal debate does take place in your organisation is largely stage-managed, which was certainly the case with the controversy sparked by the Brazilian section. First the EC meets (in secret) and agrees a position. Anyone who disagrees with the majority must resign if they are unwilling to submit to the collective decision. Then it presents its opinions to the CC, which also agrees a ‘unanimous’ position (again, in secret), and then, and only then, are the members ‘generously’ allowed to take part in the discussion, after it has already been stage-managed to guarantee unanimity. Under pressure from the leadership, the loyal members also vote ‘unanimously’ in favour of whatever has been agreed, and anyone who dissents is driven out or is under peer pressure (‘party discipline’) to keep quiet about their opinions. Truly an exercise in democracy. If the Labour Party acted this way, we would never hear the end of it from you people. You would go on and on about the ‘bureaucratic’ nature of the reformist organisations, about the need for democratisation and a radical shift away from the bureaucrats to the grassroots members, etc. Of course, different rules apply in your cult, which demands absolute ideological unanimity from each and every member. I remember how we would simultaneously criticise the Labour Party for being ‘undemocratic’, whilst also complaining that Corbyn was not being ruthless enough in forcing out the Blairites and imposing his preferred solution over Brexit. But how was Corbyn meant to do this without being bureaucratic himself??? To clear out the Blairites, he needed control of the party bureaucracy, which was never completely in his hands (as the revelations we have received since the election make clear). And if he had launched a more aggressive campaign to do precisely that, he may well have fatally split the party. But you Lilliputian Leninists playing at revolution do not accept simple political realities like this. You cannot have it both ways. You cannot have an organisation which is both very democratic, but also has military-like discipline. You must choose. Trotskyist sects err on the side of ‘discipline’ over democracy. You could just be honest about it, instead of boasting endlessly about your democratic credentials when they are so hollow.
‘We are a revolutionary cadre organization hence there isn’t space for ideas which openly question the existence of that organization that would be prerequisite of joining. We are not a broad church like the Labour Party we are a revolutionary organisation!’
Just a while back you were arguing that my cult analysis was invalid because it could apply to any political organisation. Now you say that your organisation is indeed unique. Which one is it? If you concede that your organisation is unique, then it should be analysed as such. I consider your organisation to be a cult because its organisational practices, benign forms of which exist in most organisations, are so distorted, dishonest and dictatorial that that is the only term I can justifiably use to describe it. Most organisations require subs, seek to recruit new members, raise funds and have a shared set of beliefs and values. This is normal. The IMT, like other Trotskyist groups, takes these things to an unhealthy extreme. It has a belief system which claims to have the answer to all human problems. It makes extraordinary claims but lacks the extraordinary evidence to back them up. It recruits members through dishonesty (like how I was recruited). It raises funds using extreme peer pressure and crowd manipulation techniques. It demands absolute loyalty to the leadership and no questioning of the doctrine. Healthy, mainstream organisations do not do this. Multi-level marketing schemes and Trot sects have an awful lot in common, and both of them are considered by myself and other analysts as being cults. The standard response by people like you is to either deny this outright, and insist that your organisation is no different to any other political organisation, or to justify these tactics by arguing that you are a revolutionary organisation which requires discipline and sacrifice from its members, so any means of attaining this is acceptable. Which one is it going to be?
‘I don’t know the details of your case except the little I have heard from British comrades and seen on social media. But honestly such elementary questions such as the Russian Revolution are dealt with quite early during the probationary period or the beginning of coming contact with the organisation. This tells me either whoever recruited you and schooled you politically didn’t do a good job or you should’ve never been in the organization in the first place.’
The answer is that I should never have been in the organisation in the first place, and would never have joined if I had known its real nature. Joining it was the greatest mistake I made in my entire life.
‘We are open with the amount excepted for subs I usually bring up my own as an example and explain they should pay as much as they can.’
You forget that this is regularly brought up in branch and peer pressure applied to comrades to increase their subs payments. Beyond just subs, anyone who joins is pressured into subscribing to the paper and the theoretical magazine that comes out every season. Comrades who do not do this are shamed. There is also constant pressure to purchase books from the organisation’s publishing house, especially when a new book comes out. At national and international gatherings of the organisation, massive pressure is placed upon the membership to hand over money. It reminds me of the unscrupulous methods used by churches to gain money from their congregations. People end up making financial contributions they would not have dreamed of making prior to joining. None of this is the case in a healthy organisation. You can deny being a cult all you want, but you have already admitted that your organisation is not like mainstream organisations, so why do you expect to be treated otherwise?
‘I presume you are exaggerating again or possibly lying about a full-timer asking people to “aim to become the ‘best friend’ of someone we were trying to recruit” personal relationship from platonic to romantic are frowned upon with people interested in the IMT.’
He wasn’t saying we should literally become their friend. He was basically saying, ‘Get as close to them as you possibly can so you can get them into the organisation.’ Obviously he was not saying we should genuinely become friends with anyone we were seeking to recruit, hence why he added ‘Then when they join they’ll realise you aren’t really their friends,’ causing us all to laugh. He definitely said it. I was there. That said, it isn’t unheard of for people to recruit friends or even start romantic relationships with people they are trying to recruit. It may be unprofessional, but it has happened before. The nature of your recruitment methods is such that it is difficult to stop such a thing from happening entirely. People who join (or wish to join) the Labour Party aren’t assigned another member to follow them around all the time. People seeking to join your organisation inevitably develop a personal bond with another member. The problem is that this bond can never be a genuine friendship or a healthy relationship when it is so dependent on being part of the organisation.
‘Though I can see how in the very social british section that some lonely people could join for the wrong reason.’
The primary reason why I joined the organisation was political. But I would never pretend that loneliness did not play a role in my ending up in a very intense and close-knit group of people, who all happened to share the same political views. In post-industrial capitalism, with everyone feeling atomised and alone, people are looking for companionship and a sense of belonging, and that is a common reason why people join cults, especially far-left political cults like the IMT which promise a solution to all of humanity’s problems. You may not want to admit it, but I am quite sure such things are what partly motivated you to join, and motivate most people to join such organisations. If you read my post, you would see a full-timer for Militant quoted as saying that it was good a contact was lonely, because the organisation would get plenty of work from him. People who join the IMT and similar groups join for a mixture of political and personal reasons, and these cannot be entirely separated, no matter how hard you try. There is a, dare I say, ‘dialectical’ relationship between the two. At least I have now learned my lesson and will not leap into a group of people before I know what they are really like. Being in your sect was truly like being in a den of vipers, and I wasn’t even aware of it.
‘When it comes to internal jokes they are frowned upon by the whole IMT leadership including on the internet hence the ban on memes.’
As far as I am aware, the IMT leadership was only bothered about things which could reflect badly on the organisation in the eyes of contacts and outsiders. That is likely to be the reason why sharing memes on social media has been banned. Once you join, however, you find that there are cliquish and cultish in-jokes among the membership, however much you would like to deny their existence. I am not saying that they are formally blessed by the leadership, but they are very much a phenomenon. More officially, there is also a bizarre vocabulary which separates members from those outside – ‘full-timer’, ‘Centre’, ‘the ones and twos’ etc. This is a classic feature of cults. I can’t think of anything equivalent in the Labour Party or the trade unions.
‘Though it inevitable that comrades get close as they spend so much time together but these relationships are outside the organization and free to joke around or whatever as long as it doesn’t affect the organization. Also, it is not like all comrades are friends. We are always clear with our purpose basis of everything.’
I am not saying that all comrades are friends with each other. I was always aware of the primarily political purpose of the organisation, and prioritised this over friendship with individual members. However, as you said, the organisation demands so much of its members that it is inevitable that ‘friendships’ and friendly relations will develop due to comrades spending so much time around each other. However, they can never be genuine, healthy friendships (except in a few, rare instances) since they revolve entirely around being a member of the organisation and uncritically agreeing with the doctrine. If you leave, especially on bad terms, those friendships usually fizzle out. Here is Rob Sewell’s account of the shunning he and other members of the Minority received at the hands of some of their old friends and comrades when they ended up in a dispute with Taaffe:
‘The Centre full-timers were instructed not to talk to us. Comrades we had known for years would not even say: “Good morning.” It was a systematic, organised campaign of harassment, designed to break our will and undermine our morale. It was hard, but it failed in its objective.’
The fact is that once you are marked by the leadership out as a ‘renegade’, ‘Menshevik’ or whatever, you are subjected to shunning by old comrades and friends, who will not even bother to speak to you if they see you on the street. This is not just my personal, subjective experience. This is what everyone experiences when they are forced out. This is standard cult behaviour.
‘It is true Marx, Lenin, Trotsky and Ted grant have a special place as basis of the ideas of the IMT. Also yes they are emphasised for getting the foundation of Marxist theory though comrades often for speeches, historical, and theoretical articles are asked to read other material. I for example got a comrade to read Keynes for a lead off on Keynesianism. Comrades who written and spoken on identity politics have usually read some of their work. Just because we have a consistent theory we keep to does not mean we are a cult.’
Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky and Ted Grant are practically deified. Some former members bitterly complained of a cult of personality being designed around Grant, with the Pakistani section supposedly adding Ted Grant onto their banner whilst he was still alive! Their words are quoted like Holy Scripture, even if they have been falsified again and again by events. Ted Grant’s sayings (‘leaps and bounds’, ‘recruiting the ones and twos’) were quoted incessantly when I was in the organisation, and still are. Their works are treated like the Bible, and their sayings are used to sanctify even the most banal observations. Imagine if Conservative Party members were constantly made to read lengthy documents and articles containing endless quotes from Thatcher, Burke, Hayek, Scruton, Oakeshott etc, and memorise them like sacred texts. Imagine if they walked around speaking in this gibberish in their internal meetings, like robots. Imagine if every political situation, the question is brought up, ‘What did Disraeli think about this?’ or ‘What did Thatcher write on that?’ Instead of NEW IDEAS, there are constant arguments from authority with reference to the ‘great teachers’. In eighty years, Trotskyism has given us nothing new. It is stuck in the same intellectual rut as it always has been. That is why it has been, and will remain, deservedly irrelevant.
The hallmark of a cult is that the charismatic authority of the ‘great teachers’ is invoked at every turn to suppress critical thinking among the membership. That is what your cult does. You are not allowed to express substantial disagreement with MELT on any issue. In a healthy organisation, you can. I can be a member of the Labour Party and openly criticise Keir Starmer, or Clement Attlee, or Harold Wilson. I can openly say, ‘I think Tony Blair’s government was rubbish’, and not be kicked out. In your organisation, everyone is under ‘party discipline’ to have a certain view on the Russian Revolution, on the Bolshevik-Menshevik split, on what happened at Kronstadt, etc. Even issues which are of no immediate, contemporary relevance have a party line on them.
Being a cult is not about having a set of theoretical beliefs or values in common. It is about claiming that your belief system has the answers to all possible human problems, and constitutes the ‘final solution’ to all social evils. It also means banning any and all dissent and questioning of the doctrine so that your belief system is immune to falsification. It is totalistic in nature. Look at the replies I gave to Ernest Jones, and you will see why your argument is absurd. The absolute certainty with which you issue your judgements on all issues is distinctly cult-like. Instead of making room for scepticism (which Trotsky famously condemned as ‘bourgeois’), doubt and critical thinking, you claim that you have discovered all of the solutions to human ills through Marxist theory, and that victory for your cause is assured because the prophets have said so. There is no amount of empirical evidence that could be brought to bear proving your views incorrect. The chiliastic ‘optimism’ demanded of your members means that ‘comrades’ are in such as state of frenzied expectation and excitement that they cannot bring themselves to scrutinise your preposterous claims more closely.
‘Also, the Russian Revolution is a very strange thing to leave the organization for if you were a committed socialist for your political convictions for the working class (ik you aren’t anymore).’
I was practically told to leave since I did not believe Trotsky’s analysis to be correct and thought that the whole Trotskyist interpretation of history was based on minimising Trotsky’s personal role in making Stalinism possible, and whitewashed the potential contribution of Bolshevik ideology. I had also come to realise that the entire Trotskyist movement was utterly corrupt, the IMT included, and its organisational methods based on Stalinism. When I left I initially went back to my libertarian Marxist views, but then decided that Marxism was a lost cause altogether. I have also decided that the mainstream left is hopelessly corrupted by wokeness and identity politics, and is simply a waste of my time. So I am now some sort of conservative, and a proud enemy of Marxism. To paraphrase Nietzsche, an idea does not look so dazzling once you look into its very depths. My experience has simply confirmed me in my profound individualism and antipathy to any form of totalitarianism, left or right. I am proud to be hated by the IMT, and even prouder to hate it. It is a disgusting organisation which I should never have been a part of, and seeks to bring about the downfall of Western civilisation, to which I am more loyal than any pie-in-the-sky vision of socialist utopia. I advise you to read Leszek Kolakowski’s criticisms of Marxism and free your mind from cultism. Take a break from endlessly re-reading the ‘classics of Marxism’ and engage in some critical thinking for a change. You don’t even have to tell your comrades that you are reading critical literature, for you will surely be expelled or ostracised if you do. Just do it in secret! What are you so afraid of?
‘I think all the points you used to make us into a cult say more about why you joined the IMT and never should’ve been a member in the first place. Not for political ideas but for the social life and need to feed your ego but most people don’t join for that reason.’
I joined for political reasons. I left for those same reasons. Everything else was secondary. My political antagonism towards the IMT does not invalidate my cult analysis, as I have already explained. I disagree with the Labour Party politically, but I do not regard it as a cult.
‘You didn’t take in even the most elementary ideas of dialectis this formula for cults is pure formal logic.’
You are again talking cultish gibberish. What on earth does cult analysis have to do with the question of dialectical materialism versus formal logic? I simply do not follow. If anything, cult analysis is closer to the former than the latter, since cults are seen as existing on a spectrum of organisational health, not simply as a discrete category entirely separate from all other forms of human association. I consider the IMT to be a healthier organisation than Peter Taaffe’s CWI, or the ISO, or Scientology, but it is still a cult. On the exact opposite end of the spectrum you have a perfectly healthy organisation. Most organisations are somewhere in the middle, but the IMT is closer to the cultic side than the healthy side. I do not deny your organisation has aspects in common with healthy, mainstream organisations, but at the end of the day, it remains a cult.
‘I know you will simply call me brainwashed and that dialectics is bullshit but you and me are very different. Not because i am brainwashed but to quote one of the clichés you hate “life teaches” in my case the living memory of my family which participated in two revolutions and has seen two counter-revolutions.’
You say ‘life teaches’, implying that my lived experience will lead me to believe in dialectics. But millions have lived and died without believing in dialectics or Marxism, and millions more will live and die without believing in it, or even requiring it in their daily lives. Moreover, if one’s everyday, lived experience is sufficient for leading one to a dialectical understanding of reality, why the obsession with ‘conscious study’ of dialectics from an intellectual point of view? I can anticipate your response. ‘As Trotsky said in Defence of Marxism, the leaders of the working-class must absorb dialectical materialism to better coordinate the class struggle.’ But if the workers can reach dialectical conclusions on their own, what is the need for the leaders? And why is it taking the working-class so long? After eighty years of Trotskyism going nowhere, you might want to give up.
The reason why dialectical materialism is bullshit is because insofar as it is correct, it is made up of banal, everyday observations which are simply common sense. It is an insult to the intelligence of every human being to say that banal observations like ‘Everything is always changing’ and ‘Everything is interconnected’ constitute some force-field of semi-divine insight into human and natural affairs. Insofar as it is correct, it has been applied without the special guidance of Marxists, and to the extreme that Marxists take such observations, they are false. Moreover, it does not follow from those observations that we are on the cusp of attaining some Promised Land of socialism. Kolakowski goes into the problems with dialectical materialism in his work, as does Burnham and many other thinkers.
‘I truly searched for years for an organisation like the IMT but none fitted my understanding of history and ongoing event better. That is the reason why most people join the IMT because we have the ideas that best fit their experience of capitalism.’
So far you only have 4000 members worldwide after thirty years of activity. That is pathetic. Only 4000 people out of billions of human beings think your organisation is worth being a part of or has anything to say to them about their experiences. I guess all those other workers and students don’t think the IMT addresses their experiences of capitalism. And what of those who leave? Do they leave because they are renegades or scoundrels, or because their own ‘lived experience’ led them away from the IMT? To admit this would be to admit that the IMT cannot explain the lived experience of everyone who lives under capitalism, which would fatally undermine your claim that your organisation alone has all the answers…
‘p.s Honestly I find your blog and youtube channel very entertaining it is like watching a drama. (Except for the singing rather dull). It is hilarious how you twist the facts and bring up oldest slander against the IMT but didn’t affect us then and won’t affect us now. I even showed the blog to my whole branch at a social we had a good laugh about me brainwashing them.’
I am more disappointed that you dislike my singing than with the fact that you disagree with my analysis of the IMT as a cult, lol. To each his own I guess.
This blog shall serve the purpose of being a veritable archive of all the misdeeds of your criminal cabal. If people are discouraged from joining your cult as a result of my analyses, I will be more than pleased. I spent two and a half years on this nonsense, and I will spend two and a half years correcting my mistake. None of it is slander – it is all an accurate description of what your cult is truly like. With the same passion with which I once promoted your cause, that same passion will be devoted to discrediting it.