IMT cultists have taken exception to my description of their organisation as a cult. They have raised some key objections to my analysis of the IMT. They are as follows: (a) cult analysis is a distraction from discussion of their political ideas, (b) cult analysis can describe such a wide variety of organisations so as to be meaningless and (c) the term ‘cult’ is one of insult and abuse, and therefore unworthy of serious intellectual engagement. I will take on each of these points one by one.
Cult analysis is a distraction from political debate
IMT members, and other Trotskyists, are fond of arguing that criticism of their organisational methods is a distraction from a discussion of political ideas. This idea originates with Trotsky, who argued in In Defence of Marxism that the ‘petty-bourgeois opposition’ were raising criticisms of the organisational regime of the Socialist Workers’ Party as a distraction from principled political discussion. Trotsky was convinced that the internal regime of the organisation was secondary to matters of doctrine or ideology. Ted Grant, the founder of the IMT, embraced this dogma, and the IMT retains it to this very day. Basically, the IMT are saying this: ‘Criticise our political positions. Don’t criticise our methods of recruitment, fund-raising, election of leaders, etc.’
The irony of this position is that it contradicts their own ideology of ‘dialectical materialism’. Dialectics holds that everything is interconnected. Using this logic, there is a dialectical relationship between the organisational regime of any given organisation, and its politics and doctrine. But beyond this, simple common sense (what my ex-comrades would dismiss as ’empiricism’) dictates that it makes no sense to separate the two when they both inform one another. A flawed organisational regime leads to the adoption of flawed ideas and perspectives, and flawed ideas and perspectives in turn help to justify counterproductive methods of organisation.
Moreover, organisations like the IMT insist that they are indispensable to the future of humanity. Only they have the ‘correct ideas’, unlike every other left group, which is ‘sectarian’, ‘opportunist’, ‘reformist’, ‘centrist’, or some other deficiency. They are elitist, exclusivist and claim to be unique among all other organisations. Trotskyists often refer to the ‘subjective factor’ – the role of ideas, individuals and a ‘revolutionary organisation’ in bringing about change. If their organisation is so indispensable to human affairs, then scrutinising the organisational regime in question is well worth doing. Funnily enough, Trotskyists are very resistant to their organisation being subjected to said scrutiny. If the nature of their internal regime and organisational methods are such unimportant, secondary aspects of their political work, the question arises – why don’t they dissolve and join some other organisation with similar ideas? And why do they insist on sticking to the same, rigid organisational formula borrowed from the Comintern, and which they have used for eight decades and counting? If organisational issues are not important, why have they made it a point of principle to adhere to the same, rigid interpretation of ‘democratic centralism’ for years on end? Why is it that in 2010, the loyalists in the IMT leadership forced out dissidents who called for a modified version of democratic centralism to be adopted?
Besides, Trotskyists have no problem denouncing the organisational regime of other organisations. In the IMT, we would constantly criticise the Labour Party and the trade unions for being ‘bureaucratic’, lacking internal democracy and ignoring the opinions of their members. Moreover, we were able to recognise that other, rival Trotskyist sects had rotten internal regimes. It turns out that the organisational regime of a political group does matter. Trotskyists just don’t like it when you ask questions about their organisations.
On this blog, I hope to make criticisms of Trotskyism not just in terms of the organisational regimes of Trotskyist sects, but also of Trotskyist politics and ideology. I do not see the two things as being mutually exclusive. If Trotskyist sects want to be taken seriously, they must justify their organisational methods independently of their ideological positions.
All groups have ‘cultic’ features, so cult analysis is meaningless
Another common objection to cult analysis by Trotskyists is that all groups have ‘cultic’ aspects to them, so the cult label is meaningless. Over and over again, it has been insisted that everything from the military to the Catholic Church to mainstream political organisations have cultic aspects to them as defined by the academics who look at cults. Therefore, to call an organisation a cult is an exercise in subjectivism or bias. This often takes the form of cult members saying, ‘We are no different from the broad labour movement.’ or ‘X [phenomenon under discussion] is a normal part of being in any political group.’ Notice how they want it both ways. On the one hand, they claim that their organisation is blessed with a unique mission to save humanity, and that only it can solve the pressing problems of this planet. On the other hand, they claim that their organisation is just like any other organisation – a defence they fall back on only when their group is singled out as being a cult.
The thing to understand is that cults exist on a spectrum. At one end of the cultic spectrum are healthy organisations, and at the other end of the spectrum are full-blown, destructive cults, like Scientology. In between are cults which relatively mild but still fall within the descriptive and analytical framework of cultism. Even in the Trotskyist universe, some organisations are worse than others. The IMT is mild compared to the ISO, Gerry Healy’s WRP and other Trotskyist cults. Compared to someone like Juan Posadas, Alan Woods is the very picture of sanity. But this is of course a low bar to clear.
One can point to mainstream religions and political parties (like Trump’s Republican Party in America) which certainly have cult features. However, the key thing here is degree. Your average Catholic in the Western world is unlikely to be particularly devout, have strong ties with his or her Church or contribute much in terms of time, money or much else. Whatever cultish aspects the Catholic Church may have, it does not demand much of its members. Catholics are not expected to spend absurd amounts of time proselytising in the street, attending meetings or raising money. Indeed, the beauty of being a Catholic (or indeed an Anglican) is that you can afford to pop up at your local parish every other holy day without much guilt. One can leave the Church and remain on good terms with individual Catholics, without being shunned or disfellowshipped, as is the case with proper cults. Your average parish priest is a harmless, kindly figure, unlike the stentorian, paper-selling demagogues you might find outside your local Tesco pushing their inflammatory and incandescent tabloid-style rags upon indifferent passers-by. The method by which the Pope is elected is much more democratic than the ‘slate system’ used by Trotskyist sects to ‘unanimously’ select their leadership. One of the interesting things about the Church is the way in which ritualistic displays of devotion can easily substitute for serious personal commitment. The rapidly-growing Pentecostal churches in the Third World, which aspire to be more than just gathering places for the local community, but claim to have divinely-inspired solutions for all human problems, are much more cultish than the present-day Catholic Church. Even so, my experience in the IMT is that it was much more cultish than any Pentecostal church my parents made me attend growing up, and that’s saying something. (Not that I have any desire to return to the church.) Even the average Pentecostal is able to keep his or her commitment relatively low-key, though unscrupulous preachers undoubtedly seek to squeeze the maximum amount of resources from their flock. That said, most Pentecostal preachers are not at the level of a Benny Hinn or a Peter Popoff. Just like most Trotskyist sect leaders are not at the level of a Gerry Healy or a Jack Barnes.
Sure, the IMT shares features with mainstream political and religious organisations. All forms of human association, healthy or otherwise, will share universal features. Dialectical materialism may be baloney for the most part, but it isn’t entirely wrong about the world being interconnected. Everything has at least something in common with something else. To use an analogy I would like to borrow from Dennis Tourish, a rusty bicycle in a garage has something in common with a Ferrari. But the differences between the two are far more significant than the similarities. There are striking, empirically-observable differences between the Trotskyist sects like the IMT and mainstream political organisations. To deny this is simply foolishness. Moreover, as mentioned earlier, Trots never fail to boast of the uniqueness and superiority of their organisations over every other organisation on the left. Why do they change their tune when scrutinised as cults? An IMT member attempted to defend his organisation on this blog by stating that the fund-raising endeavours and meetings that the IMT made its members commit to were no different than what is demanded of an average member of the labour movement. I called bullshit, because this is just a bare-faced lie. No mainstream political organisation makes its members hand over the enormous sums of money demanded by Trotskyist sects of their members, and no mainstream political organisation has meetings that are stage-managed to such an extreme degree as one finds in Trotskyist sects. If I attend my local Labour Party branch, I can expect to find heated discussion and debate on any given issue. If I attend an IMT meeting, I will find that almost everyone there is in complete agreement with the party line. Moreover, a good chunk of that meeting will involve a comrade giving the ‘line’ by rote as part of a ‘lead-off’, whilst the dutiful attendees try not to sleep. Our resident IMT cultist also denied that the cliquey in-jokes about dialectics and what-not were cultish, as they constituted ‘banter’ among friends. He is unaware that (a) genuine friendship does not exist in an organisation where all personal relationships revolve around absolute loyalty and dedication to the party line and the will of the leadership, and (b) the cliquishness and insularity of Trotskyist sects goes beyond the kind of behaviour you’d see in a healthy, organic group of friends, who are bound by ties of genuine affection rather than simply political agreement. You can either be a friendship club, or a revolutionary organisation. You cannot be both. And I know of no friendship club which consists of hundreds of individuals all with the exact same political views. So this cliquish dialogue which takes place among the members of Trotskyist sects has little or nothing to do with genuine friendship, and more to do with a desire to create an in-group based on shared political allegiance and hostility to the outside world.
How can people who never fail to boast of their uniqueness and superiority, all of a sudden begin insisting that they are no different from ‘bourgeois’ organisations? Because they want at all costs to escape the stigma of being labelled what they are – cults.
‘Cult’ is a term of insult or abuse
Many people are under the impression that to call an organisation a cult is an act of abuse or slander. What our friends in the IMT seem unable to accept is that the term ‘cult’ is not simply bourgeois propaganda designed to discredit their cause. (They do a very good job of discrediting themselves.) Instead, cult analysis is based on the work of social scientists from across the political spectrum, who have come up with objective criteria for determining whether a given organisation is a cult. To say that Dennis Tourish, Steven Hassan, Janja Lalich, Alexandra Stein, Robert Jay Lifton and countless others are all working for the evil bourgeoisie, and therefore incapable of making intellectually sound analyses, says more about the ignorance and narrow-mindedness of the people making the accusation than anything about the academics mentioned above. Cults can exist on both the left and right of politics. Indeed, many Trotskyists would have no problem calling groups they disagree with politically cults, and much of the time, that accusation would be justified. But somehow, their sect is never a cult, even if it shares fundamentally the same characteristics.
For the record, I loathe the IMT and everything it stands for. I am proud to be an enemy of the IMT and of Marxism. But my personal feelings towards the cult do not invalidate my analysis. Just like Marx’s hatred of the bourgeoisie does not invalidate all his analysis of capitalism. When I call the IMT a cult, it is because I have applied the methods of cult analysis used by other thinkers and researchers to inform my own understanding of the IMT and similar groups. It is not because I am trying to insult or antagonise the IMT or its members, though I am aware I have done just that by daring to leave and condemn the organisation publicly. Alas, this cannot be helped. We must all take our stands, and if my decision to break ranks is seen as ‘renegacy’ and betrayal, I can only shrug my shoulders and sigh at the prospect of the wasted lives I have left behind. Lives given up to a doomed cause, much like how the Biblical Canaanites gave up their children to Moloch. The fact is, any criticism I make of the group would be seen as an insult and an ‘attack on the Organisation’. I was a member. This is how we reacted to even the slightest criticism. We were trained to always be in ‘defence mode’. There were so many ‘enemies’ out there, so many ‘petty-bourgeois’ and ‘bourgeois’ hacks and heretics wanting to bring us down and destroy our work. The mind of the cultist is closed to criticism.
Claiming that you are ‘insulted’ by my criticism is not an argument, but an appeal to emotion. ‘You hurt my feelings’ is no substitute for intelligent debate and dialogue. But beyond that, there are those who are convinced that being told they have been subjected to mind control is tantamount to saying they are stupid. But being roped into a cult has nothing to do with intelligence. Many of those who join cults are highly educated, intelligent people with a lot to offer to society. Even more tragic, then, that such potential is wasted on cultism. The fact is that there are timeless aspects of human psychology which make us all vulnerable to cults. Instead of handwaving all examples of cult analysis as ‘bourgeois propaganda’, Trotskyist sectarians might want to actually engage with the arguments being made, and change their organisational practices, unless several more decades in the swamplands of sectarianism is their preferred state of being.