The BITE model is an extremely useful way of looking at cults and gauging the severity of cultic practices inflicted upon their members. Steven Hassan created an ‘influence continuum’, with traits belonging to destructive cults at one end, and those belonging to healthy organisations at another. The very worst cults are at the extreme cultic end of the spectrum, but there are other organisations with may display some cultic traits but are not full-blown cults. This post seeks to apply the ‘influence continuum’ to the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), which I would place close to the end of the spectrum (though there have been and are far worse groups which are even further on the spectrum than them). It has three different components – the experiences of individual members, the nature of the leadership and the relationship between the organisation and the membership.
For individuals
In healthy organisations, an authentic self can exist alongside one’s commitment to the group. A variety of different personalities can coexist within a particular group without too much friction or controversy. There is no artificial ideal imposed upon the membership. However, in a cult, there is a concerted effort to mould the personality of the cult member in line with a particular ideal. This was certainly the case in the IMT. We were moulded to be ‘cadres’, the future officers of the revolutionary army. The term ‘cadre’ has a military connotation. It refers to a group of highly trained individuals who are in turn able to train and educate others. The ideal of a ‘cadre’ in far-left groups is that any individual cadre should be equipped with a very high understanding of Marxist ideas and an ability to explain them to new members (and in the future, to the masses). A ‘cadre’ is expected to be able to take initiative and respond quickly to political developments that take place. The idea is that a cadre should have such a high ‘political level’ that they can come to the ‘correct’ conclusions independently, using the Marxist method. At the same, a cadre is supposed to be a model of ‘party discipline’ and to take criticism from the leadership, as well as practice self-criticism, in order to be a better comrade. A cadre is supposed to be a model of unabashed optimism, because ‘Marxists should be optimists’, as we were told in the IMT. I also felt pressure to be more sociable than I otherwise was, being an extreme introvert. I had to play the part and appear a good ‘party man’. We would call each other ‘comrade’, a means by which we cemented the cult identity. In the IMT, I would vacillate between feeling pride at my elite position as a ‘cadre’, to feeling guilt and shame at not fully measuring up. I often felt like a poseur. My authentic self, which was independent-minded, individualistic, sceptical, strong-willed, rebellious, open-minded and pessimistic contrasted with the cult self, or the cadre ideal. When the two came into conflict, I would feel guilt at not having rid myself of the remnants of my ‘bourgeois’ and ‘petty-bourgeois’ past. The truth was, my own psychology was rebelling against Marxism, much like the body of a blood transfusion patient rebels against foreign cells being inserted into its bloodstream.
In a healthy organisation, there are genuine friendships and connections. In a cult like the IMT, any ‘friendships’ are dependent upon loyalty to and continued membership of the cult. When I left the IMT, all those I had once been friendly with cut off ties with me. They were not even interested in my side of the story, or my criticisms of the organisation. I had become a ‘renegade’ and therefore was no longer to be regarded as fully human.
In a healthy organisation, there is compassion and respect. In the IMT, such things were seen as weakness. When I asked my branch secretary for time off due to struggling with my mental health, he shamed me, suggesting that I was not fully committed to the organisation. He also wrote off my issues as down to my having incorrect political views. Time off is seen as insufficient dedication to the organisation and proof of a lack of seriousness. This lack of compassion extended to contempt for the sufferings of comrades and former comrades at the hands of the organisation or its members. When I discussed with a couple of other ‘comrades’ the case of a former female member who had accused certain leading comrades of sexual misconduct, one of them spat out the following, disgusting sentence: ‘______ dressed to attract men.’ As if this justifies sexual misconduct! Ex-comrades who bitterly complained of their experiences in the organisation were dismissed as liars, renegades, etc. Far more than compassion, my experience of being in the organisation was being taught to hate – hate the bourgeoisie, hate the Blairites, hate the reformists, hate the media, hate other Trotskyists. And yet we were convinced that this hatred would somehow bring about a better world.
A healthy organisation makes allowance for an individual’s conscience and independent moral compass to flourish. A cult like the IMT places doctrine over conscience. Our method of recruiting people involved faking ‘friendship’ with ‘contacts’, downplaying how much we were expecting in terms of commitment and hiding our organisation’s true nature behind loud support for the ‘reformist’ Corbyn and various front groups like Hands off Venezuela, Students4Corbyn, etc. I was always uncomfortable about these things, but suppressed my discomfort because I was convinced that these hang-ups were nothing more than bourgeois moralism. Rather than leave, I redoubled my commitment.
Creativity and humour are aspects of a healthy organisation, where the intelligence and originality of the membership is utilised to the fullest. In the IMT cult, this was not the case. Despite the constant pleas by the leadership to show ‘initiative’, the organisation tolerated no deviation from the agreed line by any member. Members were commissioned to write articles for the paper and website on any given topic from a Marxist perspective, with the same cookie cutter conclusions and ‘lessons’ for the edification and ‘education’ of the membership. Our ‘interventions’ in the Labour movement and at society meetings were all affirmations of the correct line, and no comrade could put forward dissenting ideas or go off script. To do so was a serious breach of discipline. I grappled with feelings of guilt at thinking heretical thoughts, and feared getting on the wrong side of the leadership. I feared saying the wrong thing on social media or at branch meetings, and thereby being reprimanded. It was difficult to be ‘relaxed’ around ‘comrades’, since one had to make sure one was playing a role and being party-minded.
In a healthy organisation, there is free will and critical thinking. In the cult, all our activities were coordinated from the top-down, and no open criticism of the doctrine was permitted. The ordinary member had to follow the rules, accept ‘party discipline’ and obey without questioning. We spent all our time reading and re-reading the ‘sacred texts’ of Trotskyism, which helped us to further internalise the doctrine and blunted our critical thinking skills.
Leaders
Healthy organisations will also have healthy leaderships. Needless to say, this is not true of the IMT. In a healthy organisation, the leaders are psychologically healthy individuals. Yet the founder of the IMT, Ted Grant, is widely acknowledged to have been, at the very least, psychologically damaged, at the worst, a deranged narcissist convinced of his indispensability to world revolution. From his teenage years in South Africa (where he was named Isaak Blank), he dedicated his life to communism and retained this commitment to the end of his days. Upon his arrival in Britain, he adopted the name Ted Grant, beginning a decades-long enterprise to overthrow British capitalism. After several false starts, he and his colleagues founded Militant in 1964. It would soon go on to be a household name in Britain. He does not appear to have had any real interests outside politics. As far as we know, he never had a romantic relationship. Nor did he have any real friends that were not ‘comrades’. He had no private life, identifying himself entirely with the cause of revolutionary socialism. The narcissistic Grant insisted upon his fundamental correctness on every issue, quarrelling endlessly with his fellow Trotskyists, not only in other sects but in his own organisation. Those who disagreed with him were unceremoniously forced out. His stubbornness and inflexibility was a reason behind his eventual ouster as leader of Militant in 1991. Among his many false predictions was his arrogant assertion that the restoration of capitalism in the USSR was impossible, as the planned economy had proven its superiority over private industry. This was proven to be complete nonsense, of course. This did not stop him and his chief supporter, the IMT’s current leader Alan Woods, from constructing a false narrative which involved an extravagant rewriting of the historical record to make it appear that Ted Grant had been right about everything. A 1989 collection of Ted Grant’s written works, which the IMT still publishes to this day, has been criticised by the Trotskyist Al Richardson for its omissions and falsification of the historical record for the promotion of a personality cult around Grant.
Woods, Grant’s successor and the IMT’s current leader, appears to be more psychologically balanced than his mentor. However, decades of leading a far-left revolutionary organisation do not do wonders for anyone’s mental health. Like his hero, Ted Grant, his arrogance, self-righteousness and powers of self-delusion are incredible. In 2010, a group of rebels within the leadership were bullied out of the organisation, maintaining Woods’ power and control. A transcript of the debate was put online by the opposition after their ouster from the organisation. It purports to show Woods and his cronies subjecting the opposition to the most abysmal slander, abuse and Stalinist methods of interrogation. It is unclear who will succeed him when he dies or retires. A leader who is convinced of his or her indispensability has little to no interest in fostering a clear line of succession.
All Trotskyist leaders have an elitist outlook and a grandiose sense of self. The perspectives are always correct, revolution is always on the horizon and their sect alone will lead it to a successful conclusion. They alone can perceive the direction of history, using the ‘Marxist method’. At every single one of our national events, Alan Woods would impress this dogma upon us in his speeches. He would fiercely denounce the ‘idiots in academia’, corrupted by bourgeois ideology, and the other Marxist sects. Only our organisation, under his leadership, was capable of saving humanity. Needless to say, after three decades of the IMT’s existence and a global membership of barely 2000, these boasts ring hollow indeed. In a healthy organisation, the leaders know their own limits. They are not convinced of their omnipotence. They understand that the connection between the leaders and the followers is a two-way street, which involves both sides learning from each other. In Trotskyist cults like the IMT, the leaders exist to ‘teach’ the members, and the members must obey.
Healthy organisations seek to empower their members. In the IMT cult, the power-hungry leadership deliberately rigged the structures of the organisation to deprive members of any real say in how it was run. Communication was largely one-way, with ‘comrades’ being ordered around like pawns, without any proper scope for feedback from the membership. Every week, a national bulletin was sent to all members via email with commands and morale-boosting accounts of other comrades elsewhere in the country. National conferences were stage-managed, with a pre-set agenda to which we gave our ‘unanimous’ consent. Regional full-timers acted as thought-police, carefully monitoring the membership for heresy, and grooming promising recruits to leadership roles. There was never any open election for these – the leadership would meet in secret, discuss who was a ‘good chap’ and co-opt them onto the leadership body. This ‘smoke-filled room’ style of selecting leaders would have been condemned fiercely if done by the evil bourgeoisie, but it was perfectly fine for our supposedly progressive, revolutionary organisation. An organisation which, as was always stressed to us, was supposedly democratic and participatory. Everything was about maintaining control for the clique at the top. The leadership could do whatever it wanted in the name of ‘building the Organisation’, ‘defending the Organisation’, ‘combating alien class ideas’. But woe betide any ordinary member who sought to create a faction for the purpose of making changes to the organisation. They would be hounded out, slandered, abused and traduced in the most disgusting and vitriolic terms.
A healthy organisation has a leadership which is trustworthy, open and can be held accountable for wrongdoing. The IMT leadership, by contrast, lacked any real transparency in its dealings. Important discussions were held in secret at Central Committee meetings, and they would present decisions to the membership as fait accompli. Since Central Committee members were under ‘party discipline’ to keep any disagreements secret, the membership could never know of divisions within the leadership body, or vote anyone out of office in favour of someone they preferred. Elections took place according to a slate system, which involved the same list of names being put forward for re-election every year. One could not vote for individuals, but only to either accept or reject the slate as a whole. Since ordinary members were trained to be loyal, no one would trouble to create a rival slate, and if they did they would likely have been expelled. Besides, most people did not feel able to make the sacrifice of being a full-timer and take over the onerous burdens of the pre-existing leadership, so they remained in control by default.
Organisation
A healthy organisation does not have a rigid separation between leaders and led. A destructive cult, like the IMT, does. We, the rank-and-file, looked up in awe at the ‘full-timers’ and CC members as men and women wiser and more capable than we. They had absorbed more of the ‘Marxist method’, they had more experience leading a revolutionary organisation, and their every word was divine. I still remember how we would speak of ‘the Centre’, in tones of awe-struck reverence. It was originally what the old Militant headquarters was called, but came to be a metonym used to refer to the leaders.
A healthy organisation has checks and balances. The IMT had none of this. The leadership did whatever it jolly well pleased, and if you didn’t like it, you were shown the door.
A healthy organisation has informed consent. Members know what they are getting into and given all the information they need. We recruited people through deception – downplaying how much commitment was expected, using front groups to lure people who would otherwise have passed us by, withholding certain information about how the organisation was run, etc.
Instead of individuality, as exists in a healthy organisation, we were turned into cookie-cutter ‘cadres’ or ‘Bolsheviks’. We were ‘comrades’, we spoke in ‘dialectical’ jargon, we quoted Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky like holy writ. Those with different views (usually new recruits who had not yet fully internalised the doctrine) were the victims of bigoted backbiting and ridicule. If they did not conform before too long, they were hounded out.
For us, the ends justified the means. In a healthy organisation, this is the other way round. The means must be justified in themselves, and be within the bounds of ethics and good sense. For us, deception, treachery, slander – all of this was acceptable if it helped us to reach the ultimate goal, the promised land of socialism. We never reflected on Victor Serge’s own observation, which Trotsky later pretended to accept – that there was a dialectical relationship between means and ends, that the means adopted could affect the outcome sought and create an abortion. Had we taken power, we would have created the opposite of a paradise. We would have built hell on earth. We set out to slay monsters, forgetting our own inner monsters. The promise of paradise was the perfect justification for unleashing the beasts within ourselves.
A healthy organisation encourages growth on the part of its members. The IMT cult controlled its members’ activities to the tiniest detail.
In a healthy organisation, one is free to leave. In our cult, there was never a legitimate reason to leave. Anyone who quit was said to have done so because of their own weakness and unworthiness. It was never the fault of the leadership if people threw in the towel.
Conclusion
From this analysis, we come out with an organisation which suppressed individuality and critical thinking, had an unaccountable and authoritarian leadership, deceived its members and the outside world. An organisation which can be legitimately described as a cult. That is the BITE model’s ‘influence continuum’ applied to the International Marxist Tendency (IMT).