There was a time when I was quite charmed by the Dear Leader, Kim Jong-Woods, as a naive contact and then member of the organisation. I even imitated his gestures and jokes in his ‘lead-offs’ for my own. He was and is a very charismatic, eloquent and well-read man, gifted with a verve for the written and spoken word, and fluent in several languages. Unfortunately, he has chosen to waste this immense talent on building a tiny political cult which will never enjoy power anywhere on this planet. Moreover, for such a clever man, he really does come up with the most idiotic nonsense.
If I was called upon to give every single example of Woods’ well-read, eloquent idiocy, I would be sat at my laptop all day, so here is a small slice of his faulty logic. Here is one of his rebuttals to anarchism, in an article written for the organisation some years ago:
The main mistake of our anarchist friends is to imagine that a party (or an “anarchist association”) should replicate as closely as possible the future communist society, i.e. a free association of men and women. But this is to completely misunderstand the role of a revolutionary party.A revolutionary party is a tool for the purpose of overthrowing the existing state power. It is not, and cannot be, a mirror image of the future society that will be created on the basis of the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. A carpenter’s plane cannot resemble the chair or table that is the final result of his work. A bricklayer’s trowel cannot resemble a wall.
I suspect I may have first read this astounding passage from a book anthology of articles Woods had written on Marx and the founding of the First International. At the time I absorbed it uncritically. Then I realised after I had left the sect how utterly stupid it was. I am no anarchist, but any sensible person can see what a monstrous misunderstanding lies in this piece of argumentation. The sheer stupidity of the analogy is the first thing that should strike someone. How can one compare a revolutionary organisation, a political grouping, which is therefore a social organism, to an inanimate object like a carpenter’s plane? And how can the aforementioned chair, table and wall be analogous to a society of living, breathing human beings? By definition, a revolutionary sect, being a sort of social organism, will come to influence any society it brings into being, as the Bolsheviks did when they seized power in Russia in 1917. The internal dynamics of this party came to dominate life not only in the state but in society, and remained the established order of things for seventy years.
Secondly, if Woods’ analogy is at all accurate, it means that he sees a revolutionary organisation as little more than a deaf and dumb, blunt instrument for the construction of a pre-determined utopia – something which, ironically, differs from Marx’s own understanding of socialism as the creation of a self-determined people, exercising its free will upon the blind social and economic forces at play, mastering them and using them to create a free society. It would explain a lot about his authoritarian, controlling manner of ruling his own sect, and the manner in which other Trotskyist cults are run. A carpenter’s plane and a bricklayer’s trowel are both objects that can be guaranteed never to talk back to their masters, or to add their own, independent input to the finished product. Surely, if Marxism truly is about building a better society, then those who are engaged in the fight to build a socialist society should be active participants in creating it, not simply blind tools to be used and exploited by those in authority. As it happens, Woods’ idea of a revolutionary organisation is one composed of mute robots who unquestioningly implement the goals of those wise socialist intellectuals in charge of the project – i.e., himself. His ideal society, like the chair, table and wall produced by a carpenter or a bricklayer, will be composed of people who are deaf, dumb and lifeless, with no ideas of their own.
It is far from unjust to expect that those who preach the virtues of an alternative society that does not even exist should try as much as possible, in their own lives, to approximate these virtues. This does not mean going to extremes and doing things which are completely outside the boundaries of political realism, but it does require a certain kind of moral attitude towards life and one’s fellow man. For example, Marxists claim to believe in democracy and freedom. Why don’t they create organisations which have some sort of genuine democracy at least equal to that enjoyed in mainstream organisations? Why do they instead create hysterical cults around mammalian mediocrities like Taaffe, Woods, North, etc, with sham elections to committees by ‘slate’ from ‘branch delegates’ rather than one man one vote? Why do they expel or discipline people for daring to have different opinions and express them openly?
Of course, it is clear to anyone who reads between the lines that Woods’ real argument here is as follows. Yes, we Marxists believe in democracy, equality, popular participation, and all those wonderful things, just like you anarchists! But that is all to be left until after the revolution. Right now, the goal is to win power. To win power, we need a ‘revolutionary organisation’, and this organisation cannot approximate the virtues we want in the new society, without compromising its political effectiveness. Therefore, we must have a tightly-bound organisation with an omnipotent leadership that does not brook any disobedience or dissent from any quarter.
If only Woods would have come out to say this explicitly and honestly. Instead, he hides behind stupid analogies that even he must know don’t really work. Woods’ logic is the same as those IMT cultists on this blog, and on my YouTube channel, who argue that my criticism of their internal regime is irrelevant and a distraction from political issues. These same people will go on about the importance of the ‘subjective factor’ and the indispensability of their sect to any meaningful societal transformation. If their sect is important, then the social dynamics in the sect should be discussed, as these dynamics will influence whatever kind of society they bring into being if they seize power. But they would rather dodge the issue and ignore the glaring logical fallacy in their doctrine.