The Sad Life of a Trotskyist Full-Timer

Last night, I had a nightmare about the IMT – one of many. I was at one of those bloody paper sales, surrounded by all the familiar faces. I still marvel at how much time I would waste on these nonsensical endeavours, week in, week out. Steven Hassan does say in his book about cults that this works as a strange sort of reverse psychology – by getting their members to perform such absurd and degrading tasks, they convince the cult member to intensify their loyalty and dedication. They come to think, ‘If I am making a fool of myself in this way, it must be because this is a very important cause and I am a very dedicated individual.’ When I think of all the time I spent on IMT activities, I want to cry. All of this dedication and loyalty, and it was all wasted. My reward was to be hounded out, slandered, rejected and humiliated. I used to tell my mother that my dream was to become a full-time employee of the sect, and dedicate all my earthly possessions to the cause of the revolution. She hoped, for her sake, that this would not come to pass. I am glad, for my sake also, that I never became a ‘full-timer’ for the IMT.

The life of a Trotskyist full-timer is a truly sad and pathetic one. A young man or woman who is seen as promising by the higher-ups is effectively groomed, in a manner not dissimilar from how ISIS and similar organisations gain recruits, and is ‘promoted’ to full-timer. This is seen as a lifetime commitment. Unlike in a conventional job, where you would have some sort of formal contract stipulating the length of your employment and how much you are paid, there is an understanding that full-timers serve at the pleasure of the organisation’s leadership, are paid however much the organisation deems them worthy of (barely enough to live on) and can only lose their position if they are sacked for the purpose of economies, resign or are expelled/made redundant for not having the correct political views. Being made a ‘full-timer’ places you within a sacred elite of the organisation’s members, and the subject of admiration and respect from everyone else. You have an enhanced reputation to live up to, and your every word and action is the subject of close observation by one and all. Simply being promoted to that position is enough to make your head swell. You are one of the chosen few who will lead the working-class to socialism. You are considered one of the smartest political minds on the planet. So much rests upon your shoulders. It is no surprise that Trotskyist organisations produce egotistical monsters and tyrants like Peter Taaffe and Alan Woods, when such attitudes are rife within the leadership. Everyone is ambitious to be the next Lenin or Trotsky. The revolution could happen tomorrow, and they will be the one to play the heroic part of leading the insurrection against the bourgeoisie. Such delusions lay behind the degeneration of Militant, as an over-optimistic Peter Taaffe began confidently proclaiming to people that the revolution was on the horizon, with him at its head. I remember Ben Curry telling me once in a phone conversation, with deadly seriousness, ‘One day we will have to put our lives into each other’s hands.’ I look back now and cringe at this preposterous LARPing from people who actually thought they were the chosen generals of the working-class, running an army of obedient soldiers in their imaginary war against the bourgeoisie.

There is no ‘informed consent’ involved in the recruitment of full-timers. A 21-year-old fresh out of university is hardly in a position to consent to giving up his/her entire life to a quasi-secret far-left sect. Not only does he/she lack life experience, they have no idea of the horrors that await them once they take the position – years of poverty, moving from flat to flat, often with other ‘full-timers’, sacrificing family and relationships, being threatened with the sack if they fall foul of the other leaders, and so much more. The fact that their livelihood is dependent on the organisation is another means by which they are trapped into dependence on the sect, more than even normal members are. Not only are they emotionally and intellectually tied to the group, but their means of feeding and clothing themselves relies on loyalty to the group. The longer one remains in the organisation as a ‘full-timer’, the harder it is to extricate yourself and desert the group. One is not free to think critically if doing so risks the loss of one’s position and means of physical survival. The result is inertia, as the illusion of unanimity comes to dominate within the leadership. The younger the full-timer, the better. The more energy they have that can be exploited, the more they can be molded in line with the priorities of the group, the more time the sect has to tame their rebellious instincts. Conformist dullards as opposed to striking intellects are favoured. Needless to say, not all full-timers are mediocre intellects – enough need to have brains for the organisation to function – but at a certain point it becomes easier to appoint time-servers, bootlickers and slavish devotees rather than people with intellectual independence.

Being part of the upper ranks of the leadership allows one an insight into things ordinary members would not see, of the kind that creates complicity and makes it harder to leave the organisation. Just as Lenin and Stalin forced the entire Bolshevik Party to stain their hands in the blood of innocent Russians in order to cement their loyalty and destroy their humanity, so the leadership of Trotskyist organisations makes their full-timers accessories to all sorts of bad behaviour, including the forcing out of dissidents, the covering up of sexual assault etc, so that they are bound to the organisation in a bizarre brotherhood of criminals, incapable of human feeling for anyone outside their ranks, and ready to carry out the most hideous acts on behalf of the sect.

The stress of being a ‘full-timer’, and having the weight of the revolution on your shoulders, would be enough to make anyone crack from time to time. When I was in Socialist Appeal, drug use and heavy drinking were widespread throughout the organisation. I recall a drunk lead-off given by Rob Sewell in December 2019 at a Christmas social in ‘the Centre’, during which he was visibly sloshed after a few beers. It is very easy to laugh at such incidents, but looking back, it was not funny at all, but rather pathetic. It is no surprise that the full-timers in these organisations rely on drugs and drink as a crutch to distract themselves from the inner misery and loneliness they must feel, day in, day out. In the case of Sewell, Trotskyist activism has been his life from adolescence onwards. He is now in his early 70s. He knows of no other existence, no other way of being. He must feel trapped. Maybe, in the deepest recesses of his mind, a doubt or two crops up now and then, and is then suppressed. As the head of the British section of the IMT, he must know that there is so much responsibility resting upon his shoulders. After all, tomorrow Britain might turn fascist, and he could be forced to go underground, perhaps even arrested!

Of course, back in the days of Militant, drug use was frowned upon, and a puritanical ethos borrowed from Russian Bolshevism was very much in effect. It seems that standards are slipping! It seems that they have accepted that even Marxists must give in to the foibles and follies of ordinary men, who seek to dull their senses every now and then when the pressures of real life get too much. Of course, the people in the IMT are living a parody of real life. They are actually living in a mental and spiritual universe that has more in common with 19th-century Russia than with the times in which everyone else is living in. Just like Amishes who continue to live in the 17th century, or the last Japanese soldier in the jungle years after WWII, they remain stuck in a time warp.

Being a full-timer of a Trotskyist cult is to experience an even more intense version of what is experienced by ordinary members. When your entire life revolves around the organisation, it cannot be any less. At the highest levels of the cult, the stakes are so much higher. It is to exist in a mental, moral and in some cases physical prison. During the split in Militant in 1991-2, some full-timers found out the hard way when they started being dismissed simply because they sided with Alan Woods and Rob Sewell against Peter Taaffe, without severance pay! The great champions of workers’ rights who were running Militant then had to deal with being taken to an employment tribunal for this beastly behaviour. I would not be surprised if Woods and Sewell replicated this behaviour in Socialist Appeal.

Irving Howe describes the life of a sect member well:

…maneuvering by ambitious ‘youth’ leaders, elaborate games (Marxist monopoly) for nonexistent power…

…In a few instances genuine psychotics rose to leadership, young men projecting fantasies of domination and strutting about in a quasi-military style as if behind them stretched regiments of rebellion. The talk was of creating a ‘vanguard’, but the practice, at times, was embarrassingly close to that of a cult.

Now doesn’t that sound just like Peter Taaffe’s CWI, or Alan Woods’ IMT, or the SWP, or the ISO, or any other Trotskyist sect anywhere in the world? Pity the full-timers, and spare a thought for these poor people. They know not what they are doing.

It should be said that this obsessive, religious devotion to a political organisation that claims that only it can save humanity is doomed to lead to totalitarianism. Why did so many Bolsheviks, including those who had once opposed the drift towards totalitarianism, like Alexandra Kollontai and the Workers’ Opposition, and figures associated with the United Opposition like Preobrazhensky, Kamenev, Zinoviev and Lenin’s wife Krupskaya, end up capitulating to Stalin? It wasn’t simply fear of Stalin, though this was very real. It was because of the simple fact that Stalin was the head of the party, and Lenin had inculcated in them the spirit of blind loyalty and devotion to the party and its leadership. After all, as none other than Trotsky proclaimed, ‘The Party is always right’. The mere fact that Stalin was head of the party could not be treated as a mere accident, but as something ordained by the movement of history itself. Perhaps Stalinism, for good or ill, was history’s instrument for bringing about socialism. To oppose Stalin was to risk splitting the party and bringing about the restoration of capitalism. This was more than anyone could bear. Better then to remain loyal to the party, and hope that Stalinism would prove a temporary phenomenon that would give way to a more tolerant spirit once the storm had passed. This was certainly Trotsky’s belief. Arthur Koestler, in his magnificent novel Darkness at Noon, captures this attitude well.

Moreover, these were people who had given their entire lives to the revolutionary movement and to serving the Bolshevik Party, from the underground days to the triumphant days of the October Revolution and beyond. To separate from the party at such a critical juncture was to throw away everything they had worked for their entire lives. It was psychologically impossible. Some were brave enough to speak out and resign, feeling their ideals had been betrayed by the party. Others committed suicide. Most capitulated, and told themselves that in doing this, they were showing, not weakness of character, but rather, strength, in subordinating their rebellious spirit to the discipline of the vanguard. One can only speculate as to whether Trotsky, too, would have capitulated, if he had remained within the USSR during the 1930s rather than being forced into exile. It was so much easier to show loyalty to the party than to question their lifelong commitments to an organisation that had promised them paradise. This mental attitude is identical to that which exists within Trotskyist sects today, especially among the full-time employees, who are the spiritual descendants of the Russian Communists of the early twentieth century. How can they bring themselves to question the ‘perspectives’, to doubt the line, to challenge their fellow leaders? Better to suppress their doubts and redouble their commitment. It won’t be long now before the revolution arrives and their sacrifices repaid in full.

Of course, it is all a delusion. The revolution will not arrive, they will have wasted many good years, and many of them will end up deserting the sect in order to rebuild their shattered lives, leaving only the most brainwashed, or those so old, like Rob Sewell, that they have nothing left to lose.