A study of the Revolutionary Communists of America

Our movement, the Communist movement, is in dire need of reassessment in the West. We are faced with a proliferation of sects and cults, rather than a coherent movement. But what is this tendency that has sprung up in Western Communism?

The “cult-building tendency” is a term we use to describe a certain pattern that emerged in the U.S.-Canadian Communist movement after the disastrous 1957 conference of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). We can ultimately link this to the so-called “secret speech” delivered by Nikita Khrushchev to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) on February 24-25, 1956. Of course, Marxist-Leninists have been complaining of the deleterious effects of the secret speech — the world-wide splits that emerged within parties, the destructive rupture between the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China, the waves of revisionism — for nearly seventy years. We must be wary that overemphasis on the role of the secret speech may blot out other causes or give them a reduced appearance of importance. The simple fact that it has been used as the basis for many arguments in the past, however, is not enough to dismiss the effects of the secret speech as trite or rote.  With that properly in mind, we should be able to accurately assess its import in the development (and mal-development) of the Communist movement. For our purpose, the  causes — the underlying conditions within the CPSU which lead to the issuance of the secret speech and De-Stalinization policy — are less important than the effects of De-Stalinization as a whole upon the Communist movement in the United States and Canada.

At the time of the 1957 conference of the U.S. Communist Party, there was already, raging within it, a battle between great nation chauvinism and principled commitment to national self-determination. Lenin described this danger in 1922 in “The Question of Nationalities or ‘Autonomisation,’”: “[W]e nationals of a big nation, have nearly always been guilty, in historic practice, of an infinite number of cases of violence; furthermore, we commit violence and insult an infinite number of times without noticing it.”

“That is why internationalism on the part of oppressors or ‘great’ nations, as they are called (though they are great only in their violence, only great as bullies), must consist not only in the observance of the formal equality of nations but even in an inequality of the oppressor nation, the great nation, that must make up for the inequality which it obtains in actual practice.”

This was primarily focused on the issue of the Black Nation imprisoned within the Black Belt of the U.S. Empire. This battle took the form of an opportunist turn and the entrenchment of revisionist-opportunist leadership. That is to say, it did not initially appear in the form of a war of principle between committed revolutionists and great nation chauvinists, but occurred underground with the surface appearance of a battle of opportunism and revisionism on the one hand, which was committed to the “peaceful coexistence” of the Communist movement with the capitalist West, and committed revolutionists on the other, who were dedicated to the violent overthrow of all existing social relations. The underlying cause was, of course, white settler attachment to great nation chauvinism, to the idea of “America” that they could not give up. 

In short, the leadership first took the increasingly liquidationist position espoused by Earl Browder and then, after he actually dissolved the party and it was reconstituted with the aid of the international Communist movement’s pressure and assistance, at the 1957 party conference, the right-most trends shut out the national liberation groups and instituted the party slate system and other extreme methods of anti-democratic control. (Further reading with more detail on the history of the CPUSA, its origins, its trends, etc., is available in the Clarion article “The CPUSA In Its Members Own Words”).

This same tendency to shut out dissent and insulate leadership from democratic control was repeated throughout many of the successor organizations. During the 1960s and 1970s, there sprang up many would-be parties that were infected with this anti-democratic trend. We do not yet know the full influence of the U.S. intelligence agencies on these groups, but we can see similar attributes shared across all of them. The Democratic Workers Party, the Workers Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought, the Revolutionary Communist Party, the followers of Lyndon LaRouche, and even the Sendero Luminoso all share this cult-form. The Marxist cult is an evolution or graduation from the sect-form. Intense sectarianism and outside pressure — due to illegalism, fear of security services, security-paranoia — isolate left groups and lead down the mal-adaptive road of cult-building. Cosmonaut’s “Cults of Our Hegemony” presents a list of these organizations and explores the similarities between them. The recently-translated book The CIA’s Shining Path by Andreo Matías, hosted on the ProleWiki website, details the history and structure of Guzman’s Shining Path, which was also a kind of cult.

How Does the Cult-Form Function?

The cult-building tendency manifests in a similar fashion within most of the sects that fall prey to it, although obviously the details are particularized and unique in each case. We present here an individual case study of the International Marxist Tendency, recently named the Revolutionary Communist International, based on the written testimony of a former member.

Marxist parties or organizations, particularly those that emerged from the New Communist Movement in the U.S. during the ‘60s and ‘70s, often use a number of similar techniques upon making the transition from sect-form to cult-form, or they may inherit already-existing dangerous deviations that they possessed in the sect-form when they become totally closed to the rank-and-file and enter the cult-form. The necessity of maintaining control of the cult requires insulation from democratic accountability. You cannot have a cult organization that is accountable to its membership. This is the essence of the cult-form: in order to extract labor and money from its membership, commit abuses with impunity, and maintain absolute control over the money and labor lodged in the organization and its members, the leadership must maintain absolute control and block all avenues of accountability. This is sometimes done outright, but also more often done by establishing false avenues of accountability — blind alleys and dead-ends that lead nowhere but wear down the members and convince them to give up. Should any of the members become aware of their position as objectified non-entities, mere ciphers for the leadership to control, the cult must necessarily have a method of isolating them to prevent the spread of this consciousness among the others trapped in the cult.

Cults that spring from Marxist sects or otherwise profess a Marxist character tend to utilize some or all of the deviations that we have listed here. We must note that although some of these deviations share a name and, in some cases, even some elements of form with real Communist practices, these deviations are not in essence the same as actual practice, and we must be careful of falling into the cult-building trap of adopting any of the deviant aspects in our own organizing. So pervasive have they become, that they are easily confused for the healthy, Communist practice.

These deviations are:

The Slate System. Although there may be legitimate reasons for a party to adopt such a system, this is made necessary only in the face of extreme counter-revolutionary infiltration or other emergency conditions. There is absolutely no reason why a healthy party or organization not enduring some manner of siege should make use of the slate system. It may resemble the system used by the Communist Party of China (CPC), for instance, but careful attention to the functioning of a slate system as run by a cult or sect will demonstrate that, unlike real communist parties, the deviation adopted by the cults and sects permits self-selecting leadership to maintain their positions in perpetuity with no recall or accountability.

What is the slate system? As our interlocutor who provided us with the insights into RCI wrote, “a slate system is used during an election within an organization when the leadership body (or a fraction of the leadership body) proposes a slate. A slate is a list of leadership positions in the organization, with one candidate for each position which the leaders wish to fill. The leadership body votes on a single slate, which is then proposed to the rank-and-file members, who can either vote to approve or reject the slate. Rank-and-file members are not allowed to participate in the decision of the leadership body about who is put on the slate.” In many parties, this blatantly antidemocratic procedure is couched in the most hypocritical panegyrics. Oh, of course this is merely advanced democracy, true proletarian democracy, in which the membership is utterly neutralized and sidelined. Only in the most advanced proletarian democracy is the election of leadership a function performed by leadership itself!

Social isolation. Whether this is presented as a security measure to prevent individuals from learning the identity of the organizations roster, or as some bizarre and hitherto unheard-of aspect of democratic centralism, social isolation prevents individuals from having discussions “outside of the proper channels.” This is sometimes framed as a way to combat the formation of “factions,” which cults equate to any non-monitored social group. This social isolation functions in actuality to prevent individuals from comparing their experiences or sharing theoretical positions. It atomizes the membership and helps to disguise the true nature of the organization — revisionist, opportunist, abusive — and permits leadership to monitor all aspects of social life within the organization.

In the sect-form, the logic is usually that these kinds of social isolation are necessary to control and prevent the proliferation of revisionism, chauvinism, etc. Although this professed goal is certainly taken, at least in name, from the actual errors of the larger movement, it can never be achieved through the deployment of these tools. The rigid cabinning of cells is how a militant underground operates, not how a cohesive party operates. The two cannot be confused, or the resultant structure will list ever more steadily toward the cult-form.

Aggressive self-and-community criticism. Although when properly-exercised self-and-community criticism is a tool that can be used to engage in constructive struggle and can actually strengthen Communist unity, when it is abused by the sect-form and the cult-form it is a tool of social control. This is a broad subject, and was the initial topic that the Clarion writers began soliciting interviews with Marxists about. Self-and-community criticism is necessary because of the existence of the two-line struggle within Communist organizations. As the new Italian Communist Party wrote in La Voce n. 35 in July 2010, “two trends are always existing, one pushing onwards and the other restraining. They are the joint effect of the class contradiction (of the bourgeoisie’s influence and of the struggle against it), of the contradiction between the true and the false and of the contradiction between the new and the old. In some periods the two trends are complementary and both contribute to a party’s development. In other periods they become antagonistic and incompatible. The left trend has to transform the right one.”

This is particularly true in the imperial core where the two deviations — the ultra-left and right lines — arise organically from the economic and social relations of empire. Petty-bourgeois ultra-leftism must be purged; bourgeois rightism must be purged. These trends cannot be allowed to take hold! But how are they purged? Self-and-community criticism, when properly practiced, is a tool for this purification of the party organization. The deviation of self-and-community criticism can manifest in the sect-form as 1) an overemphasis on criticism (“addiction to struggle”) or 2) a refusal to permit any struggle (see below). In the cult-form, self-and-community criticism is only ever presented as flowing from the leadership to the rank-and-file. Leadership insulates themselves entirely from criticism in the cult-form.

Oppressive “democratic” centralism: 1) ban on factions; 2) ban on debate; 3) ban on expression of disagreement. Democratic centralism has been a byword for abuse in the Western Marxist movement since at least the middle of the last century. In order to understand the ways in which Western Marxists have distorted democratic centralism, we must work to recover the true meaning of the term.

Democratic centralism proposes a dialectic between the rank-and-file and leadership of a Communist organization. Democracy means the input of all levels, centralization means the consolidation of policies by leadership. The definition of democratic centralism, promulgated through the constitutions of the CPSU and the Community Party of China (CPC), means that 1) party organizations are established through elections; 2) party organizations at all levels are required to make reports to those party members or units by whom they were elected; and 3) all lower units must accept the decisions of higher units. Party rules should not restrict a party member’s “creative spirit” and democratic rights, for all members have equal duties and rights to oppose individual despotism within the party and to engage in criticism and self-criticism — especially criticism of those above and those below.

In the CPC this is expressed as 知无不言，言无不尽 zhī wú bù yán , yán wú bù jìn: say all that you know, and say it without reserve. In 2017, Li Junru, former Vice President of the Central Party School in the People’s Republic of China, articulated democratic centralism this way:

[I]ndividual Party members are subordinate to the Party organization, the minority is subordinate to the majority, the lower Party organizations are subordinate to the higher Party organizations, and all the constituent organizations and members of the Party are subordinate to the National Congress and the Central Committee of the Party, where both democracy and centralism are advocated.

The Party Charter also stipulates that if individuals hold different opinions, they can keep the differences, but most obey the Party’s decision in action. If they have advice for the local organizations, they can approach the Party Central Committee to exercise their right to express or right of petition.

This is commensurate with Lenin’s formulation: 

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 definite action; it rules out all criticism which disrupts or makes difficult the unity of an action decided on by the Party.” He gives this example: “The Congress decided that the Party should take part in the Duma elections. Taking part in elections is a very definite action. During the elections… no member of the Party anywhere has any right whatsoever to call upon the people to abstain from voting; nor can ‘criticism’ of the decision to take part in the elections be tolerated during this period…. Before elections have been announced, however, Party members everywhere have a perfect right to criticise the decision to take part in elections.

Democratic centralism does not mean that criticism of political positions is outlawed in an organization. Democratic centralism does not mean that at all times, factions are outlawed in an organization — this confusion was the result of the 1929 Ban on Factions, which is not inherently part of democratic centralism. Democratic centralism does not mean a ban on debate, or a sequestering of debate to once-every-four-years.

These deviations came about to permit leadership in compromised Western parties to exert social control over their opponents. The effects of these blanket bans on debate is to crush all democracy and subject an organization to stifling central control. As to the Ban on Factions, that could be the subject of an entire article of its own. Suffice to say here that democratic centralism requires a sliding balance of democracy vs. centralism depending on the conditions — and no organization in the West is fighting a civil war with reactionaries or is subject to intense state repression, meaning none of those organizations has a good reason to suppress factionalism entirely.

Unaccountable abuse-handling systems. This is an adjunct to the false democratic centralism, and is sometimes couched as being part of the party security apparatus. In a functional party or organization, systems of handling allegations of abuse and misconduct are exposed to daylight and are transparent. That is, part of the methodology of weeding out abuse is to expose the abusers and to demonstrate publicly the systems in place for handling that abuse.

In certain very devolved sects and as a necessity of adopting the cult-form, abuse handling systems are hidden. They are made opaque. Reports of abuse enter a black hole or, worse, trigger private and secret investigations in which the person who reported the abuse is investigated and told, behind closed doors, to be quiet. Sects will often give their reasons: avoiding wreckers who make false allegations, avoiding public scrutiny by non-Communist elements who use allegations to raise a cloud of dust and smear the name of the organization, etc. The reason for this should be clear once it’s considered for a moment: keeping accountability meetings quiet means that the abusers and, more importantly, the cult can be protected from any blowback.

In reality, the reason that sects are afraid of wreckers, false allegations, etc., is because their abuse-handling systems are, in part, insufficiently rigorous and, in part, because of the very secrecy which they demand.

RCI: In Its Members Own Words

The material we have assembled here was submitted by a comrade going by the pseudonym Violet. She sent us this material in the hope that we could publicize what had happened in the RCI and help the movement advance and learn to combat the cult-form. One of the reasons that she credited and trusted USU to undertake this task was our statement indicating our commitment to openness and transparency: that we publish all of our board and Press Organization minutes as well as our financial statements.

Sadly, in the time since we made that commitment, several of our editors, affiliates, and distributors have been targeted by the state repressive apparatus and our doings much exposed to the news in certain local regions. For that reason, although we remain committed to openness, these minutes and financial statements are no longer simply available for browsing online. Those who are interested are welcome to contact us to request the minutes and financials at USUEditorial@protonmail.com.

We hope that the above framework will provide a way to navigate and digest Violet’s account.

Violet writes,

I was a member of one of these cults for five years. The group was called the International Marxist Tendency (IMT) when I was a member, but they recently renamed themselves to the Revolutionary Communist International (RCI). The US section was called Socialist Revolution, recently renamed to the Revolutionary Communists of America (RCA). You might have seen their stickers that say, “Are you a communist? Then get organized!” This is a recent campaign of theirs, and even though their membership is small, they have been putting up those stickers like crazy, and reaching a further layer of the population than they have before, at least in the US.

MY HAPPY YEARS IN A CULT

The RCI recruited me when I was a freshman in college, near the end of 2016. I had radicalized during high school, primarily due to the internet, and there were no open socialists at my school that I could share ideas with. By the time I started college, I was so desperate to join a revolutionary group that I joined the first one that I saw in person.

Over the next five years, I devoted more and more of my time to the RCI, and more and more of my money once I began to work full-time. I was excited to finally be a part of a group which doesn’t hide the fact that it aims to overthrow capitalism. I genuinely believed that I was building the workers’ movement, and felt like I was achieving the most meaningful purpose that my little life had to offer.

THE 2022 CANADIAN ABUSE SCANDAL

In June 2022, an ex-member in Canada published an open letter, which reported three incidents of sexual assault against them and others, by members of RCI. The author had previously reported the abuse to the Canadian leadership bodies discreetly, but felt that their responses were inadequate (to say the least), and then decided to leave the RCI altogether and share their experiences with the public. The top leadership bodies in the national sections of Canada, the United States, and even the international leadership body, published a series of responses, calling the author of the open letter a political enemy of the organization, and defending the actions that the Canadian leadership took in response to the allegations.

Later, in 2023, the highest-ranking leader of the Canadian RCI section, who was heavily involved in the responding to the abuse allegations, was himself quietly expelled from the organization for committing sexual abuse, despite being a member for over 20 years, and practically founding the Canadian section. His name is Alex Grant. Many other ex-members have published resignation letters, detailing the RCI leaders’ response to the open letter in greater detail; here is the most recent one, which also addresses Alex Grant’s quiet expulsion from the RCI.

Although we did not yet know the truth about Alex Grant, many members at the time found these responses from the leadership to the open letter to be repulsive. The statements from the leadership gave the impression that they were more concerned about protecting each other, than about getting rid of the abusers. Most people who had a problem with that decided to leave. They were the smart ones. Some of them published big resignation letters, and others left quietly. The biggest sillies were in Chicago, and I was the peak silly girl.

For further reading about the scandal: Here is a resignation letter co-authored by 21 Canadian members during 2022 when the scandal was still unfolding. Here is a resignation letter from the British section. Finally, here are two other solid articles written while the scandal was unfolding, both of which address the events of the scandal itself and the RCI leadership’s response to it. I can also dig up some old internal emails from the RCI during this period upon request.

HOW CHICAGO RESPONDED TO THE SCANDAL

At the time, I was the member in Chicago who had been in the RCI for the longest. However, I had just moved to the city, and two other members already held the leadership positions in our branch. This would later come back to bite us when the scandal hit, because the two members in branch leader positions (i.e. the Branch Committee, initialed as BC) sided with the Canadian leadership, and shut down all discussion of the scandal, and any talk of improving the abuse policies, as best as they could. However, unlike those two, I could see that six out of ten members were very concerned about the abuse, and only those two approved of the leadership’s behavior, with the other two staying out of the conflict. I saw more and more people in other cities resigning. I did not want that to happen in Chicago. I felt disappointed by those members for resigning, instead of staying and pushing for change through the “democratic structures” of the RCI, which the leadership assured over and over existed.

I succeeded in temporarily convincing the other five concerned members of the Chicago branch of the RCI to stay. We tried for the next three or so weekly meetings to put a discussion about the scandal over the agenda, but it was futile, because the two members in the Branch Committee had total control over planning the meetings, and refused to let us have any say. I was still concerned with appearing good in the eyes of the national leadership, so we did not attempt to take control of the meetings by force, instead patiently waiting for the Branch Committee members to decide to open up a discussion.

This plan of ours changed when we learned about one member of the Executive Committee who resigned, after being threatened by the other EC members with expulsion. All this, just because he had two phone calls with a Canadian member where he was trying to get more information about the scandal. I have more to say about this further down, in the discussion about the slate system.

Given that we were clearly being prohibited from discussing the scandal openly at branch meetings, I reached out to the other five members privately, asking if they wanted to hop on a video call together to decide our next steps. They all agreed. By the end, we had not yet decided on a clear course of action, but we agreed to make a group chat with the six of us, so we could more easily share news and coordinate together.

A week and a half later, one of the other five got nervous, and shared the entire contents of the group chat with the US section’s Executive Committee (EC), which is the highest body of the US section. Only after this did the two pro-leadership members in Chicago agree to begin a series of discussions. This only resulted in one group discussion, regarding democratic centralism, and how to raise disagreements. Never once were the members of our branch offered an open, honest discussion about the abuse which occurred. I realized later that the leadership never once intended to have such a discussion, and that these assurances of a future discussion were only a stalling method to keep us in place while the Executive Committee prepared their attack on us.

THE LEADERS PUBLICLY SHAME AND EJECT THE “CHICAGO CLIQUE”

On August 24, 2022, the Executive Committee sent all members of the US section a big email about the “Chicago Clique” as they named us, publicly shaming us, and demanding us to repent for discussing the scandal when we had been told not to. There are a lot of acronyms used, so here is a quick guide, if you decide to read the emails:

• A = the initials representing me
• XX = the initials representing other “Chicago Clique” members
• TT = his real initials, because he was Chicago’s point of contact with the Executive Committee, and he is a terrible person who continues to do a lot of harm. In addition to being one of the most ardent defenders of abusers which I have ever met (and I have met a lot), he introduced me to his partner while I was still a member, who looked like he was at least 30 years younger than TT. TT’s full name is on plenty of Socialist Revolution publications if anyone wants to figure it out for themselves.
• BC = Branch Committee
• EC = Executive Committee
• CC = Central Committee (EC members are just the CC members with the most authority)

Here is the first email from the EC:

Comrades of the Chicago Branch,

The EC is addressing you before the membership of the entire US organization to express our support and solidarity with those branch comrades who were unknowingly excluded when a secret clique was formed in your branch. The actions of these comrades constitute a serious breach of our internal democratic structures, and have damaged the trust and confidence of the rest of the branch, and of the organization as a whole.

In the late hours of July 25, a group of six members of the Chicago branch held a secret meeting in which they voted to form a Signal chat group, and agreed to conceal it from the rest of the branch. In the weeks that followed, the group acted as a secret bloc within the branch, voting on various decisions and actions behind the backs of the other comrades, coaching each other on how to handle meetings and discussions, and sharing screenshots of texts, emails, and Slack message conversations with other branch members and the CC contact from the National Center. The group also shared Discord links to internal documents from the Canadian section, as well as various “updates” and rumors from other back channels, including report backs from conversations with individuals outside the organization.

Of the six members who initially formed the group, one comrade made the decision to break with the clique and put everything on the table, sharing a full transcript of the secret group chat. In their words, they came to the conclusion that “honesty is the one thing I haven’t tried.” Upon leaving the group chat, this comrade expressed their realization that the bloc had in fact constituted a clique, and advised the other comrades to disband the group and be honest with the rest of the branch. 

We commend this comrade for acting responsibly and attempting to restore and repair the damaged trust within the Chicago branch. We do not know if the other members of the clique plan to heed the advice of this comrade. The EC is writing this letter in order to bring the facts to light, to invite the other members of the clique to answer for their actions, and to use this experience for the benefit of educating the entire section in order to become stronger Bolsheviks.

Once again on the lessons of cliquism and factionalism

The actions of the Chicago clique are an unfortunate byproduct of the recent political attack and its impact on our ranks. The balance sheet of this experience was discussed at the last meeting of the Central Committee and outlined in the most recent circular on this topic. Prior to that, the document on “Democratic Centralism and Bolshevism” also took up the questions of cliquism and factionalism in some detail. 

We can appreciate that this has been an entirely new experience for most comrades, one that has already proven extremely instructive for the organization. In these circumstances, it is understandable that some newer comrades were disoriented and responded to events, perhaps unintentionally, in a way that undermined the democratic structures of the organization. The point is that comrades must learn from this experience, and this includes recognizing mistakes and taking steps to restore trust when it is compromised. It is one thing for comrades to fall unintentionally or unconsciously into undemocratic actions. It is another thing to go behind the backs of your comrades and engage in a prolonged and deliberate deception, and to double down on this route when the mistake is clearly pointed out to you. 

The history of the revolutionary movement shows that the refusal to break from dishonest methods can only lead to one outcome: a departure from the struggle for socialism. These lessons, which may appear new and unfamiliar to comrades today, have roots going back to earlier periods of the movement, which we can learn from. 

For example, one of Trotsky’s most famous works, In Defense of Marxism, is a collection of his contributions to an internal polemic against an unprincipled petty-bourgeois grouping within the Socialist Workers Party in 1939–40. These writings not only cover the organizational aspects of the factional dispute, but delve into the philosophical roots of Marxism as a method of analysis. This masterpiece of Marxist theory—whose title provides the inspiration for the name of our international website and theoretical journal—deserves to be read by all comrades. 

At its recent meeting on August 7, the CC discussed the lessons of the 1939–40 experience. The factionalism that had taken hold within the SWP was rooted in years of elaborate back-channeling and secret correspondence, fostered by leading figures within the party, including Martin Abern. The early years of the Communist Party in the US were rife with factionalism and various internal rivalries. When the American Trotskyist movement was born, many of these unhealthy organizational methods were carried over by individuals like Abern,who had broken politically with Stalinism, but had not broken with its methods of bureaucratic maneuvering.

Another contribution to the polemic within the SWP was made by Joseph Hansen, who was one of Trotsky’s secretaries living with him at his residence in Mexico from 1937 until Trotsky’s assassination in 1940. Hansen had a unique perspective on the nature of the Abern clique, because he had formerly been a part of it, and had gone through the experience of breaking with it. In 1939, he wrote the text “Organizational Methods and Political Principles” explaining the nature and methods of cliquism, and appealing to comrades to defend the basic principles of Democratic Centralism. As Hansen describes in the introduction, Trotsky reviewed the article approvingly, and did not feel the need to make a single suggestion or edit. 

To be sure, the degree of factionalism and intrigue within the SWP was on a level far beyond anything remotely comparable to recent instances of cliquism in the US or Canadian sections. Yet, precisely because the last couple of months have been new terrain for the organization, there are important lessons to be learned from historical experiences like these, that can help shed light on the dangers of small-circle back-channeling and cliquism as it has unfolded in the Chicago branch.

Actions that undermine trust

It is telling that the clique was formed while the International Marxist University was still underway. Some of the Chicago comrades had come together and organized a watch party that weekend, joining hundreds of comrades across the US and thousands around the world in what was an inspiring event and a spectacular opportunity to raise comrades’ political levels. Those of you who attended the watch party did not suspect that some members of the branch—who had not bothered to register or to join the local watch party—were engaged in organizing a meeting of a different type, behind closed doors.

Comrade A, who has been a member of the organization for five years in multiple cities and should have known better, was the most enthusiastic driver of this group at all times, bringing various matters to a vote and appealing to the clique members to adhere to the decisions of the group. During the initial secret meeting, A acknowledged that the comrades were breaking the rules of the IMT. The Signal group chat was set up with a description that openly mocks and disparages our principles of internal democracy, facetiously describing the group chat as: “Just a group of members in the same branch who happen to be communicating with each other.” 

We can assure comrades that there are better things to do with our time than reading screenshots of the group’s secret conversations. But you don’t have to read very far to see the dishonesty of these actions, which are self-evident from the very start of the chat. The first message from A recapped the decisions that had been taken in the Zoom call, complete with votes tallied: to form a group chat, to attempt to “loop in” another branch member to the clique when “the moment is right,” and to keep secret from the branch the hidden meeting and the “agreement on whichever [unspecified] points.”

A goes on to elaborate that even though the group has agreed not to reveal their bloc to the branch, “we can still support each other when one of us starts discussion or brings up proposals, to make our agreement look natural and spontaneous (which it was, it just happened sooner lol).” The message ends with a note of encouragement: “Each one of you is brave for sticking it out this far, and I am proud to call you comrade!!”

When another member asks for a clarification about what it means to maintain secrecy if comrades would be supporting each other in discussions, comrade XX offers a clarification: “I think the thing is we don’t coordinate our agreement. Like if something comes up in branch discussion we are open that we disagree with the IMT position. But we’re just individuals who happen to have similar thoughts. Not acting as a bloc yet.” 

When it comes to deceiving the members of your own branch, these actions could hardly be more conscious and deliberate. On another occasion, the clique members advise each other on how to approach conversations with other branch members, including members of the branch leadership and non-BC members, as well as a run down of where comrades apparently stand, i.e., who is “staying neutral,” supporting the branch leadership, or “could wind up swinging either way.”

Ahead of calls with the BC comrades and comrade TT, who follows up with Chicago from the National Center on behalf of the CC, clique members advise each other to “be sure to record it,” to pursue a strategy of “playing dumb,” and above all to protect the secrecy of the group: “say you just got all the opinions from Twitter. They’ll probably buy that.” 

At one point in the chat, the comrade who ended up breaking with the clique comments that “Trust has obviously been broken here for this group chat to even exist, and it must be taken seriously for it to be repaired.” 

The task of restoring trust in the branch falls squarely upon the comrades who have undermined it by resorting to secret channels behind the backs of everyone else in the branch. 

Why the mistrust of leadership?

Throughout the conversations of the group, the obsession with secrecy is tied up with the fear of some unknown and unspecified threat of reprisal from the leadership. Comrade ME, in particular, expresses a constant worry about the potential consequences if “leadership” finds out about the clique. 

We ask these comrades, what is it you feared this whole time that prevented you from raising your concerns honestly and openly in branch meetings or in discussions with the leading comrades you know and work with regularly? Since when does the elected leadership of a Bolshevik organization threaten to “attack” members who have disagreements? Has any comrade on the local or national leadership given any indication they were unwilling to discuss patiently with comrades, to hear any concern, and to answer any question? 

Comrade A herself spoke to comrade TT individually, in group calls, and over text and email, on at least five occasions. Throughout the sum total of these interactions and conversations, A raised exactly one concrete disagreement related to the situation in Canada. Unsurprisingly, when TT discussed this with her, A realized and admitted that this disagreement was based on a complete misunderstanding of basic facts involved. And yet, despite multiple explicit commitments by A to be open and transparent, the suspicion and clique activity continued, to the point where A told the clique that her attitude was “fuck playing by the CC’s rules.” 

The democratically elected leadership of the IMT, from the branch level to the national and international levels, has never given comrades a reason to suspect that they would be treated unfairly or that any kind of disciplinary action would be taken against comrades with opposing views. So why the misplaced distrust and outright hostility against the elected bodies of the organization? 

As we explained in the recent circular on the balance sheet of the situation, there is a clear source of this attitude of hostility and mistrust. The atmosphere of mistrust was precisely the desired effect of the political attack from its inception. Just as in Chicago, an entrenched minority of members of the Canadian section resorted to secret channels, cut off from other comrades, where they could reinforce each other’s doubts and build up an increasingly frightening image of the “leadership” as a ruthless bureaucracy intent on “crushing dissent.”

Recognizing mistakes and repairing trust

This malicious image could not be further from the truth. We can only conclude that these comrades have invested more confidence in the rumors they hear online—the updates coming through dubious and semi-anonymous sources from people they have never worked with or met in person—than in the elected leadership of the IMT or the comrades in their own branch.

For a Bolshevik, the point of internal democracy is not to assert one’s individual rights and opinions. Rather, it is a means to an end—to achieve greater clarity of ideas and strengthen the organization in preparation for a decisive confrontation with the capitalists and their state. Democratic rights come with responsibilities, including the responsibility to put differences on the table, to be discussed and debated in a healthy and structured manner. What has been the result of the clique’s actions? Have the issues been clarified? Has the branch been strengthened? On the contrary. Far from being “just a group of members in the same branch who happen to be communicating with each other,” comrades were pitted against each other, entrenched in bitter gossip and animosity, and none of the issues were clarified. 

To the comrades of the clique: you have made a serious mistake. But that mistake does not need to be the end of your involvement in our collective fight for the end of capitalism. It is now up to you to prove you belong in this organization. No one is forcing you to be a member of an organization you disagree with. It is on you to decide whether or not you agree with the unwavering revolutionary principles of this International—including our staunch rejection of identity politics. We urge you to reconsider the path you have taken and to commit to open and comradely dialogue to resolve any differences and restore trust, in discussion with the rest of the Chicago branch and the CC, which will be discussing this matter and how to proceed this weekend. 

To the rest of the comrades of the Chicago branch: the IMT is behind you! You comrades live in one of the largest and strategically most important cities of the US. Your task is an enormous one—to firmly plant the banner of the IMT in the eyes of the immense layer of radicalized youth in that vast metro region, countless numbers of which are rapidly moving toward our revolutionary views. A solid branch today, mobilized full steam ahead for the Fall Offensive in step with the rest of the US section, is the path to five Chicago branches, and to the first hundred Chicago members in the years shortly ahead. 

For this, your branch must be a well-oiled machine, made up of comrades ready to fight side by side. You cannot achieve this without the utmost confidence of all comrades in each other, a healthy environment of trust and commitment, and the willingness to overcome all obstacles. Your branch has come through a difficult test—one that can only leave you collectively stronger and more unified than before.

Comradely,

The EC of the US section of the IMT

That was the only email which I know for a fact was shared with the other members of the US section of the RCI (formerly IMT). Below are additional emails which were exchanged, but I have no idea who else has seen them.

I replied to the EC two days later:

Comrades of the EC, 

The information you have been presented with is extremely one-sided and is missing key details, most notably the events in the month leading up to the formation of the group chat.

If anyone wants to hear my point of view, please feel free to reach out. I have nothing to hide. I can also elaborate on all of this in writing if people request. Otherwise, I have no interest in making a scene.

Comradely,

A

The Executive Committee replied one week later later (my edits in all caps):

Comrades,

The EC is writing to follow up on our open letter to the Chicago branch. In the week since we sent the letter, we have received only one reply, from comrade A. Of the five members who remained in the secret group chat after comrade SNITCH came forward to reveal the underhanded dishonesty of this grouping, not a single one of them has had the courage to come clean to their branch comrades. Not one of the clique members has so much as acknowledged that their actions were a breach of our internal democracy, let alone issued an apology to the branch for going behind comrades’ backs and damaging the trust of the organization. 

As we made clear in our original letter, the task of restoring broken trust falls on those who have undermined it through their actions. Thus far, the failure of these comrades to indicate any willingness to break with cliquism or to even acknowledge their actions leaves the branch with no path toward restoring a healthy atmosphere of collective trust, honesty, and revolutionary commitment. It is simply impossible for the branch to conduct its work as long as this remains the case. What reassurances have been given to the rest of the branch that the clique is not still operating undemocratically behind comrades’ backs? None whatsoever. This, as we enter the crucial Fall Offensive period when we need all hands on deck and all comrades rowing in the same direction.

The Central Committee met in person over the weekend of August 27–28 and discussed this situation. After a full discussion and collective input from that elected body, the CC voted unanimously to empower the EC to suspend [first names and last initials of A, XX, XX, XX, and XX] from membership in the IMT. After further consideration and discussion at its meeting on August 29, the EC voted unanimously to suspend all five of these comrades, effective immediately. 

It is in the hands of these comrades to take the necessary actions to restore trust, as comrade SNITCH has already done, in order to have their membership rights reinstated. In the meantime, these comrades are barred from all political activity in the organization, including attendance at branch or any other IMT meeting, and may not access our internal materials or communications or represent themselves as members of the IMT. While on suspension, any comrade who discontinues payment of dues will be considered to have resigned from the IMT. 

We would also like to use this letter to respond to A’s reply (appended below). Comrade, your response to our open letter failed to acknowledge your serious violation of our internal democratic structures and the trust of your comrades. You have not provided the slightest indication of any intent to break with your dishonest methods. Instead, you defiantly argue that the EC was provided with “extremely one-sided information”—although the only information the EC and CC relied on in our deliberations was your own words, as relayed in the group chat of a secret clique that you actively and consciously organized. 

As a veteran of multiple branches and the longest-standing member of the IMT in the Chicago branch, and as the primary initiator of the clique, your actions constitute a more serious breach of our methods and trust than those of the other clique members. Your failure to recognize this fact casts serious doubt on your future association with the IMT. You say you do not wish to “make a scene,” but by your actions you have already created a sorry one. You also say that you are willing to “elaborate on all of this in writing if people request.” We do so request and await written clarification.

To the other suspended comrades, the door to reintegration into the life of the IMT is open to you. If you are willing to openly acknowledge your actions and work to restore trust, the EC and the rest of the Chicago branch would be more than happy to have your help in the fight to build the forces of Marxism in that important city. If you would like to organize a discussion to begin the process of rebuilding trust and getting back to regular membership in the IMT, please contact your branch secretary.

Comradely,

The EC of the US IMT

This was the last time that someone on a leadership body of the RCI ever spoke to us. However, one member of the “Chicago Clique” other than me gave two last replies on the same day we received this email.

The first reply:

I believe I have obtained video footage of the CC meeting discussing the “clique:”

The second reply (edits in all caps):

I would also like to make clear that, though you’ve decided to use A as a scapegoat for all dissent within the Chicago branch, in actuality A consistently attempted to sooth our concerns. When CANADIAN VICTIM’s letter was first published, A assured me that the IMT leadership would be willing to have a reasonable discussion on possible reforms of the abuse investigation procedures, and that resigning or taking drastic measures like calling for recalls were unnecessary. Once the IMT took the of smearing CANADIAN VICTIM’s letter (and any criticism occurring because of it) as a political attack on behalf of the Petersonian boogyman of “postmodern identity politics” (a blatantly cynical attempt to distract from the actual controversy, which is that serious sexual assaults are occurring with some regularity in the Canadian section, and the investigations into them have been consistently badly mishandled by leadership due to either criminal incompetence or deliberate conspiracy) A again convinced us to stay in the organization and that leadership would be willing to listen to our concerns. Only once it became clear that the leadership was acting in bad faith did we resort to more desperate measures. 

As for the leadership, at the branch level BRANCH SECRETARY’s handling of the situation could only be described as “malicious incompetence.” At no point during this crisis was any real effort made to reach out to listen to or assuage any concerns, nor were there any attempts made to inform members on the situation, nor really to provide anything resembling leadership. In fact, it seemed at points that BRANCH SECRETARY didn’t really realize that there was any crisis at all, and any attempts to explain our position appeared to go right out his other ear. This is why A seemed to be at the nexus of the opposition; she was trying to do BRANCH SECRETARY’s job for him, and since he was far too stupid to see that his obstinance and malice necessitated her to act on his behalf, he blamed her for the discontent caused by his dogshit leadership. 

In addition, talking as an opposition (which we only began seriously in response to the above as well as several meetings with Tom Trottier, where he seemed to deliberately misunderstand our questions) with the we began to suspect BRANCH SECRETARY was lying to us; for instance telling members who had missed meetings information at odds with the actual content of that meeting, or that they weren’t privy to information which they were; as well as talking behind the backs of other members and attempting to renege on agreements made at prior points in the crisis; this (along with similar behavior from Tom Trottier) is what convinced me of the need to record minute information on the leadership; it was clear that you were a bunch of dishonest bastards and we weren’t going to let you play mind games with us. Naturally, showing a spine or any self respect is dishonest behavior. 

It has become clear that the leadership of the IMT does not believe in anything beyond its own power. Thus they are willing to smear anyone critical of their mishandling of rape cases as an opponent to all of Marxism; which is quite a delusion of grandeur considering that the IMT exists solely to bilk naive students into buying reprints of books available for free and to sell an unreadable magazine at other people’s events to fund a clique of lumpy, mediocre bureaucrats. I’m not giving you fucks any more of my money, this was a fucking scam and I should have seen that from the start. 

Love, 

XX

If anyone would like further details on how things played out in Chicago, I would love to clarify whatever I can. I made a timeline of the events from June to September, have screenshots of messages with the leadership, and notes I wrote down during meetings. Given that the EC suspended us without bothering to hear our side of the story in the slightest, none of us think there would be any point in trying to clear our name within a system that was rigged against us from the start.

OH YEAH I FORGOT THIS WAS AN INTERVIEW

Q: What is/was the atmosphere or understanding around dissent in your organization?

Above all, hypocritical. The leadership led us to believe that conflict would be dealt with openly and healthily, but it was the opposite.

Q: What is/was the method of dealing with mundane interpersonal conflict?

In the RCI, the stated procedures for handling any kind of disagreement or internal conflict are completely at odds with the way it actually plays out. Interpersonal conflict is treated the same way, especially when it has to do with abuse.

Q: If someone had a personal problem with someone else, what was the policy? How was it handled?

“Report it to your leadership.” After that, there’s no guarantee of what will happen. Even the official abuse policy leaves the decisions of how to proceed entirely up to the leader to whom the allegation is reported. The policies that do exist state that “this comrade in a leader position may decide to do x or y thing,” but there is no requirement whatsoever on anything they must do, no matter the circumstances.

Can you see how a leader can take advantage of this procedure (or lack thereof) to suit their own needs? Who’s to say that the leader is not an abuser, just like Alex Grant was? In Canada, leaders of the Executive Committee have always been allowed to appoint themselves on the Control Commission (not to be confused with the Central Committee; to my knowledge, the RCI does not use abbreviations for the Control Commission), which is the body designed to address and process abuse allegations within the organization.

This is one way in which the US section was better: Executive Committee or Central Committee members were not allowed to appoint (technically propose in the slate, which in practice amounts to appointing, more on this later) themselves to be on the Control Committee. “Was,” not is better, because the US section struck this clause from their membership handbook in 2023.

In a way, it does not matter who the executive committee appoints to the control commission, even if the membership miraculously manages to overturn the slate, because the executive committee gets total control over when the control commission is convened. So if a member reports an abuse allegation to the executive committee, the executive committee might decide not to convene the control commission, and does not need to provide a reason for deciding not to do so. The control commission gets no say in this; by the rules of the organization, their hands are tied, and they cannot do anything.

Q: What is/was the method of dealing with what were perceived to be major political deviations? How were deviationists handled?

In the RCI, if you are a deviationist because of even minor political disagreements, or if the leadership considers you to be a deviationist because you were the victim of abuse: the leadership publicly shames you, attempts to isolate you from other members, and gaslights you into giving up and leaving. In the rare event that doesn’t work, like in Chicago and Portland, they suspend or expel you from the organization entirely. 

Q: Were deviationists rehabilitated? If so, how?

Abusers are rehabilitated whenever the leadership thinks they can get away with it. To my knowledge, no member who either left or was kicked out for opposing abuse or having political differences has ever been rehabilitated.

Q: Was the criticized person brought back into any kind of unity with the group?

No, not to my knowledge. I only know of one or two members who returned after resigning, or being suspended or expelled, and they were the recipients of abuse allegations, at least one of whom was related to the scandal in 2022. The one about whom I am certain has the first name Mitch, and he is a member of the Canadian section. I do however think that Alex Grant is out permanently, which is hilarious given how unconditionally the other members in leadership positions had his back during the scandal in 2022.

Q: Was there any element of community criticism, as opposed to self-criticism? Were the criticized people encouraged to respond in detail to calls for self-criticism, rather than simply rolling over?

None of either, only leaders criticizing their followers.

Q: What literature was provided on democratic centralism or self-and-community criticism?

For self-and-community criticism, none. The RCI is Trotskyist, and considers the concept to be Maoist, therefore to be automatically disregarded.

For democratic centralism, there is a lot, both in articles which can be found online, and in internal documents, such as the membership handbook. The RCI considers itself to be democratic centralist. In practice, it is entirely bureaucratic centralist. There is no democracy in this group. I learned that the hard way.

Real socialist democratic centralism is far more democratic than a bourgeois democracy could ever hope to be. However, the RCI makes the US legislature look like an anarchist utopia. At least under capitalism in the US, you get to vote for individual candidates, and choose between two parties which can realistically win an election. If the US had the slate system of the RCI, the election ballots would only show one option to vote for, which encompasses all members of the government, and you could either approve or reject it. As far as I know, no slate within the RCI has ever been rejected. In fact, there is no procedure detailing what happens if a slate is rejected. The leadership does not even pretend that that is a possibility.

THE SLATE SYSTEM: A METHOD OF TOP-DOWN CONTROL

In short, a slate system is used during an election within an organization, when the leadership body (or a faction of the leadership body) proposes a slate. A slate is a list of all the leadership positions in the organization, with one candidate for each position which the leaders wish to fill. The leadership body votes on a single slate, which is then proposed to the rank-and-file members, who can either vote to approve or reject the slate. Rank-and-file members are not allowed to participate in the decision of the leadership body about who is put on the slate. The RCI permits no factions, so therefore the entire extent to which the rank-and-file members are allowed to elect their leaders is by approving or rejecting the entire slate. Rank-and-file members are not allowed to approve or reject individual candidates, nor is more than one member allowed to run for a position once the leadership body has proposed a slate.

In practice, any slate is bound to succeed, because any member who is discontented enough with the slate to vote no is far more likely to just leave the organization than vote no, for several reasons. One, you’d have to wait for the national congress, which only comes once every two years. Two, you’d probably try other options to try to change the slate first. Regardless of whether your grudge is interpersonal or based on a political position, you’d end up banging your head against the wall, because you’re arguing with a group of yes-men, who always vote unanimously, and always agree with whoever is above them. Who would want to stay in that situation? Well me, my dumb ass wanted to stay in that situation, until they got impatient and kicked me and half the members in my city out.

The act of kicking us out confirmed what some of us had already figured out, and others of us had been unwilling to accept. The executive committee really was manipulating the rank and file members. They were trying to quarantine us, and gaslighting us into either accepting what was plainly untrue, or leaving once we could no longer tolerated it, as any self-respecting person would do. As soon as they understood we were willing to put up a long, determined struggle, to not shut up until our demands were met, they burned us and suspended us as fast as they could.

I was pretty cult-brained prior to that point, and even on the night that I read the second email from the EC, I lied in bed thinking I could still get to them, and convince them to have a reasonable conversation with us. I spent the previous two months trying to convince the other discontented members not to leave, because I thought they should stay and discuss what changes they wanted to be made, instead of giving up and leaving. I regret this every day, but I had taken the bait given to me by the leadership that the organization had “democratic structures,” and encouraged open discussion and debate. Surely, there had to be some members on national or international leadership bodies who were genuinely concerned about stopping abusive behavior, and stopping the train wreck that the leadership was creating through their chauvinistic and manipulative responses to the allegations, right?

Well, there was one such member of the US executive committee, who resigned after the other EC members threatened to suspend him. His crime? Talking with an RCI member from Canada about the scandal over the phone, twice. That’s it. No plans to enact change, just sharing details about what happened. To my knowledge, the Canadian member was not on any leadership bodies, and not directly involved in the situation at all. About a month into the scandal, after the national leadership in Canada, the US, and the international secretariat had all released horrible statements, the EC member in question resigned.

The other EC members justified this by saying that different national sections have their own autonomy, and that we should leave each other alone to do our thing. This is in fact the exact opposite of how the RCI works, with an international leadership body that has authority over the national sections, and international congresses once per two years precisely so different countries can decide on joint decisions, and tell each other what to do.

A few days later, this EC member told me that what the official EC position was saying about him were “distortions” and “not accurate.” Another ex-member could probably add a lot more clarity on this particular event, and if anyone requests, I can seek out further information about what happened there. After almost two years, I have forgotten a lot of the small details.

However, with this ex-member, I remember having the understanding that they had developed a reason not to trust the Canadian executive committee, especially Alex Grant, and therefore began his own small investigation. “Investigation” might be overselling it, because it genuinely sounds like he had just two phone calls with the rank-and-file Canadian member. 

Somehow, the other US EC members caught wind of this, and threatened him with suspension. As to why the leadership would feel so desperately threatened by him asking questions, it is hard to say for certain, but it certainly did make it appear like some of the other leadership were attempting to cover up evidence related to the scandal.

HOW CAN I TELL IF A SOCIALIST GROUP IS A CULT?

I’ll begin with why I consider the RCI to be a cult. The RCI is a group where:

• The leadership bodies have total control over who else gets accepted into a leadership body.
• No members of a leadership body can be recalled except by other members on the same leadership body, or by someone at a higher leadership body.
  • Formally, the rank-and-file is allowed to put it to a vote, but only at a National Congress which comes once every two years. I have never even seen a motion to recall make it so far as to be voted on, or even discussed, at a National Congress. The leadership simply hounds any rank-and-file member who supports the recall until that member gets frustrated and gives up.
• The highest ranking leaders have total control over the mechanisms for processing abuse, and are free to do as they wish, as long as the other leaders on the same level or higher approve of them.
• Several of the highest-ranking members have been alleged, first-hand by their victims, of sexual abuse and harassment toward members and non-members, most of whom are far younger than these leaders.
• The leaders regularly use public shaming to punish rank-and-file members over even minor disagreements.
  • Obviously this happened in Chicago, but they also publicly shamed the Canadian abuse victim who wrote the open letter about the instances of abuse in 2022.
  • Additionally, members in Portland tried to start the discussion about implementing minor changes to the language surrounding abuse at the 2023 National Congress, and were met with vicious public shaming by the national leadership for daring to suggest such an idea. This shaming took up a large portion of time at this event. Here is a google drive link of documents related to this incident.
  • One other funny detail about Portland is that, in one ex-member’s words: “I brought up the old sexual harassment with Woods and Co in branch once.” Alan Woods is the “leading theoretician” of the RCI, according to one RCI article. I had learned about this other scandal as well after learning about the one in Canada. The ex-member continues: “And [another Portland member at the time], old comrade from the Militant who was in my branch [the RCI’s name in the 80s in the UK], said: ‘[the girl at the center of the scandal] dressed to attract men.” This is the mentality that the highest-ranking and longest-standing members of the RCI are coming from.
  • Portland refused to relent to this bullying, and the EC responded by quietly expelling them. The EC did not even admit to expelling them, they just stopped responding to them entirely, and ceased all communication, ghosting the Portland members like a bad date.
  • This public shaming continues until the dissatisfied members either capitulate and fall in line, or give up and leave the organization. Public shaming is an intentional tool used by leaders across the board, even on the local level. It is a strong tool for eliminating members who pose even the slightest threat to the leadership. The “public” aspect of the shaming serves to send a clear message to the rest of the rank-and-file members. The message has a dual character. Agreeing with the leadership is extremely easy when you are not the direct target of the shaming, and reinforces your in-group mentality, strengthening your trust and dependency on the leaders for validation. On the other hand, it is a threat, that this is what will happen if you deviate from the opinions of the leaders. The majority of members subjected to public shaming just leave.
• In the rare event that public shaming alone does not resolve the issue, such as in Chicago, the leaders simply suspend or expel their enemies.
• Members are also extremely financially exploited by the organization.
  • The leadership is in a constant state of adding more and more expenses that they cannot afford, in the hopes that their investments will allow them to grow faster and increase their revenue later. The leaders encourage members to dig as deep into their pockets as they can, even at the cost of basic needs. Meanwhile, several of the highest leaders have a vacation home, a rich family which they can lean on for financial support, and frequently go on vacations such as kayaking retreats with each other. I would not say that they have mega-church levels of inequality, but maybe if they had more members, then they might. As it is, there certainly seems to be a greater share of petty bourgeoisie than workers at the top, as well as workers with a rich family to support them, as opposed to the rank-and-file, whom they are milking dry while they are struggling to pay for basic necessities.
  • I would not say that I have seen evidence of embezzlement, but knowledge about the finances of the organization are closely guarded by those at the top. Information regarding the financial records on a national or international level are practically never shared to rank-and-file members, except for the exceedingly rare cherry-picked facts which make the leadership look good. So really, if there was any evidence of embezzlement, the only way that the news is likely to come out would be an audit, some other government investigation, or a whistleblower, none of which appear likely at present.
  • I think I also remember hearing that the RCI’s tax records classify them as a book publisher, i.e. a private, for-profit company. I could try to fact-check this if anyone asks.

Truly, the RCI is bureaucratic centralism from top to bottom. I think it is fair to call it a cult as well. I remember speaking to one recent ex-member who expressed doubt about considering the RCI a cult, saying, “Define cult.” I responded, “Give me a definition that they do not fit. They fit every one.” This ex-member considered it, and responded that using the label of cult does not help our cause, because members will hear it and immediately disregard the rest of what we have to say. I responded that this is also true for actual cults.

I recognize that calling a group a cult is very easy to do, and much harder to disprove, for just about any group. In the eyes of the RCI, they see abuse allegations in the same way. But unlike the RCI, I do not think that we should write off abuse allegations as a counterrevolutionary psy-op, and I think that some groups are more deserving of the label “cult” than others.

Speaking from personal experience, I spent the two months of the scandal and the first few months after my suspension, thinking that there was no easy way for me to explain what had happened to normal people, who had never heard of the RCI. I was worried that this experience might be something that they could ever understand. However, when I tell people that I was in a cult, they instantly understand so much about the experience, and the way the RCI operates. The financial exploitation, the unchecked power that the leadership has over the rank-and-file, the lack of democracy, the firm discouragement of all disagreement, the public shaming, the abuse of power by the leaders and the lack of consequences when they do so, the sexual abuse and harassment and the way that the leaders respond to it — it all just clicks for people when I use the term cult, and they understand it as if they were there the whole time.

The two months during the scandal that I was still a member, my leaders constantly gaslit me into thinking I was wrong for being more concerned about the sexual abuse allegations than they were. However, every conversation I have had since I first learned about the abuse has confirmed my side of the story. Believe me, I needed a lot of reassurance before my self-doubt about the situation finally began to fade. Here was an organization that I trusted with my life for five years, and then once the scandal broke, they reacted the opposite of how I expected and trusted them to react. At the time, it looked like a switch flipped, as if I woke up one morning and found myself in a completely different group than the one I had come to know. As more time passed, I realized that this was the nature of the RCI all along. They just did a good job of hiding it, until a scandal broke out which they could not hide.

THE RCI AFTER 2022

The leadership has probably managed to continue to hide their true nature to any members that joined the RCI after July 2022. The RCI used to have a strict vetting protocol for new members, but this seems to have faded over the last two years. The method appears to have changed to onboarding new members fast, getting them involved in branch activities and paying dues as fast as possible, and accepting a high level of turnover.

There also appears to have been a bit of an ultra-left turn over the last two years, indicated by the fact that the British section has finally abandoned the Labour Party (the RCI split from the CWI in the first place over their refusal to leave the Labour Party). The International Executive Committee voted to rename the International Marxist Tendency to the Revolutionary Communist International, to coincide with this change in strategy.

In addition to being a turn toward ultra-leftism, and an attempt to scrub their name’s association with abuse scandals, this coincides with an intensification of the blind optimism projected by the leadership, which serves the role of convincing more people to join, and exciting the already-existing members to devote more of their time and money to growing and maintaining the group.

It also coincides with a further abandonment of their presence in the existing mass parties and the labor unions, in favor of focusing more closely to student work, directing new members to an insular group where they will be isolated from the broader population (another method of control employed by cults). To their credit, student work has been by far their most successful means of recruitment in recent decades, so that turn could be justified by that alone.

However, college freshmen are by far the most common recruits from student work. College freshmen usually have just moved to a completely different town, and are just beginning to figure out who they are, what they want to do with their lives, and how they want to relate to other people, sexually and otherwise. 18-and-19 year olds tend to have a lot of anxiety about the uncertainty of their future, the overwhelming amount of choices ahead of them, and the lack of any clear answers. At this age, it can be refreshing to find a group that gives you all the answers, and tells you exactly what to do. I should know — I was one of them.

Religious cults and human-traffickers are also well aware of this fact, which is why they target people in this age range, and are commonly found on college campuses. Given RCI leaders’ track record of committing and defending their abuse of younger members, I think there is ample reason to be alarmed by their increased focus on the recruitment of students.

TO CURRENT MEMBERS OF THE RCI

To any members of the RCI who joined after July 2022:

You are being lied to by your leaders. Any member who joined before then, who is still around, is willing to defend abuse by proven abusers, and publicly shame people who come forward with allegations, smearing them as a liar and an enemy of the organization. At the very least, they stood by while other members did so, and are unbothered enough by their behavior to continue to give the leadership their money, and try to pull more people under the control of these leaders. Either they are guilty, or complacent. You have to snap out of it, and leave before you give the RCI any more of your lives.

To any current members of the RCI who joined before July 2022:

If this is somehow your first time learning about any of this, and you are thinking about leaving the organization, or fighting to change it from the inside, I strongly recommend you just leave. If you try to push for change like I did, even if you do everything by the book and the way that the leadership claims to want you to do so: at best, you are going to find yourself banging your head against the wall until you realize that it’s futile and leave, and at worst, you will wind up traumatized, and kicked to the curbs as if you never meant a thing to them. You don’t mean a thing to your leaders, no matter how much you think otherwise. They are only interested in taking advantage of you, and wasting as much of your time and money as you allow them.

If you already knew all of the facts here, regardless of what you think of my opinions, and still support the RCI:

Fuck you. Your organization snatches up young, radicalizing workers, then chews them up and spits them out. You waste their time. You exploit them financially. When they finally leave, at best, you make them hesitant to trust a Marxist group ever again, and at worst, you traumatize them (or justify and protect another member who traumatizes them), and they drop out of politics for the rest of their life. You are not in a revolutionary party, but a vicious barrier to the formation of a real revolutionary party. You might think you have good intentions, but your actions cause nothing but harm. You are pathetic, and I will never stop hating you.

NAMES OF OTHER COMMUNIST CULTS

Unfortunately, the RCI is far from the only small communist cult of its kind. In the US, the PSL has had similar abuse scandals, and the leaders reacted in much the same way. The SEP (with the paper called WSWS, World Socialist Web Site) regularly publishes articles casting doubt upon high-profile abuse allegations against random celebrities, siding with the alleged abusers. The CPUSA, SWP, RCP, both iterations of FRSO, and Socialist Alternative all give me similar impressions, although I cannot point to a specific publication as proof, but someone else might be able to. The DSA has had sexual abuse scandals arise, and possibly reacted similarly, but I honestly do not know enough details to make any definitive statements about them. I would love to see people chime in with more information about these groups, and how they address abuse within their ranks.

There are other recently dissolved groups in the US from the last five years, which have more reading materials regarding their abuse scandals. The Black Hammer Organization and the CR-CPUSA were the quintessential examples, which both collapsed in 2022, due to state intervention and a revolt by the members, respectively. They both dialed the cultiness up to levels that none of the above groups are likely to reach anytime soon, engaging in kidnapping, hazing of new members, death threats, and more.

The International Socialist Organization is also worth mentioning. In 2019, a sexual abuse scandal and cover-up surfaced to the public, much like the RCI in 2022. However, unlike the RCI, rank-and-file members sympathetic to the victims quickly took the reins of leadership. Their final articles published by their organization are all still online, and show a great level of detail of how events unfolded, and how different factions held greatly differing opinions. This one demonstrates that the leadership responded far better than the RCI did, and gives the impression of a sincere apology, and a commitment to do better. Whether that is an accurate assessment of their response is hard to say from an outsider’s perspective. Still, it was too little too late. The ISO voted to dissolve itself a few weeks later.

The RCI was watching closely as the ISO collapsed. I think that the RCI leadership learned from that experience, particularly, how to prevent the RCI from collapsing when met with an abuse scandal. Instead of taking the lesson that abuse should be prevented and treated in a healthy way, the lesson that they took was that dissent should be clamped down on immediately with utmost force, and they should paint a picture of a leadership which did nothing wrong as quickly and decisively as they can. They saw that the ISO leadership relented, and allowed the rank-and-file to recall and replace them with people sympathetic to the victims, then those new leaders voted to dissolve the organization. The RCI leadership said at multiple times during the scandal, that if they accepted the victim’s account uncritically, then the only option for them would be to liquidate the organization entirely. This is why they considered the victim to be an “enemy of Marxism,” i.e. a cynical hostile agent, with the sole aim of destroying the RCI. The RCI leaders demonstrated that they were willing to sink the entire organization into the ground before relenting to any demands for change in leadership and procedure. Sounds like a cult to me. Unfortunately, they’re not the only one.

WHY ARE THERE SO MANY CULTS ON THE LEFT?

The US has a bit of a unique reputation for cults, but I am sure that cults dot the landscape of socialist organizations in plenty of other countries. I can speculate about why workers and petty bourgeoisie are drawn to cults under capitalism in the general sense, but as to why communist cults specifically are so common, I still do not know. Even Christian cults are far outnumbered by churches without cult-like qualities. Yet, healthy communist organizations appear drastically outnumbered by communist cults, at least in the US. Are communist cults consciously propagated by capitalist governments in order to cripple the workers’ movement? Are they a natural consequence of the organization structure of the Bolsheviks being applied in the modern day, where material and subjective conditions are very different, and do not necessitate the high level of centralization and control which were vital in securing the revolution of the Bolsheviks? Are they just the result of a high need for a communist group to protect itself from attacks from the state, which might include abuse allegations (although I do not know of any examples of a capitalist government weaponizing allegations in this way)? I really cannot say.

MY ADVICE TO COMMUNISTS SEARCHING FOR THE RIGHT GROUP

To anyone reading this, hoping for a recommendation of a better group to join, I am embarrassed to say that I do not have one. I have spent the one-and-a-half years outside a cult working on myself, trying to make myself happy, and trying not to get sucked into another cult (which is very common for ex-cult members). I still feel too hurt and untrusting to proactively look at what my options are.

I first learned about Unity-Struggle-Unity Press when I saw them searching for people to interview who have “been in a left org that discourages criticism of the organization and its leaders,” and I have not had much of a chance to get to know them yet. I will say that I am reassured by these statements on the front page of their website:

Although we may decide, in the near-future, to solicit donations to help us cover operating costs (currently paid for out of our own pockets), unlike many similar “Left” projects, we will never profit or otherwise personally benefit from the Press. Our goal is to raise consciousness, heighten organization, and build toward a unity of Marxists — not to line our pockets.

We take transparency seriously, just as we believe all Communist organizations should. To that end, visitors can view the minutes of all of our Editorial Board and General Volunteer-Staff Body meetings, as well as our financial statements, and our bylaws on this website.

Editors Note: These minutes and financial statements are now only available by request due to the Editors and Distributors of the press being subject to intense scrutiny following our anti-zionist paper with the lead article To Stop Marx and the threat of certain press-associated people with losing their employment.

The RCI and all of the organizations which I mentioned above would never make such assurances. No leaders in a cult would ever freely volunteer minutes from their meetings to rank-and-file members, and especially not to visitors. No pyramid scheme would ever freely volunteer their financial statements. And in the RCI, their membership handbook (equivalent to bylaws) is considered strictly internal information, and only revealed to people in the process of joining. These facts alone make Unity-Struggle-Unity Press far superior to any other communist group that I have encountered.

But please, if you take nothing else from what I have to say, think for yourself. Before you join a political organization, and start to contribute your time and money to them: think carefully about the way that the group is structured, and the actions it takes, not just who they claim to be, and what positions they claim to support. I used to belittle communists for not “organizing,” or more realistically, just being a part of a group (since I wouldn’t consider being a part of a cult to be “organizing”). Now, I have learned that joining the wrong organization can be far worse, for yourself and for the worker’s movement, than simply joining no group at all. You have to be cautious and skeptical, or else there are a thousand groups who will eagerly swoop in to take advantage of your selflessness. It’s easy to feel good about being selfless, when you have someone with authority over you eroding your self-worth, and insisting that you are helping others, when you are really just helping them gain money and control over others.

Have some self-worth! In order to become a communist under capitalism in the first place, you have to have a big heart. You have to have the courage to stand against the people in power, if that is what it takes to help the powerless. It is a shame that some people lose sight of that after being a communist for long enough. If you never let go of that feeling, and love yourself as highly as you love others, then whenever you do become politically active, you will do more to help the movement than a cult ever has, and ever will. Have faith in yourself!