As I became more and more tired of the IMT’s problems, I decided to discuss them with a CC member. I brought up problems such as the lack of financial transparency, the slate system, and turnover, as examples. I also sent him this article about the slate system.$^{1}$ He dismissed my concerns as unimportant. He said that the system of finances and the slate system were not currently causing problems, so there was nothing to worry about. I said that these problems would become worse if the organization grew as much as it intended to. Financial transparency may be a small issue in a small organization, but it can lead to large problems in the long term. He also individualized the problem of turnover to a lack of member initiative. He didn’t address my concerns, and he called me “undialectical” and “Zinovievist” for questioning the structure of the IMT. At this point, I decided to leave. He later apologized for insulting me, but he didn’t apologize for dismissing my concerns.
Several members were shocked when I left the organization, and one member even convinced me to rejoin the organization, so I attended a couple more meetings. I joined the organization again for a couple of weeks in an attempt to address these issues internally, but it seemed too difficult. I saw too many problems within the IMT, and they demanded so much time from me to recruit new members. I didn’t feel right recruiting new members to an organization, which didn’t address my concerns. My concerns were always pushed forward to some future date, and this was incredibly frustrating for me.
The IMT only seemed to care about my concerns after I left the organization. I think these problems are the fault of systems not individuals. Even though the IMT was formally democratic, it seemed to have many bureaucratic mechanisms.
It is important to distinguish between tactics and strategy when discussing political organizations such as the IMT. Strategy is the overarching plan of the organization to achieve its goal, i.e., communism, and tactics are the various steps and actions contained within the strategy.
The IMT used stickers and posters as a tactic to grow our membership. It used the “united front” tactic in an attempt to both grow our membership and establish a broader base of support. It used Trade Union cells in an attempt to sink roots into the working class. These tactics seemed to work, but there was no clear goal in the short term beyond quantitative growth.
The IMT constantly connected its organizational structure to its interpretation of “Bolshevism.” We were encouraged to read Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky, and many of the texts we read were written by Alan Woods and the other older members of the organization. I learned a lot, but it seemed incoherent sometimes. We tried to mechanically impose the model of the Bolsheviks upon modern American society.
The IMT presents the “Manifesto of the Revolutionary Communist International” as its strategy. However it seems to be a repackaging of the old Comintern strategy, interpreted by the leadership of the IMT.
“That is why the questions of strategy and tactics must occupy a central place in the considerations of the communists. Both Lenin and Trotsky had a very clear idea about the relationship of the communist vanguard to the mass reformist organisations.
This was summed up in what was undoubtedly Lenin’s definitive statement on revolutionary tactics: Left-wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder. Over a century later, Lenin’s writings on this important subject remain a book sealed by seven seals for the pseudo-Trotskyist sectarians.
They have everywhere discredited the banner of Trotskyism and have rendered invaluable services to the bureaucracy. They imagine that the mass organisations can merely be written off as historical anachronisms. Their attitude to these organisations is confined to shrill denunciations of betrayal. But these tactics lead straight into a blind alley.”$^{2}$
Lenin wrote “Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder in order to critique the Left of the Comintern. In order to understand this document, we must understand the history of the Comintern.
The Comintern was created in 1919 by the Bolsheviks and various Communists across the world. Many former members of Social Democratic parties joined the Comintern due to their opposition to the First World War. The Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) had voted in favor of war credits in 1914. The Russian Revolution of October 1917 inspired other revolts across Europe, and many radicals joined the new Communist Parties created by the Comintern. Initially, there were a variety of ideological tendencies within the Comintern such as anarchism.
In “Left-Wing” Communism, Lenin explained that new communists had to learn from the experience of the Bolsheviks, which he called “Bolshevism.” The Bolsheviks had to adapt to changing circumstances in Russia. The Bolsheviks were formed in 1903 as a faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP). The Russian Revolution of 1905 forced the Tsar to liberalize his regime, by decreasing censorship and forming a parliament. Lenin used this political freedom in order to spread Marxist ideas. The Bolsheviks worked less openly during certain times such as the period 1907-1910. The Bolsheviks had to alternate between “attacking” and “retreating,” in the build up to the October Revolution.
Lenin critiqued the tendency of “left-wing communism” because he believed it would prevent Communists from gaining the support of the masses.
It is unclear if the authors of this Manifesto mean that we should copy everything from this book, or if we should try to adapt it to present conditions. If we are supposed to repeat Lenin’s exact strategy under completely different circumstances, we are bound to fail. The authors also don’t explain how this strategy could be changed to adapt to new circumstances. An effective strategy needs to be both functional and coherent, but the RCI’s is not.
“In 1938, the great Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky stated that, ‘the historical crisis of mankind is reduced to the crisis of the revolutionary leadership.’ These words are as true and relevant today as the day when they were written.
In the third decade of the 21st century, the capitalist system finds itself in an existential crisis. Such situations are by no means unusual in history. They are the expression of the fact that a given socio-historical system has reached its limits and is no longer capable of playing any progressive role.”$^{3}$
The IMT repeats Trotsky’s argument that the crisis of capitalism can be solved by good leadership. Of course, the leadership of the IMT views its own perspectives and theory as important and correct, but what does it have to back this up?
“The present crisis is not a normal cyclical crisis of capitalism. It is an existential crisis, expressed not only in the stagnation of the productive forces, but also in a general crisis of culture, morality, politics and religion.”$^{4}$
Some crises seem to be existential, but capitalism usually has a way of recovering from them. Many “once in a lifetime” crises have happened in my lifetime, yet capitalism has not ended. In “Left-Wing” Communism, Lenin wrote:
“Comrades, we have now come to the question of the revolutionary crisis as the basis of our revolutionary action. And here we must first of all note two widespread errors. On the one hand, bourgeois economists depict this crisis simply as “unrest”, to use the elegant expression of the British. On the other hand, revolutionaries sometimes try to prove that the crisis is absolutely insoluble.
This is a mistake. There is no such thing as an absolutely hopeless situation. “$^{5}$
No matter how bad our capitalist crisis seems to get, this does not mean that revolution is inevitable in the short term. The authors of this Manifesto claim that our present crisis is “existential,” and attempt to back up this claim with a list of problems. However, the Manifesto does not clearly explain how these problems relate to Capitalism. It commits this second error Lenin points out. The Manifesto of the RCI contradicts the very document it cites. This is incredibly sloppy.
Trotsky’s Transitional Program was initially titled The Death Agony of Capitalism and The Tasks of the Fourth International and written in 1938. The IMT’s reference to the “existential crisis” of capitalism mirror’s Trotsky’s reference to the “death agony” of capitalism. Trotsky was wrong because capitalism recovered during the Post-WW2 boom. It managed to recover from the Great Depression, and it may recover from the current crisis. Even if it does not recover, the labor movement is so weak that this crisis would not cause a revolution in the way Trotsky described.