Cultic Studies Journal, Vol. 9, No. 1, 1992, Page 39
current internal discipline or rectification campaign. Also, there were thousands and
thousands of political leaflets written and produced by the party that were handed out
throughout the Bay Area. These gave the party’s viewpoint on a local strike, a community
cause, a ballot issue, a presidential candidate, and so forth. After 1981, the party’s publishing
operation also put out several books and journals each year, managing to get them
distributed and sold through normal book-trade channels.
In the early years, members also studied select literature by other groups on the Left, as well
as articles and books in the fields of history (U.S. and international), international economics,
political science, political theory, and so forth. Most, but not all, of this reading was by authors
representing a leftist perspective. As with some of the other training, the amount and type of
study dwindled with the party’s growth. By the late 1970s, party members were reading only
party materials, most of it supposedly authored by Baxter. (In the later years, Baxter in fact
wrote very little, if any, of the material credited to her.) By the early 1980s, political study
was a low priority, rarely on the agenda of any weekly meeting, and, if so, it was carried out
in a superficial and perfunctory manner.
The Effects
It didn’t take long for this training and life-style to take effect. Members broke from family
and friends. There was literally no time for outside activities or outside people. Those with
spouses or relationships outside the party were strongly pressured to recruit them or leave
them. Each person’s reality became the reality of the internal life of the organization.
In their study of coordinated programs of coercive influence and behavior control, Ofshe and
Singer (1986) suggest that currently “the technology of this sort of influence has developed
well beyond what was employed in the Soviet Union and China ...for the purpose of
extracting confessions and carrying out political `thought reform’“ (p. 3). Ofshe and Singer
defined these as first- and second-generation programs: the former had the backing of State
power as a means of both commanding participation and demanding compliance and
conformity the latter need to find more ingenious methods to draw people into initial
involvement and then to ensure their acceptance of the authority and rules of the
organization.
In order to conduct a coercive influence and behavior control program, an
organization must obtain both psychological dominance over an individual and a
considerable measure of power in the individual’s life. The second necessary element,
actual power, is often attained in newer organizations by making the target’s
continuing relations with intimates and friends, as well as economic security,
contingent upon continuing membership in the organization. ...
An organization will have maximized its structural and social power over a target if
it succeeds in introducing changes into the person’s life such that the individual’s
intimates are all subject to its authority and the organization controls the target’s
income, employment, capital, and social life. Under these circumstances, a person
threatened with expulsion is threatened simultaneously with being cut off from many
of the major social supports upon which stability of identity and emotional well-being
depend. The controlling organization can create this level of extreme threat since the
individuals who matter most to the target are subject to the organization’s authority
and will reject the person if the organization does so.
If an organization succeeds in shifting a target’s social ties to other organizational
members, it gains the potential to bind the person to the organization in a fashion
which far exceeds the binding power of investments, job, and residence. Immersed in
a social world in which peer esteem and disapproval are dispensed for conformity to
current internal discipline or rectification campaign. Also, there were thousands and
thousands of political leaflets written and produced by the party that were handed out
throughout the Bay Area. These gave the party’s viewpoint on a local strike, a community
cause, a ballot issue, a presidential candidate, and so forth. After 1981, the party’s publishing
operation also put out several books and journals each year, managing to get them
distributed and sold through normal book-trade channels.
In the early years, members also studied select literature by other groups on the Left, as well
as articles and books in the fields of history (U.S. and international), international economics,
political science, political theory, and so forth. Most, but not all, of this reading was by authors
representing a leftist perspective. As with some of the other training, the amount and type of
study dwindled with the party’s growth. By the late 1970s, party members were reading only
party materials, most of it supposedly authored by Baxter. (In the later years, Baxter in fact
wrote very little, if any, of the material credited to her.) By the early 1980s, political study
was a low priority, rarely on the agenda of any weekly meeting, and, if so, it was carried out
in a superficial and perfunctory manner.
The Effects
It didn’t take long for this training and life-style to take effect. Members broke from family
and friends. There was literally no time for outside activities or outside people. Those with
spouses or relationships outside the party were strongly pressured to recruit them or leave
them. Each person’s reality became the reality of the internal life of the organization.
In their study of coordinated programs of coercive influence and behavior control, Ofshe and
Singer (1986) suggest that currently “the technology of this sort of influence has developed
well beyond what was employed in the Soviet Union and China ...for the purpose of
extracting confessions and carrying out political `thought reform’“ (p. 3). Ofshe and Singer
defined these as first- and second-generation programs: the former had the backing of State
power as a means of both commanding participation and demanding compliance and
conformity the latter need to find more ingenious methods to draw people into initial
involvement and then to ensure their acceptance of the authority and rules of the
organization.
In order to conduct a coercive influence and behavior control program, an
organization must obtain both psychological dominance over an individual and a
considerable measure of power in the individual’s life. The second necessary element,
actual power, is often attained in newer organizations by making the target’s
continuing relations with intimates and friends, as well as economic security,
contingent upon continuing membership in the organization. ...
An organization will have maximized its structural and social power over a target if
it succeeds in introducing changes into the person’s life such that the individual’s
intimates are all subject to its authority and the organization controls the target’s
income, employment, capital, and social life. Under these circumstances, a person
threatened with expulsion is threatened simultaneously with being cut off from many
of the major social supports upon which stability of identity and emotional well-being
depend. The controlling organization can create this level of extreme threat since the
individuals who matter most to the target are subject to the organization’s authority
and will reject the person if the organization does so.
If an organization succeeds in shifting a target’s social ties to other organizational
members, it gains the potential to bind the person to the organization in a fashion
which far exceeds the binding power of investments, job, and residence. Immersed in
a social world in which peer esteem and disapproval are dispensed for conformity to
