Cultic Studies Journal, Vol. 15, No. 1, 1998, page 26
into its ideology. Thus, Trotskyists are possessed of a tremendous sense of urgency and a
powerful conviction of their group‟s unique role in bringing about the transformation of the
world: what could be described as delusions of historical grandeur. Trotsky himself confided
to his diary in 1935:
Now my work is “indispensable” in the full sense of the word.... The collapse of
the two Internationals has posed a problem which none of the leaders of these
Internationals is at all equipped to solve.... There is now no one except me to
carry out the mission of arming a new generation with the revolutionary method
over the heads of the leaders of the Second and Third International. (1958, p.
54)
This approach leads to the belief that the vanguard party has a level of insight into society‟s
problem unmatched by anyone else. The group under consideration here, the CWI, provides
many instances of such a conviction in its publications. An internal document from 1977
averred:
What guarantees the superiority of our tendency ...from all others inside and
outside the labor movement is our understanding of all the myriad factors which
determine the attitudes and moods of the workers at each stage. Not only the
objective but the subjective ones too.
This conviction is combined with contempt for all other organizations on the Left. The closer
such organizations are to the group‟s own ideological lineage the more likely they are to be
the targets of abuse. A CWI International Bulletin in 1975 declaims: “We consider that our
organizations are alone in upholding the banner of Marxism ...we repudiate every sectarian
fragment appropriating the name of the Fourth International.”
One interviewee (David) told me:
We were taught to absolutely hate every other political organization that there
was. Anybody on the Left who wasn‟t a Marxist was called left reformist, and we
were absolutely convinced that they didn‟t have a clue. We looked on them as
hopeless people. People outside left politics at all were dismissed as “liberals,”
but we probably hated them more than extreme right-wingers --we used the
word liberal as a sort of political swear word. But other Trotskyist groupings
were the worst. We just laughed at them in internal meetings. We called them
“the sects” and took the view that they were incapable of any development at
all. They were good for a laugh at best, but really the attitude toward anybody
else claiming to be Trotskyist was that they were the complete enemy of
everything we stood for. If we ever had taken power, God knows what we would
have done to them.
However, an additional feature of Lenin‟s conception of a vanguard party is that it was to be
governed by the principles of what he termed democratic centralism. It would not be a loose
federation, but a tightly integrated fighting force with a powerful central committee and a
rule that all members publicly defend the agreed-upon positions of the party, whatever
opinions they might hold to the contrary in private. Between conferences, the party‟s
leading bodies would have extraordinary authority to manage the party‟s affairs, arbitrate in
internal disputes, update doctrine, and decide the party‟s response to fresh political events.
As Lenin expressed it:
The principle of democratic centralism and autonomy for local party
organizations implies universal and full freedom to criticize, so long as this does
not disturb the unity of a defined action it rules out all criticism which disrupts
or makes difficult unity of action decided upon by the party. (1977, p. 433)
into its ideology. Thus, Trotskyists are possessed of a tremendous sense of urgency and a
powerful conviction of their group‟s unique role in bringing about the transformation of the
world: what could be described as delusions of historical grandeur. Trotsky himself confided
to his diary in 1935:
Now my work is “indispensable” in the full sense of the word.... The collapse of
the two Internationals has posed a problem which none of the leaders of these
Internationals is at all equipped to solve.... There is now no one except me to
carry out the mission of arming a new generation with the revolutionary method
over the heads of the leaders of the Second and Third International. (1958, p.
54)
This approach leads to the belief that the vanguard party has a level of insight into society‟s
problem unmatched by anyone else. The group under consideration here, the CWI, provides
many instances of such a conviction in its publications. An internal document from 1977
averred:
What guarantees the superiority of our tendency ...from all others inside and
outside the labor movement is our understanding of all the myriad factors which
determine the attitudes and moods of the workers at each stage. Not only the
objective but the subjective ones too.
This conviction is combined with contempt for all other organizations on the Left. The closer
such organizations are to the group‟s own ideological lineage the more likely they are to be
the targets of abuse. A CWI International Bulletin in 1975 declaims: “We consider that our
organizations are alone in upholding the banner of Marxism ...we repudiate every sectarian
fragment appropriating the name of the Fourth International.”
One interviewee (David) told me:
We were taught to absolutely hate every other political organization that there
was. Anybody on the Left who wasn‟t a Marxist was called left reformist, and we
were absolutely convinced that they didn‟t have a clue. We looked on them as
hopeless people. People outside left politics at all were dismissed as “liberals,”
but we probably hated them more than extreme right-wingers --we used the
word liberal as a sort of political swear word. But other Trotskyist groupings
were the worst. We just laughed at them in internal meetings. We called them
“the sects” and took the view that they were incapable of any development at
all. They were good for a laugh at best, but really the attitude toward anybody
else claiming to be Trotskyist was that they were the complete enemy of
everything we stood for. If we ever had taken power, God knows what we would
have done to them.
However, an additional feature of Lenin‟s conception of a vanguard party is that it was to be
governed by the principles of what he termed democratic centralism. It would not be a loose
federation, but a tightly integrated fighting force with a powerful central committee and a
rule that all members publicly defend the agreed-upon positions of the party, whatever
opinions they might hold to the contrary in private. Between conferences, the party‟s
leading bodies would have extraordinary authority to manage the party‟s affairs, arbitrate in
internal disputes, update doctrine, and decide the party‟s response to fresh political events.
As Lenin expressed it:
The principle of democratic centralism and autonomy for local party
organizations implies universal and full freedom to criticize, so long as this does
not disturb the unity of a defined action it rules out all criticism which disrupts
or makes difficult unity of action decided upon by the party. (1977, p. 433)
