I met some who were very nice, seemed very rational, didn’t even come off as “culty” as their particular Trot party is “known” to be. I mean, yeah, ideologically they’re not quite right, but like, more people working against capitalism, who at least understand and agree with what Lenin said, is a good thing, right? Sectarianism is silly and left unity between Marxist tendencies is important to get to the point of revolution and then sorting out our differences, right?
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The RCP near me seem like really nice people genuinely trying to present socialism as a solution to people’s problems, and they did get a giant crowd of people, who weren’t neccessarily anything more left than just mad at some really awful conservatives, to chant “General Strike!”, so at least their calls for radical action do seem to inspire agreement, but uh… yeah. What they did was show up to a big multi org rally with a broad purpose, give a speech that called for the most radical actions, then hold an open meeting afterwards. Oh, and they tried to hawk their newspapers the whole time, but, like, that’s a given with Trots. I’ve never met one who didn’t try to sell me a newspaper. They didn’t derail the rally too badly, but they did call me a Stalinist when I talked to them.
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Yeah theyre often nice people. The hatred for RCP is less of the individuals than of their organisation, many of the members of my org are former RCPers themselves
The big issue is their general strike chant may strike a chord in the moment at rallies, but they often refuse to participate in the more boring work to create those rallies, preferring to promote their own (primarily book club / educational) events
When they do participate they tend to derail. E.g. at my uni we tried to start a bds committee, got the uni to disclose their investments and had a townhall to discuss which ones we should centre the campaign on, which groups and faculty, to reach out to, how to go about promoting the campaign, next steps, etc. The rcpers kept raising their hand and running straight to general strike, skipping straight from “education” past “agitation” and “organisation” and right to the second highest level of escalation
Its very frustrating, bc in a 2 hour meeting (already stretching peoples patience) they tend to spend 30 minutes talking about radical actions instead of building the movement at hand towards those actions
I had a lot of fun with some of them that day after the rally, the people are great.
But yeah. They showed up, set up a table off on their own, tried to sell newspapers (but that one is basically Free Space on “Trotskyists being lame AF” bingo, because I don’t think there’s such a thing as a Trot who isn’t trying to sell you a newspaper), gave a speech out of sync with the general tone of the rally, and then, as the rally broke up, they held an open meeting right there in the park, which lasted their customary two hours, and one guy spent the entirety of their customary portion for talking about action plans discussing their goddamn newspaper! I mean, it was a nice day outside, and a Trot meeting was less boring than going home and sitting on my couch watching trash TV or doomscrolling on my phone, but still, two hours of complete disconnect from reality. I’d never been in a room full of commies IRL before, but even I know these guys make Lenin look like a centrist in terms of the Overton Window. Which, y’know, it was nice for me, to not feel like a total whack job for a little while, but like, I’m aware I’m an extreme leftist and that people who say exactly what I’m thinking half the time are gonna come off that way to the vast majority of people around us.
Look, they’re neat people, and I think in not very leftist areas, like mine, a lot of people who aren’t really Trots might throw in with them because they’re the party that exists, and those are probably the ones I enjoyed talking to that day. But yeah, an organisation that doesn’t understand the material conditions on the ground and can’t effectively organize anything without piggybacking off others and engaging in tailism… is probably the thing on the left that infuriates me the most.
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Avoid RCP like the plague.
Source: I was in their cult for over a decade
Do you mind if I ask if you have more that you’d like to share about your experience? Or a previous comment/post where you did, if you’ve written about it before?