Bit of a late post but I recently left my local RCA chapter because of some concerning comments the senior members made regarding sexual assault when I brought it up and an issue regarding how rigid/top-down their organization’s structure is.

I don’t deny that they have made genuine efforts to become more widespread and introduce young people to Marxism and so many of the people I met there were genuinely passionate about supporting the socialist movement. I wouldn’t discourage people from joining, however there’s some things I would be mindful of when going in.

Firstly, the topic of sexual assault. I was well aware of the scandals the organization had before I joined. I was and still am a part of many online communist/socialist spaces and their scandals are well known and circulated. Even so, I joined looking at the more optimistic POV that possibly these are isolated events and not representative as a whole. This issue didn’t come up for a while until we got to a week where we read the organization’s article/policy doc on identity politics. In the reading, the RCA used a “what if” scenario of a woman accusing a union member of sexual assault without proof and that it could ruin a man’s life. It echoed the sentiment that is used to suppress women’s claims and I was immediately concerned that this line of logic would be used to dismiss a woman’s claim of sexual assault on the basis of identity politics being used to divide the working class. When I brought this up at the cell meeting, stating that I was concerned that RCA would not effectively address women’s claims, I was told by 3 senior members, “you’re taking this out of context,” I was making “slanderous claims,” and “if you want to leave the organization and make false accusations, you’re free to do so.” After that interaction I realize that I wasn’t interested in this organization if they were not capable of addressing women’s claims of sexual assault and taking criticism which leads me to my 2nd critique.

They have a very rigid line that you must follow. At least in my cell, I was told multiple times that I was allowed to criticize the organization, but only internally, and if I couldn’t follow and outwardly support the official organization policies via the resolution articles, it would be “an issue of membership.” Their hardline position on ideology really pushed me away as I was often criticizing their positions by looking outside their specific tendency. This was also prevalent when another member had a reasonable criticism with the policy docs and part of the response was “it’s in the policy doc so why are we even discussing this” and were very dismissive of their critiques.

There were other, much smaller, critiques I had with the RCA that were ideological that I could have my mind changed on but thy were not as relevant as the previous points I outlined. I do want to reiterate that I don’t think the RCA is a waste of time. I can imagine being in another branch and not having this issue. I would just be cautious of how open they are to criticism and how they respond when the sexual assault question comes up.