In the 80's here in San Francisco, the Democratic Workers Party, led by an abusive alcoholic named Marlene Dixon (who wasn't w/o some smarts, being a discussant of a paper by Wallerstein @ a ASA convention in S.F. back then, and the DWP did publish a pretty good journal, "Contemporary Marxism."), has been described as a cult by former cadre such as, Peter Siegel, Nancy Strohl, Laura Ingram, David Roche and Jean Taylor in a piece in Socialist Review," Leninism as cult: The Experience of the Democratic Workers Party, ", November-December 1987, pp. 59-85. There they relate 12-16 hr. days organizing, living in
collective households w/ other cadre and rank and file "Jimmy and Jane Higgins'es", and cutting off all ties to old friends and family.
Ex-Trot Tim Wohlforth, has co-written a great book on political cults, right and left, published by M.E. Sharpe, w/ Dennis Tourish, where the DWP, the Healyites in the UK (Vanessa Redgrave being a member) and truly bizarre formations like the Gino Parente group, going under various labels like Provisional Party of Communists and NATLFED. http://users.rcn.com/xnatlfed/supp/foster01.html Front groups of the Parente formation here, http://users.rcn.com/xnatlfed/entindex.html , there are quite a few all around. They combine recruiting PMC rads and attemting to organize low wage workers and lumpen.
The list of leftist cults, could be expanded, way beyond these examples. Michael Pugliese