Why do groups split?

[Lyev]

I want to discuss why certain revolutionary organisations/parties split - whether this is more prominent in one tendency or another or whether that's a strawman; if splits and expulsions are simply recurring anomalies, that aren't indicative of any wider malaise; if certain organisational structures are more conducive to these splits than others etc. I, at first, thought that the smaller a group is, the prone their to splitting. But the IMT split from the CWI, and likewise, several groups have split from the SWP (Permanent Revolution and the Revolutionary Democratic Group, for example). The Trotskyist movement through 60s till the 80s was - and still sometimes is - very turbulent. But of course, it isn't only Trotskyist parties that split. I was just reading some documents of the Communist Bulletin Group which split from the ICC in the 80s. There is also the New Communist Party of Britain and the CPGB-ML which are splits. So why does this happen? Is it something to with (a possible misapplication?) of democratic centralism? This is just some very general musings. Please keep the sectarianism here to a minimum.

[bricolage]

this has always been my view and a lot of it is wholly speculative but anyway...
revolutionary groups, or those that claim the role of revolutionary groups, only have relevance in how they can relate to a class movement. In the absence of, overt, prolonged, class struggle this relationship cannot be forged so they are forced to invert upon themselves, with everything becoming entirely internal. I don't know if this is true or not but my guess would be in times of mass strikes etc the number of leftist splits is a lot less than in times of (relative) social peace.

[graymouser]

I've spent a lot of time studying the splits of multiple parties, although the most with the American SWP, which has possibly the most fascinating history of splits for any left-wing group in existence.

The SWP had ten splits of varying significance and their splits are responsible for much of the modern American Trotskyist landscape. In two instances, entire branches simply dropped out of the party and formed their own - Workers World in 1958 and the Freedom Socialist Party in 1966. Most of the splits were groups that had a chance to re-integrate into the SWP but chose not to; the last split, producing Socialist Action and two small groups that are now in Solidarity, was more of a purge.

Different things happen to split a party. Sometimes the party tries, and fails, to integrate people who don't really fit into its politics. This happened with a vengeance in the early '60s. The SWP recruited some people who had been in the Shachtmanite youth group before Shachtman went into the SP. They converted to orthodox Trotskyism, but in a very narrow and dogmatic way compared to the SWP. Cuba came up immediately, and the SWP was pro-Cuba but the ex-Shachtmanites considered that a violation of Trotskyism. One group, around a guy named James Robertson, split in 1963 and became the Spartacist League. The other group, around Tim Wohlforth and Shane Mage, left in 1964 to form the Workers League, which is now the Socialist Equality Party. There were also elements of this in the 1940 split with Shachtman himself; a lot of the people who left following him were originally in the Socialist Party's youth group, YPSL.

Other times, a leader in the minority will build up a following and find an exit route from the party. This is what happened with Abern and Shachtman in the 1940 split; it's also the main thing behind the 1958 split that produced the Workers World Party and the 1966 split that started the Freedom Socialist Party. Sam Marcy in Buffalo was a good example. His group had certain ideas that were different from the SWP majority, and they argued these politics in a principled fashion for eight years before splitting off to form the WWP.

It was a lot less clean the other times, for instance Dick Fraser and George Breitman had taken up opposing positions on Black liberation during the '50s. Fraser thought a "revolutionary integration" position would win over the Civil Rights movement, which is less unreasonable than it sounds, as the SWP had a large Black membership in the late '40s, being virtually all-Black in Newark and Detroit. Breitman, who had been closer to the Black cadres, understood that there was a tendency toward nationalism in the radical layers and the SWP would have to orient toward that. In the 1963 convention, Breitman won and the party became close to Malcolm X on the basis of his position. Fraser found himself increasingly uncomfortable and basically provoked a split, only to be kicked out of the new party during his messy divorce from his wife Clara.

Sometimes a layer is turning right or left. That's what happened in the early '50s, with a group around Cochran and Clarke, that were becoming conservatized and formed a short-lived group called the American Socialist Union. A lot of these are related to the international disputes. The final splits in the SWP were really a purge, with Socialist Action and two other groups that are now part of Solidarity being rudely thrust out of the party.

Most of this has to do with the dynamics of leadership. In a smaller group, a leader who's perpetually in the minority can take a short and easy route to a majority, a split. It's also hard for groups to assimilate people with what may seem like relatively small differences in politics. The last big phenomenon I've seen is that when a party makes a large change in direction, there's frequently a group that opposes it and finds itself on the outside. Socialist Action found itself in this position involuntarily, the IMT broke with the CWI quite intentionally on the same grounds.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

You will find a novel, class analysis of why they split, here:

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2009_02.htm

[Tower of Bebel]

Minorities are inevitable. If an organisation surpresses the tendency towards the development of ideas on a free basis then people will be forced to develop their ideas elsewhere. As bricolage pointed out the lack of open class struggle forces organisations to turn towards the inside. If the internal conditions don't allow for the free expression of minorities they will be forced to split.

If there are lots of opportunities for organisations so take part in the class struggle or the class movement then minorities are sometimes willing to set aside internal differences over the lack of means of genuine expression. Not because the minority can express its ideas in the class movement (most of the time you can only do that if you are also allowed to do it inside your organisation), but because the minority believes it can use the working class to gain a more dominant position. This has been done by many marxists who were part of reformist parties.

Then there are people who want to break up in principle, but they are possible only a small minority amongst those who have left organisations because of differences. There is also the problem of turn-over, but they involve more cases of individual departures than departing groups.

[Dimentio]

Usually, splits are caused by charismatic local leaders who are taking advantage of the weakness of central party structures. The ideological differences are often just justifications for what essentially are power grabs. Some predatory individuals, who are not enough brave to become mobsters, prefer to assemble cliques around themselves and play that they are glorious leaders.

[NGNM85]

I think it's symptomatic of certain pathologies that are, to my knowledge, unique to the radical Left.

[RED DAVE]

Minorities are inevitable.Yea, verily.


If an organisation surpresses the tendency towards the development of ideas on a free basis then people will be forced to develop their ideas elsewhere. As bricolage pointed out the lack of open class struggle forces organisations to turn towards the inside. If the internal conditions don't allow for the free expression of minorities they will be forced to split.Problem is that every one of the four splits I've been involved with involved organizations that were completely democratic internally.

RED DAVE

[graymouser]

Minorities are inevitable. If an organisation surpresses the tendency towards the development of ideas on a free basis then people will be forced to develop their ideas elsewhere. As bricolage pointed out the lack of open class struggle forces organisations to turn towards the inside. If the internal conditions don't allow for the free expression of minorities they will be forced to split.
But that's simply not the dynamic of historical splits in leftist parties. Again, to use the American SWP as an example, the tendency around Sam Marcy first began to coalesce in 1950 (the year Marcy wrote his "Global Class War" thesis) but didn't split until 1958. Dick Fraser and George Breitman had their debate from 1955 until 1963 - yet when Fraser lost he was not unceremoniously kicked out of the party. Arne Swabeck was basically a Maoist from the late '50s onward but stuck with the SWP until the FSP split when he headed out.

Minorities tend to split because they never fit in the first place, or changes have happened and they no longer fit. The desire of individuals to play the leader does play a role - but fundamentally this flows from politics. Very few parties have had a split without a very clear political reason. (The PSL split from the WWP was un-explained at the time but has meant a political shift in both groups over the years, albeit a very narrow one.)

[RED DAVE]

Minorities tend to split because they never fit in the first place, or changes have happened and they no longer fit. The desire of individuals to play the leader does play a role - but fundamentally this flows from politics. Very few parties have had a split without a very clear political reason.The splits that I was involved in had a very different dynamic from this. All the following is from memory.

(1) The split in the SP-SDF in '63, basically between Shactman's Realignment Tendency, and the Labor Party Tendency (led by Parker and Geier) was defined, at that time, by diametrically opposed attitudes towards the Democratic Party. The Shactmanites had basically come up with the notion that the presence of the labor bureaucracy and mass labor support for the DP, plus the black presence in the North, determined that it was a social democratic party and that entrism was a legitimate tactic. The LPs completely rejected this. After the split, which was centered in the party's youth group, the YPSL, the YPSL was destroyed. The Labor Party Tendency eventually regrouped into the IS. (The Shactmanites went to hell.)

(2) In '71, Hal Draper split from the IS taking a small group with him. Draper alleged that the IS, in spite of the fact that about 1/3 of its membership was inside the working class (about half in New York), was not able to relate to workers. The general consensus is that Draper himself was orienting towards the union bureaucracy and the fact that the IS had a focus on building rank-and-file groups was antithetical to this.

(3) Around '74 (I don't remember the exact year), there was a heterodox split in which, as I recall, a group of anarchist-oriented comrades split and eventually formed the group Love and Rage. The main person in the group was Wayne Price. At the same time, a group around Sy Landy split and eventually formed the LRRP. My interpretation is that neither of these groupings could deal with the IS's rank-and-file orientation. The anarchist group essentially abandoned a working class perspective. The Landy group retreated into extreme sectarianism. Both these groupings were the result of the entry into the IS of people from the outside. The anarchists, in my opinion, were centered around people who had come into the IS as the result of its building of the Peace and Freedom Party. The Landy group came about as a result of the presence of people who had come from the SWP along with Harold Robbins.

(4) The "unkindest cut of all" came when a group, basically influenced by the British SWP, split the IS. The ostensible issues had to do with tactics inside the labor movement. At that point, the rank-and-file ferment of the early and mid-'70s was receding leaving the IS, which had had a definite amount of success inside the working class, more and more isolated.

(I apologize for any factual errors in this. I'm relying on my memory for events that happened decades ago.)

The point I'm trying to make is that the essential element in any split is orientation toward the working class.

A split involves a different orientation toward the working class than the main group. Usually, the splitting group is evolving its own unique way of abandoning the working class. In the case of the 4th example above, I believe that neither of the tendencies abandoned the working class (the split was engendered from the outside by the British SWP), and, as a result, both tendencies still exist as Solidarity and the ISO.

Hope this helps.

RED DAVE

[Chris]

In the CP of Norway splits have (mostly) been due to ideological reasons. The most recent splits came between 2001-2004. The first was... well not really a split. Some members of the CP of Norway was part in founding the Movement for Socialism (a political organisation more interested in discussion than action). The MfS had a reformistic and social-democratic way of doing this, and the members were given an ultimatum (leave MfS or be expelled). 7 people were expelled, but his lead to:
The Åsnes local cell of the CP of Norway decided to split from the party in 2004 to form Radical Socialists. Their reasons were the parties attitude to Stalin and religion. Ie, they wanted a laxer view on religion and more anti-Stalinism.
The former youth organisation (The Communist Youth League of Norway) split. The YO was more revisionistic than the new trend in the party (the party having taken an increasingly strong stance against revisionism since 2001) and broke off after the party decided that the leadership of the YO needed some adjustments.

Earlier, the only large split among the left in Norway were after the foundation of Comintern. The Norwegian Worker's Party (more or less the only socialistic party in Norway) decided to join the Comintern. The rightwing of the party (social-democrats) broke off and formed the Social-Democratic Party of Norway. This was in 1921.
In 1923 the Worker's Party decided to leave Comintern. The Foreman who decided that had only won by 2 votes against the Leninist candidate. The Leninists broke out and formed the Communist Party of Norway (which remained in Comintern). The Norwegian Worker's Party still considered themselves communists, but Left Communists.
In 1927 the Norwegian Worker's Party and the Social Democratic Party of Norway reunited. There were talks of the CP of Norway also reuniting up to 1947, when the Norwegian Worker's Party abandoned planned economy and Communism from their party programme.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Minorities are inevitable. If an organisation surpresses the tendency towards the development of ideas on a free basis then people will be forced to develop their ideas elsewhere. As bricolage pointed out the lack of open class struggle forces organisations to turn towards the inside. If the internal conditions don't allow for the free expression of minorities they will be forced to split.

I'd like some constructive criticism of this:


Forums and networks can be organized by one or more current, platform, or tendency, as well as by the party as a whole, to promote particular issues, viewpoints, and debates, plus in the case of networks to focus on specific tactics like “No Platform” and other anti-fascist confrontations. Currents tend to be about particular systems, advocating things like so-called “Economic Democracy” and other forms of market socialism, participatory economics, and the more political Participatory Socialism (participatory economists advantageously raising socialist consciousness inside the working class but outside the class movement, while expressing their political rejection of the dead-end “democratic socialism” that puts parliamentarism above socialist aims, and also of the hyper-activist minority aims masked as “revolutionary socialism”). Platforms correspond to particular systems, particular worker demographics such as the working poor and pensioners (more on these two groups later), or lesser themes such as pro-labour reform, ecology, and civil rights – but are nevertheless bound, according to Nestor Makhno’s works on anarchist platformism, at least by tactical unity, collective responsibility, and some form of federalism in between decentralization and centrality. Last but not least, tendencies are a step up from forums, currents, and platforms, with separate media in striving for an intra-party majority both politically and organizationally.

So what is factionalism, then, within an atmosphere of forums, currents, platforms, and tendencies? Factionalism is characterized by its very contrast to publicized discussive unity. As opposed to tendencies, factions and their culture of secrecy limit audience access to intra-party discussions, overemphasize representative voting and top-down appointments, exhibit unprofessional behaviour in striving to be a political and organizational majority (such as bullying or threatening to split unless their views are adopted across the board, or attempting to replace party media with their own), refuse to act in accordance with agreed-upon action, and abstain from presenting majority viewpoints in addition to their own. It is no wonder why the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin and his immediate conspirators, despite their baseless and hypocritical charge of authoritarianism on the part of Marx, were expelled from the International Workingmen’s Association for maintaining the International Alliance for Socialist Democracy as a secret faction inside and outside the former, with its “rules or administrative regulations contrary to the General Rules and Administrative Regulations of the International Association.” Therefore, the best approach to factions vs. tendencies would be similar to the left-reformist “Eurocommunist” approach, as described by Mike Macnair:

The clearest cases are the French and Italian Communist Parties. Such parties officially prohibit factions [and factionalism], but have them [and tendencies] de facto, and are officially Bonapartist-centralist, but in practice allow a lot of leeway to the branches and fractions. They can actually be useful for the workers’ movement and the development of class consciousness even if they have coalitionist politics which they cannot carry into practice (all of them between the 1950s and the 1970s) and even if they are small (like the old CPGB).

The only organs that should be allowed to have one or two factional characteristics under pressing circumstances (overemphasizing representative voting and top-down appointments, plus limiting audience access to intra-party discussions especially during politically revolutionary periods) are the Central Workers Council and its lower-level equivalents within the party.

[Blackscare]

I think that part of the problem is that we've evolved sort of a mentality that any political difference means that there can be no cooperation.

Rather than groups seeing themselves as factions expounding different lines within one movement, they often try to organize as parallel or even competing movements. And I mean this not only in terms of intra-tendency relations (Trotskyist groups splitting from each other and acting very uncivil towards each other) but also inter-tendency relations. Why Maoists, "Stalinists", Left-Coms and Trots (to name a few) can't realize that at this juncture these differences matter very little compared to the huge need for an at least partially unified worker's movement with varying revolutionary perspectives is beyond me. Perhaps there is at least some degree of civility that I'm not aware of, but certainly much less cooperation than is required. It is absolutely healthy and necessary for all revolutionary leftist groupings to operate as cooperative factions.


The left seems to have almost completely abandoned any sense of solidarity. You hear more talk about strategic alliances/etc with bourgeois parties than you do calls for greater unity amongst the already existing Left scene.



I'd like to add that, failing a proper mass worker's party with what we would better recognize as classic factionalism (which is what we need, desperately), parties should consider themselves essentially unofficial factions. I say this because of DNZ's quote relating to intra-party factions (well, the last bolded bit just caught my eye, at least). Proper emphasis on the role of intra-party factions is necessary to stem the bleeding, but it won't fix the problem of disunity on the left.

[scarletghoul]

I used to think it was because the Left here is so detached from any working class movement and was just mutilating itself in confusion. But then if you take a look at countries with intense revolutionary struggle, they often have just as many splits and stuff. Search for a list of communist parties in India or Nepal and you'll see what I mean. So maybe its just that we notice the splits more because not much else is going on.

[Tower of Bebel]

Maybe I'm just overemphasizing one end of the spectrum, but I don't have much experience with factionalism and I'm not able to judge the reasons for a split concerning differences on orientation.

[RED DAVE]

Maybe I'm just overemphasizing one end of the spectrum, but I don't have much experience with factionalism and I'm not able to judge the reasons for a split concerning differences on orientation.My experience is that most splits are real in terms of orientation toward the working class. Not all of them though. For example the split between the Spriticists and the Workers League, the Robertson group and the Wohlforth group, seemed to me at the time to be largely based on a personality conflict between the two men.

RED DAVE

[Jose Gracchus]

I think it's symptomatic of certain pathologies that are, to my knowledge, unique to the radical Left.

What about lifestyle-changing religious groups?

[The Idler]

Most splits are because members are recruited before they understand the politics of the organisation. Levels of understanding of new members vary between organisations, some barely understand the basics, some don't understand the full programme until years in the party. I suppose splits mainly emerge from minorities which have been in the organisation long enough to agree on the basics but not the whole programme.

[RED DAVE]

Most splits are because members are recruited before they understand the politics of the organisation. Levels of understanding of new members vary between organisations, some barely understand the basics, some don't understand the full programme until years in the party. I suppose splits mainly emerge from minorities which have been in the organisation long enough to agree on the basics but not the whole programme.All well and good, but what you are ignoring, and most people seem to be ignoring, except for graymouser and similar posters, is real political differences.

You can talk about sociology all you want. But Marxism, even when it involves small groups, is, in my opinion and experience, mostly about real political difference, the root difference being orientation towards the working class. This is not to say that one tendency is necessarily wrong or the other right. But even so, the differences are usually real.

RED DAVE

[The Idler]

All well and good, but what you are ignoring, and most people seem to be ignoring, except for graymouser and similar posters, is real political differences.

You can talk about sociology all you want. But Marxism, even when it involves small groups, is, in my opinion and experience, mostly about real political difference, the root difference being orientation towards the working class. This is not to say that one tendency is necessarily wrong or the other right. But even so, the differences are usually real.

RED DAVE
Its a political decision for an organisation to say we'll accept your subscription and let you sell our paper but not to tell recruits your ideology won't ever be welcome.

Sometimes organisations don't even ask potential recruits what their ideology is! For example whether they want a free market, support national liberation movements, support democratic centralism etc. No wonder there's splits.

[Blackscare]

Its a political decision for an organisation to say we'll accept your subscription and let you sell our paper but not to tell recruits your ideology won't ever be welcome.

Sometimes organisations don't even ask potential recruits what their ideology is! For example whether they want a free market, support national liberation movements, support democratic centralism etc. No wonder there's splits.

Then again, you'd have to wonder why a free market supporting individual would seek out an obscure socialist party to work with.

I think what you're doing (even if there is indeed a kernel of truth), is making a caricature of the problem.

[The Idler]

Then again, you'd have to wonder why a free market supporting individual would seek out an obscure socialist party to work with.

I think what you're doing (even if there is indeed a kernel of truth), is making a caricature of the problem.
Different "socialist" organisations do actually support provision of things in a free market to varying degrees (didn't Titoists wholeheartedly embrace "market socialism"?). However, asking what potential recruits think should be provided by the free market (which I guarantee many groups won't do) is just an example to demonstrate how shallow opportunistic recruitment strategies among socialist parties (obscure or otherwise) lead to expulsions, defections, most commonly general disillusionment and if they've been in long enough to build a base, splits into new organisations.

[blake 3:17]

Sometimes organisations don't even ask potential recruits what their ideology is! For example whether they want a free market, support national liberation movements, support democratic centralism etc. No wonder there's splits.

That's not the reson for splits -- that's why people just leave groups as individuals. The first Marxist group I joined was on the basis that there WOULD BE a split. The leadership of the local branch had played a very destructive part on the Canadian Left, alienating a great many people otherwise sympathetic to the ideas of revolutionary socialism. The faction I joined was very much pro-regroupment, which eventually led us to joining a larger group (also a split...) and now engaged in a much broader regroupment process, with different Marxists, socialists and anarchists on a relatively local level.

I think the origins of most splits or failure to regroup when the time is right is due to sectishness, often with a guru or two telling The Truth. I'm fine with many forms of organizational discipline, but do get POed by poobahs telling The Truth and you better agree or eff off.