Sects: A Discussion

...We could carry the point further—did Trotsky (sectarian) contribute less to socialist thought than Ramsay MacDonald (non-sectarian)?—but .. . IV If we have insisted upon the need for a political analysis of the problem raised by Coser, it is not because we disagree with his more general observations but rather because we think such an analysis will help us understand the problems that confront socialism, today...

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...If the sect is a caricature of a vital socialist movement, not only are its roots (withered...

...We are familiar with this, and from our own experience could easily enlarge on it...

...Marx's and Engels's vast contribution to thought do not make their associations less sectarian...

...By which we mean to say that if intolerance is characteristic of the sect (and it generally is) it is a characteristic conditioned by political attitudes and aspirations...

...An examination of socialist sectarianism does indeed seem to us to be an essential undertaking...

...It is incontrovertible that what passes for a "socialist movement" in this country today consists almost entirely of sects, distinguished by greater, and rarely lesser, degrees of intellectual sterility and political impo tnce...

...Whether this is actually so, whether the SP is happy about heretics, for example, is beside the point...

...We say this not to insist that the SP be damned along with all the others but rather to point to the real perplexities and problems of socialism today...

...The point seems trivial in itself...

...Except to ask: isn't it possible that the sect often reflects, duplicates on its own level, the mores and "patterns" of the non-sect power groups...

...Admittedly, this was a difference, an important one...

...In a footnote to his essay "Sects and Sectarians" (DISSENT, Autumn, 1954), Lewis Coser advises that he is employing a "typological procedure," and that the political sect modeled in his study is a sociological construct, neither portraying in its entirety any particular sect, nor implying in its composition any value judgment...

...So far as we know sects in this country have rarely insisted that members change their names, and have at least sometimes encouraged the opposite...

...Coser thus gives attention to the fact that members of the political sect often change their names: symbols of their rebirth...

...No matter what their aspirations—and except for a few sects who are happy in their isolation the way prisoners are sometimes happy in jail, most do at least pretend that time and progress will free them—they are unattractive and sterile groups, precluded almost by their very nature from being more than they are...

...We think the point obvious enough without belaboring it...

...Incapable of coping intellectually or practically with the great questions of our time, they bend them into stereotypes...

...still in the political soil that nourished the healthy plant, but its very malformation as a sect lies in some political development...

...Even in its own terms, "exclusiveness versus broadness" concealed political issues: how each group saw the unfolding of the Russian Revolution...

...A more significant relation is made on the exclusiveness of the sect...

...Agree with it or not, we recommend as reading on this point Trotsky's brilliant essay on the different concepts of the Russian Revolution, appended to his biography of Stalin...

...To begin with, very few people have made original contributions to socialist (or any other) thought, let alone sects or parties...

...Although not stated explicitly by Coser, the essay points to that conclusion...

...III Is it true that political sects have not made any contributions to the socialist movement or its body of thought...

...Yet in any valid political sense (that is, in the sense of its relationship with the mass of people and the political life of the country) the SP is as much a sect—let us add, unfortunately—as any of the groups that are referred to by Coser...

...Each of the qualities noted by Coser could, we believe, be documented from an examination of the early Communist League and other groups with whom Marx worked, including the First International...

...I By way of accenting the typological approach, Coser understates the role of ideology in the political sect...

...Being, alas, more familiar with the realities of sect life than Coser we could supply additional evidences of sectarianism...

...it adheres to a "special set of rules of conduct...

...Shall we each of us create our own standard of weights and measures...

...But how much importance should we attach to this...

...The sect is intolerant...

...But then where do we stop...

...Yet his essay illustrates in its approach and methods the limitations of sociological techniques when applied to what are fundamentally political problems...

...What then seems necessary to examine and evaluate are which rules of conduct exist...

...With socialism battered into isolation by a thousand circumstances outside their control, as well too by their inability to meet these circumstances creatively, the sects intensify their isolation, their "sectness," by making a fetish of their separate "programs" (all too often reduced to empty formulae, and used in and out of place) and organizations...

...The Salvation Army for its exaltation of the individual...

...It is not, nor can it be, our intention to supply such an analysis in this rejoinder...

...Yet, it has happened that—from their own point of view and for their own purposes —sects have been tolerant in degree and quality beyond any comparison with non-sectarian groups...

...Are our mass, loose 179 political parties in the United States especially noted for their lack of bureaucratization...

...As colleagues of Coser, sharing his deep concern with the problems of socialism, we understand that it could not have been his intent to disclaim "resemblance to persons living or dead...

...Martov, the Russian Menshevik theoretician) felt obliged to adopt a party name...

...If large mass organizations have sometimes been more tolerant of dissidents than the sect, it has often been not so much a matter of principle as of expediency (the dissidents being part of the over-all "power" picture, or disposing of enough power themselves to protect their positions...

...It would be difficult to imagine any social body—let alone a political sect—that did not have "rules of conduct," implicitly or explicitly...

...Presumably this is so because the SP does not in all respects meet the qualifications set forth...

...The Catholic Church, which Coser contrasts with heretical religious sects, has highly elaborate "rules of conduct," certain of which have precisely the object of welcoming saints and sinners alike into its bosom...

...Exclusiveness, intolerance, persecution of heretics, tendency towards de individualization (these are cited by Coser) are undoubtedly frequently the product of the sect's narrowness...

...The sect consists of men cut off from society...

...However, it occurs to us that the sect qua organization may often have been in a better position to develop an idea or political position precisely because its attention is focused 181 inward...

...We can see little relevance in this, particularly in light of the fact that all the sect personalities named by Coser use their non-symbolic, real names...

...By and large, there is no denying that...

...We doubt it, but even 'so: isn't that so arbitrary and subjective an approach as to preclude fruitful investigation...

...The real differences were political 'in nature, and so proved themselves to be in the evolution of both factions...

...At issue presumably is the matter of the Bolsheviks and their struggle with the Mensheviks, the exclusiveness of the former epitomizing the differences between the two...

...It is this recognition that we find missing in Coser's article...

...but we really gain little understanding of the Bolsheviks or the Mensheviks by 'giving this ' difference a disproportionate value...

...We will assume it is so...

...And include or exclude any given body as it pleases us by expanding and contracting our criteria...

...Conversely, sectarianism would hardly appear to be of overriding importance in evaluating historically Marx's group associations...

...Many, perhaps all, of the characteristics alleged to be peculiar to the Marxist political sect, can be found in other movements, organizations or social groups...

...And shall we admire the intolerant, bureaucratic and conformist manner in which the leadership of the British Labor Party—a classic example of a non-sectarian socialist movement for whose achievements we have the profoundest respect—is presently handling its Bevanite heresy...

...DISSENT will, we hope, receive such contributions in time...

...To which we will add that many a non-sectarian, or presumably so, revolutionist (e.g...

...But a "sociology of the sect" which does not mesh its analysis with the truly significant problem of the absence of a socialist movement limits the usefulness of its perceptions...

...II Suppose we look briefly at the "special set of rules of conduct," accepted by those qualified as "professional revolutionaries...

...Here at any rate there is an identifiable relevance...

...Was the Nazi Party, let us say, noted for its toleration of heretics...

...We doubt if the most thorough investigation would disclose many organizations, past or present, which were more tolerant of dissident views than the Workers Party (predecessor of the Independent Socialist League—the "Shachtman group,") at certain stages of its development...

...More often than not practical 180 reasons of self or family protection are all that is involved in changing names...

...It might be that the particular characteristics enumerated, in the particular way they are used, cannot be found intact (neither add one nor take one) in other social or political bodies...

...The classic example of this, of course, was the Bolshevik Party organized by Lenin...

...and its " . . . very structure, quite apart from its ideology, is likely to lead to a number of characteristic patterns of behavior...

...This seems to us a sad fact of infinitely greater relevance than whether or not the SP is less "exclusive" than the Socialist Labor Party or the Socialist Workers Party...

...Is it decisive in understanding the role of the sect in political life...

...Where else is the egoism of an interminable discussion likely to be practical...

...The consequences of this method are, for example, indicated indirectly in that the Socialist Party is not included among the sects Coser discusses...

...The failure of socialism in the United States, the lack of influence of the socialist movement, its inability to communicate with the masses of people and to establish any vital contact with reality—these are the big questions...

...In brief, we believe that a political examination of socialist sects would disclose that their role today is negative, precisely to the extent that they have proved incapable of relating ideologically to the political realities of the day...

...Debs, as thoroughly non-sectarian and popular a leader as American socialism has produced, was not—in terms of importance or influence or contribution to the evolution of his movement— on a par with Morris Hillquit...

...Which did not make it any less a sect, as its leaders we are sure would have been the first to acknowledge...

...They are questions that a "typological" study cannot even depict in full, and certainly not clarify...

...Who are the originators of socialist thought and action, in what way, and why, can be debated, but never settled...

...For that matter, was not Marx himself the leader of a sect...

...We will not pre tend that we have researched the issue intensively...

...Hillquit, the theoretical leader of the popular Debsian party, formulator of its tactics and its strategy, was nevertheless as thoroughgoing a sectarian in his behavior as any of those mentioned by Coser...

...Tolerance is an essential ingredient of a healthy socialist movement, yet its absence or presence (regrettably perhaps) hardly distinguishes sects from non-sects...

...The American people have excluded themselves quite as much from the SP as from the others...