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Nobody ever cries for the Mensheviks.
They curse the Bolsheviks and weep for the royalists, or they weep for the Bolsheviks and curse the royalists, but the Mesheviks are forgotten except for Russian history buffs.
At the begining of the 20th century reformist elements formed two basic parties, the Constitutional Democratic Party for the capitalist and nobility and the Socialist Revolutionary Party for peasants, workers and radical reformers.
The SRP split into the Mensheviks (translated Minority Group) and the Bolsheviks (translated Majority group).
In 1917 after WWI the Monarchy control of government collapsed from inertia and the Duma selected a provisional government. The Mensheviks wanted to participate in a European style democracy with various political parties. The Bolsheviks, or more specifically Lenin, preferred not to waste time with formalities and decided to show up with guns.
The police and army simply had no will to fight and since the Bolsheviks were the most disicplined and the best armed they were able to take over power without basically firing a single shot.
The Mensheviks and the Social Democrats had lots of discussions and opinions but never really agreed on a decisive path of action.
The "Menshevik/Boleshevik" conflict has some interesting points that we might find relevent.
The first is that those who kept calling themselves the "true" supporters of the masses, the Bolsheviks, in fact didn't. The Bolsheviks were never the majority but they knew public relations. How sappy were the Mensheviks? They accepted the term Mensheviks, permanently describing themselves as the minority group. The Bolsheviks didn't allow elections but Georgia was far away and the Bolsheviks weren't organized there yet so an election was held and the Mensheviks commanded 80% of the vote. Yet they still accepted the term Menshevik. Oh and the Georgian Mensheviks remained in firm control until the Bolsheviks showed up with a rather well armed contigent suggesting that there had been a mixup in the voting and that they were in control of Soviet Georgia. The Mensheviks continued to respond with furious arguments, from France.
In the conflict between the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks the Mensheviks out performed the Bolsheviks on every possible point except one, the Bolsheviks were better disciplined.
A political party requires many things.
Ideas, leaders, financial support, a historical tradition and so on.
But every successful political party or movement has also had the discipline to, after a full discussion and complete input from the party, exercise political will.
Now that's where the Menshevik/Bolshevik comparison ends because the kind of party discipline that is required in 21st century America is of course completely different from early 20th century Russia, but every SUCCESSFUL political party or operation has had discipline and lack of discipline has defeated many progressive parties.
Of course now we are talking about self discipline. We aren't talking about investing the head of the party with authoritarian powers nor are we talking about not having open and aggressive discussions.
But at some point people in the same party need to coalesce and support their party, to continually enter into party fratricide over every possible policy point and to express apocalyptic pronouncements every time your individual agenda is not met is simply a recipe for political suicide.
We all have issues that we feel strongly about that don't fit into the party platform. I would be happy to gather every gun in America and throw them into the Oceans. Its not the party platform, its not supported by the majority of the party and it would be a stupid thing to campaign on, so I accept the discipline of the party, and I know that all of us have similar examples.
For those that profess ardent non compromising absolutist positions that require non ending debate and absolute condemnation of those that don't accept their point of view 100% only one thing is certain, they will not be successful.
1) Don't let more strident radical voices adopt the claim as 'spokesman' for progressive forces without a fight.
2) Don't let radical factions frame you or your issues.
3) There is time for input, discussion, debate, disagreement and questioning. There is also a time for discipline.
In other words be a "Mensch" not a Menchevik
Mensh
mensch or mensh (měnsh)
n. pl. mensch·es or mensch·en (měn'shən) Informal
A person having admirable characteristics, such as fortitude and firmness of purpose: "He radiates the kind of fundamental decency that has a name in Yiddish; he's a mensch" (James Atlas).
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