Most Monolithic

To what end, precisely?

Is the point of the Cold War New Left that Communism is less monolithic than some other movement, or is their point that even though they are the most monolithic you would still be woefully mistaken and mislead to treat them as if they were monolithic?

I suppose I’m just concerned because as far as I’m concerned you’re exactly right, and thus nobody will be able to disprove you, which leads me to wonder where you’re going next with it. Do we address these New Left scholars as competitors in a pissing contest or as guys cautioning against bad historiography no matter who wins the superlative (presumably it would be the Communists, as you suggest).

What about Roman Catholocism in Europe pre-Luther?

I think we’re going to run into a knowledge problem here. To those outside these movements, they are very likely to appear monolithic, so to really decide how monolithic they were, we’d have to be a part of the movement. Second, how to we measure monolithicity?

Some counter examples to those mentioned:

Western liberalism- Unless you have a specific time period in mind that I am missing, it seems that history is FULL of western liberals engaged in in-fighting.

National Socialism – This one got me at first but then I remembered that although the Brown-Shirt SAs were instrumental in the rise of the Nazi in Germany, they were summarily destroyed by the party after it rose to power. That seems like a pretty big rift.

Roman Catholicism – The Babylonian Captivity of the Papacy from 1309 to 1378 represents a time when there was not one but TWO popes, and yes even THREE at one point. Also, the Eastern Orthodox church split in the 1050s, well before Luther. The Church didn’t get established formally until around 400 and there were a large amount of heretics that formed various splinter groups.

Feminism.

Monolithic how?

Ethnic nationalism was extremely monolithic in that it was a single, globe-spanning ideology in the post-war period. It animated a lot of 20th century history and its adherents never wavered in their rationales or talking points but it also lacked the comprehensive structure and depth of communism.

I was sort of being snide/ironic in my above choice (western liberalism), but I gotta say that one above all else wins in this thread: Catholicism.

It would be difficult to be more monolithic than that! (And the few rifts mentioned above only make this point clearer–over 1600 years, that’s all you’ve got?!)

Not sure about the mormons. There are a large number of related groups who have heritage from the mormon scriptures. Much more than the salt lake city group would like you to believe.

The New York Yankees.

And in support of G. Gould’s point.

As Sumner reminds us, liberalization is the biggest untold story of the last quarter of the 20th century. It happened all around the world in a fairly similar fashion. Doesn’t that make it monolithic?

@Bob Murphy:

Evangelicals are far less monolithic than communists, the other two are possibly correct.

I thought of some more:

* Mathematicians

* Particle physicists

* Chess masters

* Advocates of the “fair tax”

I think Mathematicians win, the amount of in fighting is much less, and the amount that is, isn’t really saying the other side is irrational. There are ideas on that differ on what will be proved, based not on proofs. But they aren’t really a movement.

Particle physics, way off I’d say, interpretation of quantum mechanics is all over the place.

The most monolithic movement, what about the Fascist Japanese, don’t have much evidence. Also Islamic Fundamentalist maybe, no work shown for either.

Ohh and about the Catholic Church, yeah to say it is monolithic is entirely ignorant of History in that area. Every single council had vast amount of debate and issues agreed upon. So 21 Councils which represent numerous major riffs in the church that Papal decree would have been inconceivable, but still often led to a new separate Church every time, addressing easily 100’s of large divides with often 1000’s of people attend. Also, every papal decree represented a division in the Church that needed to be cleared up, the dozens of Great heresies that developed over that time, the thousands of rites developed in the way the worshiped numerous local pagan influences creeping in every, and the massive differences on how political rule and science should be like, as well as non official areas like nuances in morals and ethics, and aspects of theology that have no official position by the Church. At least that’s my view on why I would not say the Catholic Church was very monolithic.

In regards to measuring monolithic of a movement, how much should hostility towards the other side be the judge? And what defines a movement and not the large movement is is defined within. Like when is it Communist movement and not Maoism, or Leftist? No group that’s large will be complete mindless drones though

@Matt

Recall that the post is about comparative monolithicy; it starts by saying that we should reject the point about communist infighting as just so much missing the point.

You know, like you’ve done here.

“National Socialism – This one got me at first but then I remembered that although the Brown-Shirt SAs were instrumental in the rise of the Nazi in Germany, they were summarily destroyed by the party after it rose to power. That seems like a pretty big rift.”

And the purges of trotskyites, “opportunists” and Titoists?

The AGW proponents come to mind.

How about Progressives?