on the spirit of sects - Tendance Coatesy

ON THE SPIRIT OF FACTIONS AND SECTS. "From the capital this pestilence was diffused into the provinces and
cities of the East, and the sportive distinction of two colours produced
two strong and irreconcilable factions, which shook the foundations of a
feeble government. The popular dissensions, founded on the most serious
interest or holy pretence, have scarcely equalled the obstinacy of this
wanton discord, which invaded the peace of families, divided friends and
brothers, and tempted the female sex, though seldom seen in the circus, to
espouse the inclinations of their lovers, to contradict the wishes of this
husbands. Every law, either human or divine, was trampled under foot; and
as long as the party was successful, its deluded followers appeared
careless of private distress or public calamity. The licence, without the
freedom, of democracy, was revived at Antioch and Constantinople, and the
support of a faction became necessary to every candidate for civil or
ecclesiastical honours." Vol. IV The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Edward Gibbon
INTRODUCTION: THE RUBBLE TO BE CLEARED AWAY.
"You yourself have personally experienced the contradiction between the
movement of a sect and the movement of class. The sect sees its raison
d'être and its point of honour not in what it has in common with the class
movement but in the particular shibbolith which distinguishes it from the
movement." Marx to Shwietzer. 1868. "Liebknecht, who was the main agent in bringing about the unity of the two
sections, (of the German Socialist movement) told me he had more trouble
with Marx and Engels and the little knot of extremists who, not unnaturally
perhaps, were inclined to deify these great thinkers than he had with all
the rest of the German Socialists put together. They could not understand
that men like Bebel and Liebknecht and their intimate associates, who were
right in the middle of the fray, must be able to judge better of the
necessities of the time than themselves, who were so much confined to their
libraries, and could not feel how things were going. But the policy of the
men on the spot won, and neither section has ever had any reason to regret
the calling together of the splendid Congress of Erfurt which gave birth to
the birth to the greatest and the best-disciplined Socialist Party in the
world." Henry Mayers Hyndman. Record of an Adventurous Life. "What, for example, can be done to keep the members happy in times when
little is happening?" As Soon as this Pub Closes. John Sullivan (1) In The Life and Death of Democracy (2009) John Keane observes that
sometime in the most ancient period, at the birth of Cities in the Eastern
Mediterranean, people began to think democratically. They "supposed that
humans could decide for themselves as equals how they were to be governed."
Whether by face-to-face decision or by representatives, he continues,
people came to understand that life was "never given". This arrangement
forces us to recognise that "all human customs are built on shifting sands"
People act as "if they are subjects of this world, in all its flesh-and-
blood complexity". In which "no body rules". In the Athenian Pnyx people
met to deliberate over the City's life, heavily informed by religion, Keane
informs us, they saw every decision in terms of the "will of the deities"
yet apparently, disregarded them whenever they wanted. Parties were
forbidden, he asserts yet there were "clubs" and had "a sense of
solidarity" using "behind the scenes" methods, similar to modern parties."
I stop reading. I think of the fact that 'parties' in the modern sense,
haven't existed, except in...modernity. For what reason? Something lurks in
the shadows. The ancient Greeks had an utter horror of stasis, which Keane
translates as "violent feuds". The bane of the Polis. Better given, as
subversion, factionalising, and a continuum from disagreement up to bloody
fighting, we find in Keane's ambitious survey of democracy the subject of
this book. But what is stasis? Moses Finley gives an extended explanation, "the aim
of any stasis was to bring about a change in some law or argument, and any
change meant a loss of rights, privileges or wealth to some group, faction
or class, for whom the stasis was according subversive." And "from that
standpoint all politics are seditious in any society in which there is a
measure of political participation, or freedom for political manoeuvring."
That politics are fluid and contradictory to the very core can be seen from
the fact that historically the term covers everything along this spectrum,
and it is unclear if 'war' is in a fact a continuation of politics or,
given the history of civil disputes, simply another form of it. Who are the
agents involved? Groups, factions and classes. Now that hasn't changed. How
did the Greeks deal with it? David Hume cited (not wholly accurately) a
"curious custom" of Athenian democracy. That the Assembly could declare any
legislation illegal. In other words, it was always open to turning
everything over. Was this one way to regulate disorder? Were other customs,
such as Ostracism, different means to stem the flow of stasis in mid-track?
Did the religious heritage exacerbate the divisions (used against
Socrates), or heal them (by getting rid of a dangerous anti-democrat)? Is
this not a central problem of all politics: not just who rules, but also
how the rulers (including the 'people') cope with opposition? Surely politics, post-Carl Schmidtt, recognises something primal about the
division between the Friend and the Enemy? "The utmost intensity of a union
or separation, of an association or dissociation"? What is stasis but this
played out in practice? Perhaps this is wholly false: that there is no
fundamental such an "extreme case of conflict" - that there is a spectrum
of friends and enemies, that "intense and extreme antagonism" is not a
singular, but a variety of conflicts which are destined to be channelled
through politics. That the 'cut off point' where this becomes a concrete
struggle to the death is never predetermined, and lays out the moment when
a polis becomes founded on an intelligible sense of what it has in common.
And what not, without wandering along Schmitt's road of a single command to
resolve the matter. If far from leading to disaster and world threatening
results, it is the staff of political life? That we can take this even more
radically than the theorists of 'agonistic democracy': the paradox of
democracy running through to its foundation, not in the dialectic between
formal institutional rights and the urge of equality and popular
sovereignty, but in the sparks that fly within all levels of politics. (2) All forms of politics are founded on the differences that lead to
disturbances. Let us begin with some words. How do people organise their
differences in politics? Obviously a party is a body apart, historically as
disliked as much as any other disturbance of the social order, and mocked
for its partisans. Turning inwards then, to their own supporters. In party
affairs nobody is ever definitive about the difference between a trend of
associated ideas and people (set out by number of individuals, writers and
journals), a tendency (a fairly loose but organised current of opinion
within a political organisation or movement), a faction (a separate part of
a whole organisation), a fraction (an organised group inside another one,
usually trade union - also used in Marxist theory to designate am part of a
class), a sect (a whole in itself, with a defined ideology or set of
principles), and a cult (a whole devoted to itself, though more usually a
Leader, anchored apart from the rest). Or simply a clique - an exclusive
coterie. There are plenty of the other words in this line, cabal,
conspiracy, gang ('of four'), plot, that give a flavour of how they're
looked at without much need to go further. So too is the instant refrain
that everyone is against sectarianism (divisions as a culture). The
shifting history of the nouns and their derivatives has left traces: in
some languages, such as German, Fraktion can mean Parliamentary Party, as
it once did in English; a second sense in French of 'faction', Guard Duty,
gives a flavour. History is scattered with fights between all forms of groupings, with
Byzantine's illustrating an enduring affinity to sporting rivalry. Let's
take the most extreme dissenters, the professional oppositionists, and the
splitter's home: the Sect. A close relative, they say, of the Cult. Which
continues to wear its Latin origins, as a congregation devoted to worship
(Cultus) - of itself that is, around it. Sectarian Trainspotting is the
subject of some of the best wit on the left, such as the immortal, As Soon
as this Pub Closes (1986?). The cover asks, "your boyfriend says you are
ultra-left while your sister claims you have Pabloite tendencies so you
don't really know what to say" and offers a guide to the "labyrinth" of the
left - needing only some very slight updating. Some consider that humour on
the left largely depends on jokes about this. John Sullivan suggested, less
jokingly, that these groups "do not live outside history" and that their
existence may be due to the need for a "refuge, which many people need,
either permanently or temporarily." At the same time he asks whether the
class make up of these groups, largely mid