Atlas / Comparisons / Hamas vs Mensheviks
Hamas and Mensheviks
Measured distance across six axes
Opposed programmes with little shared ground. They agree within three points on SC. They diverge by eight points or more on CU, AU, ID.
Axis by axis
| Axis | Hamas | RSDLP(m) | Gap | Reading | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EC · Economic organisation | −02 | −08 | 6 | Differs | Real difference, but not the dividing line. |
| CU · Social and cultural order | +09 | −05 | 14 | Diverges | Carries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this. |
| AU · Organisation of power | +09 | −04 | 13 | Diverges | Carries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this. |
| SC · Scale of decision | +04 | +03 | 1 | Agrees | Effectively the same position. Not what an argument between them is about. |
| ID · Rule of membership | +09 | −07 | 16 | Diverges | Carries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this. |
| CH · Method and tempo | +08 | +02 | 6 | Differs | Real difference, but not the dividing line. |
Each axis runs from −10 to +10; the distance is the straight-line separation across all six at once, out of a maximum of 49.0. How the scoring works →
The evidence behind the widest gaps
A distance figure is worth nothing unless the scores behind it can be checked. These are the artefacts supporting the axes that separate these two most.
Hamas · CU +09
At the ceiling: religious authority over social life in the territory it governs.
- Documented act or statuteDress and conduct regulations were imposed in Gaza after 2007.
RSDLP(m) · CU −05
Shared the Bolshevik cultural programme; the split was never about social questions.
- Programme textBoth factions campaigned on universal suffrage including for women, civil marriage and secular schooling.
Hamas · AU +09
Coded +9: won an election and then held no other.
- Documented act or statuteWon the 2006 legislative election, seized sole control of Gaza by force in 2007, and held no election in the following seventeen years.
RSDLP(m) · AU −04
Committed to an open mass party and a constituent assembly, and destroyed by the faction that was not.
- Programme textMartov's 1903 formulation would have admitted any member who assisted the party, against Lenin's requirement of participation in an organisation.
- Documented act or statuteThe party was banned and its leaders exiled or imprisoned by 1921.
What this comparison does not establish
Proximity means similarity of stated position. It carries no claim about competence, circumstance, scale of operation, or what either organisation actually did to the people under it. Two organisations can sit close together and produce entirely different histories, because those things are not on any axis and could not be.
Hamas
1987– · Gaza, West Bank
Armed Palestinian nationalism in an Islamist frame, rejecting the negotiated framework in favour of resistance.
Mensheviks
1903–1921 · Russia
Russia must pass through a bourgeois-democratic stage; socialism cannot be decreed by a minority.
Distance is not the whole answer. Two organisations can sit the same distance apart for entirely different reasons, and the reason is the content of any claim about them. Open the comparison in the atlas to weight the axes yourself.
Open in the atlas