Atlas / Comparisons / Likud vs Mensheviks
Likud 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 EC, CU, AU, ID.
Axis by axis
| Axis | Likud | RSDLP(m) | Gap | Reading | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EC · Economic organisation | +06 | −08 | 14 | Diverges | Carries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this. |
| CU · Social and cultural order | +06 | −05 | 11 | Diverges | Carries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this. |
| AU · Organisation of power | +05 | −04 | 9 | Diverges | Carries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this. |
| SC · Scale of decision | +03 | +03 | 0 | Agrees | Effectively the same position. Not what an argument between them is about. |
| ID · Rule of membership | +07 | −07 | 14 | Diverges | Carries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this. |
| CH · Method and tempo | −03 | +02 | 5 | 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.
Likud · EC +06
Market-oriented: the 2003 reforms under the current prime minister as finance minister were among the deepest in Israeli history.
- Documented act or statuteThe 2003 emergency economic plan cut transfer payments, raised the retirement age and privatised state holdings.
RSDLP(m) · EC −08
Coded within one point of the Bolsheviks: the disagreement was about sequence and method, not about ownership.
- Programme textBoth factions accepted the same Second Congress programme of 1903 on socialisation of the means of production.
Likud · CU +06
Coded +6: traditionalist coalition politics with a secular liberal party history.
- Documented act or statuteGoverns in coalition with parties committed to religious authority over personal status law.
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.
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.
Likud
1973– · Israel
Security-first nationalism, settlement of the West Bank, free-market economics, judicial restraint.
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