Atlas / Comparisons / Mensheviks vs National Socialism
Mensheviks and National Socialism
Measured distance across six axes
Opposite ends of the recorded space. No axis places them within three points of each other. They diverge by eight points or more on EC, CU, AU, ID.
Axis by axis
| Axis | RSDLP(m) | NSDAP | Gap | Reading | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EC · Economic organisation | −08 | +02 | 10 | Diverges | Carries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this. |
| CU · Social and cultural order | −05 | +09 | 14 | Diverges | Carries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this. |
| AU · Organisation of power | −04 | +10 | 14 | Diverges | Carries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this. |
| SC · Scale of decision | +03 | +09 | 6 | Differs | Real difference, but not the dividing line. |
| ID · Rule of membership | −07 | +10 | 17 | Diverges | Carries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this. |
| CH · Method and tempo | +02 | +09 | 7 | 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.
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.
NSDAP · EC +02
Ownership stayed private and was pushed further private, while allocation was directed by the state for rearmament. That combination sits just right of the midpoint, not at either pole.
- Programme textThe 1920 twenty-five point programme demanded nationalisation of trusts, profit-sharing and land expropriation without compensation.
- Documented act or statuteHitler declared the programme unalterable in 1926 and none of its collectivist points were enacted.
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.
NSDAP · CU +09
Social order was to be reconstituted on racial hierarchy, with women's role restricted by policy and all autonomous civil association dissolved.
- Documented act or statuteMarried women were pushed out of the professions from 1933 and awarded the Mother's Cross for childbearing from 1938.
- Documented act or statuteYouth, professional and leisure organisations were merged into party bodies under the Gleichschaltung laws of 1933–34.
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.
Mensheviks
1903–1921 · Russia
Russia must pass through a bourgeois-democratic stage; socialism cannot be decreed by a minority.
National Socialism
1920–1945 · Germany
A racially defined national community, hierarchy by blood, conquest of living space, extermination of designated enemies.
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.
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