Atlas / Comparisons / Mensheviks vs Peronism
Mensheviks and Peronism
Measured distance across six axes
Different families with real common ground. They agree within three points on EC, SC, CH. They diverge by eight points or more on CU, AU, ID.
Axis by axis
| Axis | RSDLP(m) | Justicialism | Gap | Reading | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EC · Economic organisation | −08 | −05 | 3 | Agrees | Effectively the same position. Not what an argument between them is about. |
| CU · Social and cultural order | −05 | +03 | 8 | Diverges | Carries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this. |
| AU · Organisation of power | −04 | +06 | 10 | Diverges | Carries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this. |
| SC · Scale of decision | +03 | +06 | 3 | Agrees | Effectively the same position. Not what an argument between them is about. |
| ID · Rule of membership | −07 | +04 | 11 | Diverges | Carries the disagreement. Any claim that these two are alike has to explain this. |
| CH · Method and tempo | +02 | +01 | 1 | Agrees | Effectively the same position. Not what an argument between them is about. |
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) · 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.
Justicialism · CU +03
Coded mildly traditional: women's suffrage and social rights alongside a Catholic corporatist frame.
- Documented act or statuteWomen received the vote in 1947 and a women's branch of the party was created.
- Documented act or statuteDivorce was legalised in 1954 during the conflict with the church and repealed after the 1955 coup.
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.
Justicialism · AU +06
Coded +6: elected, and hostile to the institutions that could check it.
- Documented act or statuteThe supreme court was impeached and replaced in 1947; the main opposition newspaper was expropriated in 1951.
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.
Peronism
1946– · Argentina
Social justice, economic independence and political sovereignty, delivered by a leader speaking directly for the shirtless masses.
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