Many popular movements are weakened by in-fighting. One of the most famous examples is the dissolution of the American Equal Rights Association in 1869 because its members disagreed about whether women or black men were to gain the right to vote first, should the opportunity present itself. Some members of the Equal Rights Association were profoundly racist.
There is at least one known instance of the US domestic intelligence service fomenting in-fighting for the purpose of disabling or weakening social movements. Because in-fighting is almost always justified on the grounds of ideological purity, this is evidence that being right is wrong. It is not consistent with achieving stated goals. An organisation’s members might be ideologically-driven, the institution itself must not be.
Managing similarity
Most strife takes place between individuals and institutions which are most similar. Managing similarity involves determinining when that strife has utility and when it is simply self-defeating. The two operative principles are goals and alliances.
Goals
A movement must have a clearly articulated goal and an unambiguous definition of success. If members disagree on ideology but agree on the organization’s goals, they may nevertheless coöperate. This permits a larger tent.
An example of a failed alliance comes from the UK’s women’s suffrage movement. In the early 20th century, women across the nation were mobilised for a new and much more militant phase of the struggle. In particular, offices of the Women’s Social and Political Union were opened in London’s poor East End. However, when suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst expanded the scope of her activism to address the economic plight of the women living there, the leadership of the WSPU ejected her. The leadership (Sylvia’s own mother and sister) apparently had class loyalties that transcended women’s rights. The British government was then able to retire the leadership of the movement by giving only them, and women like them, the right to vote. The first law giving suffrage to women excluded poor women and women under the age of thirty. The last provision is especially cringe-worthy because poor women had short life expectancy relative to educated middle-class women. The schism over class was an epic failure of management of similarity.
The idea presented here is that in order for a movement to achieve its stated goals, it must be willing to ignore orthogonal differences. If some women are too poor or too socialist, then let them have their own organisations, but then let all suffrage organisations work together on their common project.
Alliances
An ally is a person or an organization which shares goals with another person or organisation. An ally may differ in all regards which are orthogonal to the goals. These differences must be tolerated. An ally might even have different reasons for sharing the goal. A humanitarian aide worker and a christian missionary might both work to alleviate poverty. If they quarrel over religious indoctrination, it means that poverty is not the only topic; they have hidden and conflicting goals. It means that they cannot be members of the same organization, but their two independent organizations can coöperate at a low level, say, in digging at least one well, and maybe more.
Successful Examples
Rainbow Coalition
One of history’s most unlikely alliances occurred in racially-divided Chicago of the 1960s. The “Rainbow Coalition” was constituted of gun-toting Black activists, a former hispanic street gang, and a group of white southerners waving confederate flags. They were unified only in their fight against economic discrimination.
1968
A series of student protests against capitalism were unexpectedly bolstered by sympathy strikes run by trade unions. This was the largest general strike in France’s history. This alliance was admittedly short-lived, but that is not the point. The point is that a short-lived, but broad alliance created a waypoint in the French political landscape which is referenced to this day.
Cowboy and Indian Alliance
In 2013, non-native ranchers joined forces with native Americans to defend land that had historically been the source of contention between the two sides. The common threat they faced was the Keystone XL pipeline, a project designed to deliver an unprecedented amount of oil from Canada to mid-western refineries. The combined effort sought to convince the federal government to oppose the project. In 2021, the federal permit for the project was revoked and the energy company abandoned its plans.
Summary
Here is the core concept again: a social movement organisation ought to define itself by its goals, not by its ideology. The reason is that it is possible to recognise when concrete goals have been reached, but it is much more difficult to determine when ideological hegemony has been achieved. Members of an organisation might join for any number of reasons. As long as they agree on the goals of the organisation, they can work together. They can enjoy the strength of numbers and they can see more easily when the leadership has gotten off its rails.