[Marx and Engels] made no fetish of unbroken unity [...]. But the splits which they considered natural were not the artificial splits of an ideological wing which is out to unfurl an abstract programmatic banner. The splits they expected were those arising organically as the mass level rose. They expected such splits from two directions: from bourgeoisified elements who objected to a class line and a class-struggle course of development of the movement; and from sect-ideologists who saw the class movement moving away from their own special nostrums and prescriptions for it. They expected that either such elements would split away, or that the healthy class elements would have to split with them; but however it came about formally, the line of organizational demarcation was never to be special programmatic views of an ideological vanguard for its own sake (i.e. program in the abstract) but rather the political meaning, in terms of ongoing social struggle, of the political level of the development reached by the movement of the class (i.e. program in the concrete, program as concretized in the real class struggle going on).
Draper, H. [1971] (1998) ‘Toward a New Beginning – On Another Road: The Alternative to the Micro-Sect’, What Next?, 10. Available at: https://www.whatnextjournal.org.uk/Pages/Back/Wnext10/Draper.html (Accessed: 10 July 2026).
