An intransigent faction functions as party conscience rather than genuine alternative leadership.
Evidence
Although there was a diffuse “Left” within the party, and this even constituted itself briefly as an “intransigent-revolutionary” faction in mid-1917, it overlapped to a great extent with the party leadership. It differed from official policy mainly on issues of “principle” - in its insistence that violence is inevitable as the midwife of revolution; that the reformists collaborating with the committees should be expelled; that the bourgeois notion of the “nation” should be repudiated, etc. The faction did also advocate a more active encouragement of mass resistance to the war, but it never elaborated any really distinct strategy. Although the “intransigent” faction of 1917 was in a sense the forerunner of the communist faction of 1919-20, it was short-lived and acted as the conscience of the party rather than as an alternative, let leadership. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 63
Categorization
- DEFINE: Clarifies what an ‘intransigent-revolutionary’ faction is and why its principled stance, without distinct strategy, fails to become leadership — useful for distinguishing Gramsci’s later notion of organic versus ‘conscience’ leadership.
- XREF: connects to: Member-heavy parties get locked into orthodox stances that alienate the broader electorate — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past: The…, 687