Can a Social Democrat be Sectarian, and Can Sectarianism Exist within Social Democracy?
Irving Howe declared sectarianism a waste. If by waste he meant that it was ineffective, he was wrong. Sectarianism can be politically effective; the Jewish settlers are a partial proof of that. Partial, because we cannot tell whether they are effective as sectarians, cut off from mainstream Israeli society, or whether they are effective as sectorialists. But Howe presented the perspective of a social democratone who is committed to democracy. From this perspective there are two questions to be addressed: Can a social democrat be sectarian? Can a social democrat be sectorialist? My short answer to the first question is, No. My short answer to the second is, It depends. Unfortunately, these short answers are distinctly unhelpful. It is obvious that the ideal type of a social democrat (say a composed picture of Hjalmar Branting of Sweden, Jean Jaurs of France, and Hugh Gaitskell of Britain) is a negation of the sectarian mind in all its features: the elitist disregard of numbers, the Man
