It's called "pragmatists versus theologians" (or fundamentalists, depending on the translation), and it was extremely common in any left wing movement in Europe

It's called "pragmatists versus theologians" (or fundamentalists, depending on the translation), and it was extremely common in any left wing movement in Europe from the '60s to the '90s. Umberto Eco wrote a fair bit about it. it's not exclusive to left wing movements but historically has been very apparent in such groups[1]. In short, You got a group of people whose main objective is to improve the condition of their community and it's inclined to bend the purity of their message in order to achieve some realistic objective (to the point sometimes of fully betraying the original ideology altogether) And then you got a group of people whose idea is that philosophy trascends their or anyone else life, and the point is the fight itself. As an italian song of the '70s cynically puts it (very loosely trasnlated) "The fight has to be endless, comrade, otherwise I won't be a general for the people anymore." Truth is, you need both of them to make a movement capable of actually going somewhere, despite ironically having in itself the main cause of its own collapse. [1]https://journals.openedition.org/ejpap/1232 https://journals.openedition.org/ejpap/1232