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    Nascent political movements tend to contain several different types of people, each with their own aims. It also seems that almost any moderately successful (in terms of popular knowledge of its existence) movement invariably develops these opposed factions whom all claim to be the true voice of the movement, and, in most cases, spend so much time fighting amongst themselves that none of the aims of any of the groups are ever achieved.

For the purposes of my own thinking about these movements, I have broadly broken the groups into three factions, each of which is identifiable by their means. I have tentatively termed them the critics, the revolutionaries and the reformers.

Critics

These tend to come first in any movement, and may predate the common conception of a “movement” by decades or even centuries. The Critics tend to see themselves as philosophers, and are either viewed as they wish by the rest of the world, or if not, as harmless wackos. In any case, it is exceedingly rare for a Critic to initially be taken seriously upon promulgation of their criticism. They are generally ignored, and lie in wait for the right time and level of disaffection to render them suddenly potent.

Critics, at least the original round of them, tend to not have much in the way of identifiable goals or ends, or if they do, the means they propose are often badly out of date, having been mired in the particulars of the time they wrote, not when they were “discovered” by the vanguard of some movement.

After being discovered, and finally taken seriously, they usually spawn a group of intellectual followers who use their insights as an ongoing critique of the current situation or stance against whatever the movement has identified as the enemy, the Other, no matter how different a situation or time the original thoughts were conceived in.

This second wave of Critics are destined to become -ists. Karl Marx famously said “I know one thing for certain, I am not a Marxist.” (Marx is unusual in that he was still alive to see the second-order Critics, Revolutionaries and Reformers that his ideas spawned.)
Revolutionaries

The revolutionary faction of any movement (and I use “revolutionary” here very broadly - taking in all those who propagate utopian fantasies under the new system as well as those who are actually agitating/fighting in the streets/manning the barricades) tends to be made up of the youngest and least-informed (both of the wider world their ideals must exist in and of their own intellectual heritage) adherents to the cause.

They are, almost without fail, interested solely in what the revolution/movement/cause will bring to them, though they are often only superficially aware of this motivation, and are always cloaked in the rhetoric of liberation and people and solidarity. They are many times ignorant of the actual works of the Critics whose ideas they claim to espouse, and are almost always ignorant of any intellectual thought prior to the Original Critic, either pro- or con-.

When their agitation is successful, resulting in an uprising or overthrow, they tend to style themselves as philosopher-kings or warrior princes of the people. Outwardly they are almost always seen as dictators and despots. It is a source of continuing amazement to all the world when such a revolutionary group does not immediately set up an oppressive regime and so spark a never-ending series of coups and counter-revolutions. (Seriously, I challenge you to name five such revolutions, or for my fellow Americans, to name one other than the American Revolution.)

Reformers

Reformers within a movement like to think of themselves as either Critics or Revolutionaries, and are invariably late to the Party. In most cases however, they are the only ones who ever accomplish anything lasting, and their success, if there is any, is due to simply ignoring the other two factions and getting on with it. They are always decried viciously by the Revolutionaries as being sell-outs and collaborators.

So, what does any of this mean? Probably not much, but I am poking at the edges of it, trying to see if it actually fits, if it is a useful way to categorize the various currents within a  movement.