Entryism

Entryism (also called entrism, enterism, infiltration, a French Turn, boring from within, or boring-from-within) is a political strategy in which an organization or state encourages its members or supporters to join another, usually larger, organization in an attempt to expand influence and expand their ideas and program. If the organization being "entered" is hostile to entryism, the entryists may engage in a degree of subterfuge and subversion to hide the fact that they are an organization in their own right.

One entryist strategy that took place in the United States is called the "boring from within" strategy. Radical workers would join established (and often conservative) trade unions and attempt to join their leadership to shift their stances leftward. These workers were called "borers". Boring was opposed by radical workers who supported dual unionism, where radical unions would attempt to win over workers and firm-level union locals from the established trade unions.

Starting in the 1890s, a faction of the Socialist Labor Party – which would split to become the Socialist Party of America – began "boring from within" in an attempt to make the American Federation of Labor (AFL) more radical. In contrast, the Industrial Workers of the World – and another faction of the Socialist Labor Party, close to the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance, which would remain in the party – supported a dual unionist strategy of competing against the AFL within a workplace.

In opposition, Daniel De Leon of the Socialist Labor Party criticized "boring from within only" and supported "boring from within and without". SLP members were encouraged to join the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance and later the Workers' International Industrial Union.

In 1929, the Communist Party of America abandoned "boring from within" the AFL and embraced dual unionism against the AFL.^{[citation needed]} As a result, its labor organization, the Trade Union Educational League (TUEL) became the Trade Union Unity League (TUUL).

The "French Turn" refers to the classic form of entryism advocated by Leon Trotsky in his essays on "The French Turn". In June 1934, he proposed for the French Trotskyists to dissolve their Communist League and to join the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) and for the Communist League to dissolve its youth section to join more easily with revolutionary elements. The tactic was adopted in August 1934, despite some opposition, and successfully raised the group's membership to 300 activists.

Proponents of the tactic advocated that the Trotskyists should enter the social democratic parties to connect with revolutionary socialist currents within them and then to steer those currents toward Leninism. However, entryism lasted briefly since the leadership of the SFIO started to expel the Trotskyists. The Trotskyists of the Workers Party of the United States also successfully used their entry into the Socialist Party of America to recruit their youth group and other members. Similar tactics were also used by Trotskyist organisations in other countries, including the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, and Poland. Entryism was used to connect with and recruit leftward-moving political currents inside radical parties.

Since it was used in France, Marxists have used the tactic even if they had different preconceptions of how long the period of entry would last: