Date: Wed, 29 Oct 1997 10:37:56 -0800 (PST)
From: oldmole-AT-pseud.pseud
Subject: Re: M-INTRO: Leadership in a Marxist Society....


At 09:45 AM 10/29/97 MST, Jazzman-AT-pseud.pseud wrote:
[snip]
>What does Marx think about the leadership of the society?
>It seems to me that to practice what I have read thus far you would 
>need a perfect, uncorruptable leader.
>
Actually, the opposite. What Marx sought was a society in which the messy,
unpredictable character of democratic institutions would make it impossible
for any one "leader" or group of "leaders" to dominate. Capitalist society
moves more and more toward centralized administrative control (presidential
or prime ministerial power, "strong mayors", etc.) because its only the
state which binds the warring factions of capitalists together and keeps
them from cutting each others' throats. A society organized democratically
from below would have much less need of "leaders."

This isn't to say that there's no such thing as leadership, and wouldn't
continue to be such a thing in any society we can imagine. It's just that
there's a big difference between leading and giving orders. If there's one
lesson anyone should be able to draw from the collapse of the Soviet Union,
regardless of what they may think about what it was or how it got that way,
it's that a system based on top-down management with no democratic control
from below just plain doesn't work very well.

oldmole



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