Yoshie wrote:
In the days of Lenin, Mao, Ho, Mossadegh, Arbenz, Castro, etc., the gap in class backgrounds between leaders and masses was enormous. Generally, the leaders came from petit-bourgeois families of doctors and lawyers, when a majority of the population were either illiterate or functionally illiterate. Today, the class backgrounds of many nationalist leaders -- Evo and Lula, most obviously, but also Chavez, Ahmadinejad, Putin, etc. -- are much lower than the 20st-century socialist and nationalist leaders: they come from working-class family backgrounds and have risen through education, state bureaucracy, and/or union/movement bureaucracy.
I think it was Aristotle (or someone even earlier!) who pointed out a paradox here. Middle- or upper-class leaders are less likely to be corrupted than are those who rise to the top from the working and poor classes. That's because middle- and upper-class types already have the money, power, and influence while those from the working and poor classes find it easy to fall for the temptation of bribes or undue perps. I'm not saying that Evo or Lula is personally corrupt, but some of the deputies may well be. Evo hasn't been in office long enough, but Lula has. The corruption of the second rank can be extremely important. (There's an old phenomenon I know from Chicago: hizzoner da Mare Richard J. Daley of da Great City of Chicaga wasn't personally corrupt, but his cronies...) This doesn't say that the working class shouldn't come to power. However, it does say that party discipline should be applied to the leaders. (BTW, I reverse standard "Leninism": disciplining the leadership is more important than disciplining the rank and file.) -- Jim Devine / "To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." -- Nuremberg Tribunal
