On 11/18/06, Doyle Saylor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Greetings Economists,
On Nov 18, 2006, at 9:32 AM, Jim Devine wrote:
> The rule against
> having cults of personality should be made general.
Doyle;
What rule? There is no such socialist rule. That's important in my
view. What would the rule be based upon?
maybe "rule" is the wrong word. But the old CP decided (after 1956)
that the cult of personality was the key problem under Stalin. Others
decided that the c of p was simply a symptom, not the disease. Again
and again, various leftist groups that started public worship of their
leaders showed that they were diving into sectarianism.
anyway, I think it's bad to put any individual over all others. Back
when I was in a left group, I argued that so-called "democratic
centralism" discipline should be applied first and foremost to the
_leaders_, who were the organization's public face and could use the
organization for their own careerist goals.
--
Jim Devine / "That's free enterprise, friends: freedom to gamble,
freedom to lose. And the great thing -- the truly democratic thing
about it -- is that you don't even have to be a player to lose." --
Barbara Ehrenreich.
