Part 05
In Part 04, I iterated my intention to highlight the differences in the ecology of the strategic planning process of leaders under capitalism and socialism. This part continues and concludes some of the background for understanding the differences. (Obviously, there is a ton more.)
The differences influence the part that ego plays in how a leader operates. My hope is that in by exposing the underbelly of Socialism, the comparisons with Capitalism will become more easily evident. I used the past rather than the present because, if properly motivated, people can more dispassionately dig up the history on their own without having to deal with their biases of the current day.
Frequently, to divert attention, totalitarian ideologues have tended to advance the concept that the Marxist-Leninist system is a political opposite to Mussolini’s Fascist system, as well as to German National Socialism and the various other ‘fascist’ systems in the thirties. (There were a bunch of them.) Mussolini was especially adamant on the point. (But, he was anti-everything.)
Yet the concept of opposites is based on inadequate criteria and even false premises. A spectrum that puts Communism and Fascism/Nazism at diametric extremes distorts reality in significant ways. Yet, rigorous comparisons of the ideologies, in most cases, have not been made. There have been cut short by the Western Intellectuals' Groupthink reverence for the great "intellectual" orthodoxy that Communism was a great and well-meaning experiment (trying to build Utopia) which, unfortunately, "created some excesses." No kidding! More than 100,000,000 "excess" dead!
According to Rummel, "Constructing this utopia was seen as though a war on poverty, exploitation, imperialism, and inequality. And for the greater good, as in a real war, people are killed. And thus this war for the communist utopia had its necessary enemy casualties, the clergy, bourgeoisie, capitalists, wreckers, counter revolutionaries, rightists, tyrants, rich, landlords, and noncombatants that unfortunately got caught in the battle. In a war millions may die, but the cause may be well justified, as in the defeat of Hitler and an utterly racist Nazism. And to many communists, the cause of a communist utopia was such as to justify all the deaths. The irony of this is that communism in practice, even after decades of total control, did not improve the lot of the average person, but usually made their living conditions worse than before the revolution."
Underneath it all, the end they sought was to control the factors of production, just in different ways and with different means. The supreme irony is that all claimed that what they were doing was to free their people from want by redistributing wealth. In fact, their major accomplishment was to institutionalize misery.
The bottom line of this series is that planning, strategic or otherwise, whether in a Capitalist or Socialist framework, implies both control and the power to exercise control. Control implies the existence of two entities: an entity that wields the controlling power and an entity upon which the controlling power is wielded. Further, Control requires the exercise of power and a structure to transmit it between the controller and the controlled.
Strategic planning requires the balancing of ends, ways and means. The basic environment in which the leader does his strategic planning is as important as his abilities because they govern his use of his abilities to lead. They also govern what is available to feed his ego.
In Part 04, I iterated my intention to highlight the differences in the ecology of the strategic planning process of leaders under capitalism and socialism. This part continues and concludes some of the background for understanding the differences. (Obviously, there is a ton more.)
The differences influence the part that ego plays in how a leader operates. My hope is that in by exposing the underbelly of Socialism, the comparisons with Capitalism will become more easily evident. I used the past rather than the present because, if properly motivated, people can more dispassionately dig up the history on their own without having to deal with their biases of the current day.
Frequently, to divert attention, totalitarian ideologues have tended to advance the concept that the Marxist-Leninist system is a political opposite to Mussolini’s Fascist system, as well as to German National Socialism and the various other ‘fascist’ systems in the thirties. (There were a bunch of them.) Mussolini was especially adamant on the point. (But, he was anti-everything.)
Yet the concept of opposites is based on inadequate criteria and even false premises. A spectrum that puts Communism and Fascism/Nazism at diametric extremes distorts reality in significant ways. Yet, rigorous comparisons of the ideologies, in most cases, have not been made. There have been cut short by the Western Intellectuals' Groupthink reverence for the great "intellectual" orthodoxy that Communism was a great and well-meaning experiment (trying to build Utopia) which, unfortunately, "created some excesses." No kidding! More than 100,000,000 "excess" dead!
According to Rummel, "Constructing this utopia was seen as though a war on poverty, exploitation, imperialism, and inequality. And for the greater good, as in a real war, people are killed. And thus this war for the communist utopia had its necessary enemy casualties, the clergy, bourgeoisie, capitalists, wreckers, counter revolutionaries, rightists, tyrants, rich, landlords, and noncombatants that unfortunately got caught in the battle. In a war millions may die, but the cause may be well justified, as in the defeat of Hitler and an utterly racist Nazism. And to many communists, the cause of a communist utopia was such as to justify all the deaths. The irony of this is that communism in practice, even after decades of total control, did not improve the lot of the average person, but usually made their living conditions worse than before the revolution."
Underneath it all, the end they sought was to control the factors of production, just in different ways and with different means. The supreme irony is that all claimed that what they were doing was to free their people from want by redistributing wealth. In fact, their major accomplishment was to institutionalize misery.
The bottom line of this series is that planning, strategic or otherwise, whether in a Capitalist or Socialist framework, implies both control and the power to exercise control. Control implies the existence of two entities: an entity that wields the controlling power and an entity upon which the controlling power is wielded. Further, Control requires the exercise of power and a structure to transmit it between the controller and the controlled.
Strategic planning requires the balancing of ends, ways and means. The basic environment in which the leader does his strategic planning is as important as his abilities because they govern his use of his abilities to lead. They also govern what is available to feed his ego.
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