>Yes. The parallels are spooky, up to and including the all-benevolent
>all-wise leader who could do no wrong...
"Neither of us [Marx and Engels] cares a straw for popularity. A proof of this is, for example, that, because of aversion to any personality cult, I have never permitted the numerous expressions of appreciation from various countries with which I was pestered during the existence of the International to reach the realm of publicity, and have never answered them, except occasionally by a rebuke. When Engels and I first joined the secret Communist Society we made it a condition that everything tending to encourage superstitious belief in authority was to be removed from the statutes. (Later on Lassalle exerted his influence in the opposite direction.)"
Karl Marx in a letter to W. Blos, dated Nov. 10, 1877 from R. Tucker, The Marx-Engels Reader (2nd ed.)
It should be mentioned that Tucker implies in a footnote, referring to Stalin, that personality cults are NOT alien to Marxism or Socialism, a point I take as meaning that they are as liable to such failings as any other social formation/movement.
Todd
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