[lbo-talk] Revolutionary Leaders (was Iran Poll)

Bill Bartlett billbartlett at aapt.net.au
Fri Oct 26 18:13:08 PDT 2007


At 2:27 PM -0400 26/10/07, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:


>On 10/11/07, Bill Bartlett <billbartlett at aapt.net.au> wrote:
>> At 8:08 AM -0400 11/10/07, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>>
>> >Generally speaking, both populist and socialist leaders often come
>> >from the petit-bourgeois class (such as lawyers, military officers,
>> >medical doctors, and so on, and nowadays clerics also). That is so
>> >because leaders of revolution, be it a war of position or a war of
>> >maneuver, must be intellectuals, whether they are formally or
>> >informally educated. This won't change until the working class get
>> >better educated.
>>
>> But when the working class get better educated, you call them "petit
> > bourgeois"... Its catch-22.

[...]


>Why is it that revolutionary leaders tend to come from the middling
>sort? Because they are better educated and more ambitious than those
>below them and yet those above them block their advancement in the
>existing order.

No, its merely because you *define* them as middle class solely on the basis that they are better educated or have more than base ambitions. The second a person becomes a candidate for leadership, they cease to be working class according to your very conception of working class.

Reading between the lines, I suspect that you subconsciously hold the working class in contempt, and you cannot reconcile this conception of working class with any person of education or noble ambitions. Your class analysis is not only a tad irrational, but also self-loathing. Since you are apparently working class yourself. (Try not to view it as an insult that I have called you working class.)

Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas



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