Click here to access article by Ramin Mazaheri from The Greanville Post.
Mazaheri continues to expand on the thesis (inspired by a recent author, who was inspired by many others) that successful democratic leaders are able to lead the people by listening to them and formulating actions to guide them in achieving more influence over their lives in opposition to serving the interests of relatively tiny social classes that have attained coercive power over entire societies.
The history of humans since civilization began (roughly the last 10,000 years of our 200,000 year existence) with the end of the nomadic hunting and fishing groups and the establishment of settled, agrarian societies is the history of class rule. The basis of these classes that ruled over societies has been sheer power, that is, the coercive means of getting people to behave the way those who have power want them to behave. Ultimately such power often takes the form of violence.
This means that a tiny ruling class uses the rest of the population of societies to serve their interests. Thus we have witnessed during the last 10,000 years class-ruled societies ranging from military chieftains who used sheer physical violence (or the threat of it) to dominate societies, to divine authorities (spiritual leaders who were believed to have secured exclusive access to various all-powerful gods or supernatural forces) or some combination of the two (as seen under feudalism), to what we have today--the establishment of ruling classes based on the "ownership" of economic property. Although the latter form of class rule attempts to conceal or "legitimate" the use of violence with courts and laws, they ultimately intimidate others into compliance with the threat of violence (think of police and military forces) to enforce their rule.
In an attempt to argue against the "great man" version of history propagated by our current capitalist masters, I think that he may have overstated his argument and thereby understated the benefits of certain people who have special insights about guiding people (together with the ability to communicate such ideas) to take effective actions against their class oppressors and to establish societies in which people can live in harmony with each other and the environment. Clearly no such one person has ever existed which is a fact that the "great man" version tries to undermine. We all are gifted to a greater or lessor extent over a whole range of virtues, and no one person can have a monopoly on the virtue of leadership. That reality is what fundamentally makes us a social animal.
