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Fiction. There is no such human tendency.
What?
I'll wait patiently for your refutation of mainstream psychology and biology.
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Leaders are useful when collective effort is required, but leaders do not persist because humans have a "tendency to be led." Leaders persisted first because they were strong and had all the swords, then because they were strong and had all the God, then because they were strong and had all the money. Humans have learned to survive in a world where oppressors demand to be called leaders. That does not mean that humans have a "tendency to be led."
Collective effort is permanently required. And your summary of history, whilst poetic, is equally levied at any system of governance including communism. For any system of governance to be effective, it needs to be enforecable (swords), it needs to be approved of by much of the populace (God) and it needs to actually provide something (money). "The establishment" has always had the swords, God and money all at the same time. Take those away, and you get anarchy. In modern liberal countries, the 'establishment' is a set of rules or a constitution. Trump can't run into the streets with a Kalashnikov and go fucking mental because the establishment would take him down using its swords (the police/military) and its God (the condemnation of everyone) and its money (with which it pays the police).
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And now it's long past time to improve things still further. Things are not as good as they can be just because they're better than they once were. The feudal serf may be better off than a slave, but that doesn't mean that feudalism is a good system.
It doesn't make communism a good system either. Life will continue to improve because technology improves and people become more liberal, more educated and more democratic. Communism isn't democratic, otherwise we would have voted for it already.
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Nothing about the job of a CEO requires them to be positioned within the ruling class. The job could just as easily be done by someone earning a more modest living, with an equal say in governance.
- A CEO's position is defined as being in charge, and necessitates them having control over more resources than the ordinary person. As a side effect, that gives them more political power, which is unfortunate but I don't see that communism is the best answer to that. Rather, it's fixed with better regulation and enforcement, and better cultural education. The CEO of today tends to be more egalitarian and liberal than the CEO of fifty years ago, partly because of more public scrutiny (thanks to social media and information technology) and partly just because that's how our culture as a whole has moved.
- The amount that a CEO earns could be reduced if it didn't affect their productivity so much that the benefit was outweighed by the cost to his company, its employees and the wealth the company generates. In general, pay grades are necessary. The main reason today for too-high CEO wages is often not simply because they paid themselves too much ("Yes it is!" calm down.), but because companies are in competition to keep the most qualified people. In other cases it IS because they're paying themselves too much for no reason, and that results in incompetent people making our banks bankrupt and then awarding themselves obscene bonuses for it. But that behavior isn't sustainable - it destroys the organisation and it attracts widespread hostile attention that ultimately leads to them being removed and more competent people in their place being rewarded in a more logical manner. Again, economic selection.
- The president or prime minister of a country has a job comparable to a CEO, and instead of economic selection (s)he faces democratic selection. That's why I'm discussing CEOs. But CEOs are relevant in their own right because they are leaders of their own hierarchy of people and resources and represent an effective structure that is repeated across capitalist society.
Capitalism gives us science and facts because the companies with the most truth win. Democracy gives us rights and values and regulates capitalism so that people benefit.
A Communist society does not necessarily have a planned economy. It may have a managed economy, with restrictions on profit, but there's no need to have the government set the price of every good.
I already live in a managed economy. The workplace is heavily regulated, the rich are taxed significantly more than me and various services are provided by the state. Various levies are used to influence the flow of money, as well as financial watchdogs that enforce economic regulations. Personally, I preferred it a few years ago when we were a little more to the left and we were still in the EU. But that's the flipside of democracy, sometimes the group will decide something you don't like.
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Corporations only compete in the marketplace. When they're dictating how the government will function, they work together.
If two people are working cooperating while trying to kill you, it doesn't matter that they root for different sports teams.
That's why I advocate regulated capitalism and not free market capitalism. Again I sense you are merging everyone with any money or power into an amalgamated singular consciousness. Most CEOs aren't evil. Most were brought up with normal egalitarian values and believe their corporation is benefiting people.
Competition is what drives investment in the very scientific research and technology that is responsible for so much good. Without market competition, you can ensure you get the lab results that back up your preconceived communist ideals (google Lysenkosim). Result, people starve but no worries, because you can just make an excuse and do it some more. Do that in the marketplace and your corporation goes bust, and then you no longer have the means to keep doing it.
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Except every few years, you just elect new leaders. Similar to how capitalist governments do it, except under communism, those leaders actually would be answerable to the people, rather than to the capitalists.
The people are capitalist.
Communist leaders are less answerable to the people, not more, thanks to their habit of instilling a personality cult and requiring more authoritarian control. Nothing about communism makes a society more democratic.
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The 21,000 people who die of starvation every day might disagree about how well capitalism is working.
So might the the growing percentage of the first world population which is living with poverty and disenfranchisement.
A great many more would die under attempted communism. Regulated capitalism is a process - the world won't be fixed overnight and it isn't there yet. But the rate of improvement, culturally and economically, is clearly fastest under regulated capitalism.
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If you're arguing that the job of CEO is possible to do poorly, and that a poor performance by a CEO will (occasionally) lead to a failed business, I agree. That's fairly trivial. Of course, as I said above, nothing about the job of CEO requires that the person doing the job be propelled into the ruling class of society. They could just as easily do their job well (or poorly) if they made a modest living. And hey! There wouldn't be any incentive for corruption or nepotism if the job wasn't so lucrative.
Yes there would, the incentive for corruption would be to make their job more lucrative than it was. And there wouldn't be the motivation to take on the workload and responsibility of a CEO, either.
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Not that it matters either way. The company that succeeds will be whichever one was lucky enough to hire the person who has an amazing idea that their CEO will take credit for.
There is no way we can falsify that. I believe it does happen, but not in a majority of cases.
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Steve Wozniak is a genius.
Steve Jobs was a leech, and the world is better without him.
Not sure of the details involved, no time to find out, and it doesn't matter - it's anecdotal evidence.
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The wage gap has steadily increased for decades. Cost of living has steadily risen. The idea that that plight of the poor is improving is demonstrably, mathematically false.
If wealth (as in anything with a positive h/s impact) is absolute and not relative, the wage gap is irrelevant if capitalism works. The cost of living will always increase, that's also irrelevant. The salient metric is working class wealth in absolute terms or, if you like, income relative to the cost of living. Money is an intermediary without intrinsic value. In short, do I have more access to food, water, services and leisure than my forebears? Obviously so.
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*Entirely. Entirely caused by Western military adventure.
Countries that are corrupt are often corrupt because we propped up corrupt leaders. Countries that are poor are poor because we stole their resources, then imposed capitalism upon them.
How convenient. How is it that you do not allow other countries to make their own mistakes? If their country's gone to shit, it must always be our fault. If you want to talk about propping up destructive leaders, who's propping up the leaders of Syria and North Korea? Russia and China. Also, there's no 'we'. If you're referring to the colonial period, then yes. But governance and capitalism today is unrecognisable from what it was then. Our culture and our values have changed, systems have improved. And there was plenty of misery and barbarism in the world before "we" turned up. The Indian caste system isn't democratic or good for the poor, nor is the monarchy of Saudi Arabia.
