Socialism’s own logic would yield more commanders than subordinates
Evidence
It is questionable whether a socialist order could eventually do without such a priori super-subordination. Socialism postulates that any accidental chance be eliminated from the determination of positions to be occupied, and that individual qualification alone decide the attainment of positions. On the other hand, it also postulates that any talent develop “freely,” that is, that it find the position commensurate with it. From this and from what has been pointed out before, it follows that in socialism there would be more superordinates than subordinates, more persons who command than execute commands. — Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 2820
Categorization
- QUESTION: Simmel’s claim that a free-development socialist order yields more superordinates than subordinates seems to rest on a specific formal argument worth reconstructing—does it depend on the pyramid shape described in earlier paragraphs?
- DEEPTHINKING: Simmel’s inversion of the socialist promise—that eliminating chance and letting talent develop freely collapses the pyramid—is a dense piece of formal social philosophy worth sitting with.
- corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 2820
- XREF: connects to: Authoritarian leaders surround themselves with subordinates who never question them — Arsalan Iftikhar, Fear of a Muslim Planet_ Global…, 327
Broader Connections
- Authoritarian leaders surround themselves with subordinates who never question them
#complicates(0.70) — Arsalan Iftikhar, Fear of a Muslim Planet_ Global…, 327