In order to carry out a struggle against bureaucracy, Lenin advocated the setting up of a “Commission on Workers and Peasants Inspection” (RABKRIN), as the highest arbiter and guardian of party morality and as a weapon against alien elements in the Soviet state apparatus. At the centre of RABKRIN, Lenin placed a man whom he respected for his organi... See more

Friedrich Engels long ago explained that in any society in which art, science, and government are the preserve of a minority, that minority will use and abuse its position in its own interests. Because of the isolation of the revolution in a backward country the Bolsheviks were obliged to call on the services of a host of former tsarist officials t... See more

The adoption by the provincial gentry of literati ideals (and bureaucratic ambitions) was a vital stage in China’s transition from a semi-feudal society, where power was wielded by great landholders, into an agrarian empire. What made that possible was an imperial system that relied much less on the coercive power of the imperial centre (a clumsy a

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