Hey Matt, I enjoyed your comment and it really got me thinking. I don't really know if people who are obsessed with the power of positional leadership adhere to Marxist or Maoist theory but here are a few thoughts that came to my mind while reading your comment. In a Communist society (really all authoritarian societies) a person who is strictly a positional leader has more opportunity to advance that in a free society. In authoritarian countries the police power of the state is often abused and used in the advancment of a leader. By this I mean that if you control the police power of the state you can "rub out" those who oppose you. (see Josef Stalin vs. Leon Trotsky) In an environment like this you are not dependent on your leadership skills for advancment. Secondly, an authoritarian always controls the propaganda machine. Whoever controls this can do no wrong since they "literally" write the history on a daily basis. Even if you're a poor leader you can just use propadanda to tell everyone that you are a great leader and that's that. The greatest master of propaganda was Josef Goebbels who was Adolf Hitlers Minister of Propaganda. Hitler could get away with virtually anything because as far as the German people knew, he could do no wrong. Which means that he didn't have to rely solely on leadership skills. Obviously it doesn't work in the long run. It's much more effective to advance through the 5 Levels of Leadership. So I guess my point is that any authoritarian society provides a fertile environment for people to abuse positional leadership. Talk to you later, Bert