>Frankly, when I typed my reply to Walter looking at his words, I felt that some association is right here and suddenly I saw it. By the way, first time I got a glimpse of the book (it was around 1980, when I was in college) it was hugely realistic, to the most awful point. Nobody believed at that time that Soviet Union will ever disappear.

Ah, it was about USSR? When I read it in 1973, it seemed to me like any other movement which creates its own hierarchy, seeing it as a means for victory, and then being ridden by that hierarchy happily ever after. No matter what you have in this hierarchy - military rank, commissars, priests, or just golf club or party cadres, nomenklatura or whatever they get called, the first result is to subvert the idea.

So you get a rich church preaching poverty, you get so-called communists living in luxury while their workers (who are "in power") barely have a roof, you get rich charities which stage gala fundraiser all-tux events while their activists rattle tin cans on the streets... the same story over and over again.

What I don't understand is why do the people fall for it each time? Why are the only ones who recognize the scheme as it takes its first steps in the wrong direction only those who expect to profit from it?