“The Jewish Phenomenon,” Economic Success and Fabulous Wealth

Two percent of the US population, about 6 million of America’s 300 million people, are Jewish (in the world of 6 billion people, there are only 13 million Jews, only one-fifth of 1%).

• The banking Medici Dynasty was behind the Renaissance and they were Jewish. 400 hundred years later, the banking Rothschild Dynasty was founded by a German Jew. 
• The American Rockefeller Dynasty was founded by a German Jew. 
• Chicago School of Economics was founded by Austrian Jews. 
• The banking powerhouse JP Morgan founded by a Jew. 
• Various sources of influential ideas around the world were started and are run by Jews. 
• Cecil John Rhodes and his close friend Alfred Beit were British and German Jews, respectively. 
• Anglo American Corporation was founded by Ernest Oppenheimer, originally a German Jew. 
• The powerful media houses (Economist magazine, Financial Times newspaper, Forbes magazine, Fortune magazine, New York Times newspaper, Washington Times newspaper, etc) around the world are owned by Jews.
• Facebook was started and is owned by a Jew, Mark Zuckerberg (an almuni of "Alpha Epsilon Pi," a Jewish college fraternity and born to a dentist father and psychiatric mother who later became a business development manager of her husband); 
• Google was started and is owned by Jews Sergey Brin of Russian origin (born to a mathematician father and economist mother) and Larry Page (born to a professor of computer science father and computer programming teacher); 
• Andre Citroen, a French entrepreneur and pioneering car manufacturer; 
• Larry King, former anchorman of CNN.  

Some more prominent are:

• Roman Abramovich, a Russian Jew; 
• George Soros, Wall Street investor and foreign currency speculator, Austrian Jew; 
• Alan Greenspan, Chairman and president of Townsend-Greenspan, economic consulting firm; former Federal Reserve Chairman; 
• Marcus Goldman, co-founder of Goldman Sachs investment bank; 
• Samuel Sachs, co-founder of Goldman Sachs investment bank; 
• Calvin Klein, Founder and CEO of Calvin Klein; 
• Ralph Lauren, Founder of Polo Ralph Lauren; 
• Bernard Marcus, co-founder of Home Depot, Inc; 
• Howard Schultz, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Starbucks Coffee; 
• Julius Rosenwald, President and Chairman of the Board of Sears; 
• Herbert Allen, Jr., CEO of entertainment investment house Allen & Company; 
• Edgar Bronfman Jr., CEO of Seagram, Viacom; 
• Barry Diller, CEO of 20th Century Fox and QVC; 
• Gerald Levin, Time Warner, CEO of HBO; Michael Eisner, CEO of Disney; 
• David Geffen, co-founder of Dreamworks, CEO of Geffen Records; 
• Jeffrey Katzenberg, co-founder of Dreamworks, Disney; 
• Sumner Redstone, chairman of CBS and Viacom; 
• Michael Ovitz, President of Disney, founder of CAA; 
• Isaac Perlmutter, CEO of Marvel Entertainment;  
• Steven Spielberg, co-founder of Dreamworks; 
• Harry Cohn, founder of Columbia Pictures; 
• William Fox, founder of Fox Film Corporation; 
• Carl Laemmle, founder of Universal Pictures; 
• Louis B. Mayer, founder of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; 
• Sidney Sheinberg, executive of MCA; 
• Sam Warner, co-founder of Warner Brothers Studios; 
• Lew Wasserman, founder of MCA; 
• Harvey Weinstein, Co-founder of Miramax; 
• Bob Weinstein, Co-founder of Miramax; 
• Adolph Zukor, founder of Paramount Pictures; 
• Leonard Goldenson, president of ABC; 
• Les Moonves, CBS President; 
•  William S. Paley, Founder And CEO of CBS; 
• David Sarnoff, founder of NBC, general manager of RCA; 
• Laurence Tisch, CEO of CBS; 
• Jeff Zucker, NBC President; 
• Adolph Ochs, executive of New York Times; 
• Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr., New York Times executive; 
• Mortimer Zuckerman, publisher of U.S. News and World Report and New York Daily News; 
• Katharine Graham of the Washington Post; 
• Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft; 
• Michael Dell, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Dell; 
• Lawrence Ellison, Founder of Oracle Corporation. 

Jews are no different from anyone else with regards to being human beings and intelligence, yet:

1. The percentage of Jewish households with income greater than US$50,000 is double that of non-Jews.
2. The percentage of Jewish households with income less than US$20,000 is half that of non-Jews.
3. The Jewish advantage in economic status is very high among households of similar age, composition and location.
4. By the 1990s, Jews were hugely over-represented among the very wealthy, when they comprised more than a quarter of the people on the Forbes Magazine list of the richest four hundred Americans, 45% of the top 40 richest Americans, and one-third of all American multimillionaires
5. 20% of professors at leading universities are Jewish.
6. 40% of partners in the leading law firms in New York and Washington are Jewish!
7. 30% of American Nobel prize winners in science and 25 percent of all American Nobel winners are Jewish. In the period 1901–1962 16% of Nobel prize-winners for science were Jewish.
8. Jews constitute 2% of the USA population but are the source of over 40% of political funding. Therefore the Jewish political influence is through 3 activities - campaigning, voting and financial contributions.
9. In many cases, Jews earned their American success in only one or two generations in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
10. Jews enjoy 75% of the $50 billion worth of foods sold in the United States each year.
11. In 1890, there were few Jews practicing in law or medicine in New York City. By 1900, there were 400-600 Jewish doctors in the city and several thousand in teaching and other professions.
12. In the 1930s, 55% of doctors, 64% of dentists, and 65% of lawyers in New York City were Jewish. This was in spite of quotas restricting the admittance of Jews to institutions of higher learning.
13. They estimated the world population of Jews in 1938 at 18 million and the world population of European non-Jewish whites at 718 million, and calculated that Jews were over-represented by a factor of approximately 6.6.
14. Jews have been about half of the world’s top rated chess grandmasters between 1851 and 2000 (Rubinstein, 2004) and of the champion American bridge players and theoreticians (Storfer, 1990).
15. In the 20th century, Jews have been greatly over-represented in a number of countries among intellectual elites and in the higher socio-economic status occupations. In Austria in the years between the two World Wars Jews were approximately 3.5% of the population but were 27.3% of university professors (Fraenkel, 1967). In Germany between 1918 and 1933, Jews were 0.78% of the population but were 16% of the doctors, 15% of the dentists, 25% of the lawyers, 50% of the theatre directors and occupied 80% of the leading positions in the Berlin stock ex- change (Gordon, 1984; Slezkine, 2004). In Poland in 1931, Jews were 10.2% of the population but were 56% of the doctors in private practice, 33% of the lawyers, and 24% of the pharmacists (Slezkine, 2004). In Russia during the period 1917–1939 Jews were approximately 1.8% of the population, while Jews were 9% of the officers in military academies, 15% of the university graduates, 11% of the doctors and 14% of the university professors (Slezkine, 2004).
16. In Britain, the numbers of Jews and non-Jewish whites possessing large wealth in the period from 1809– 1939 have been examined from probate returns on death by Rubinstein (2000). He has found 199 such individuals of whom 28 were Jews (14.1%). The average number of Jews in the population during this period was approximately 0.4%, so Jews were 28.4 times over-represented among the very wealthy. Prais and Schmool (1975) calculated that 10% of Jews and 4% of non-Jewish whites were in the higher professions in 1961, and hence Jews were over-represented by a factor of 2.5. In a later study, Tropp (1991) examined the numbers and proportions of Jews in eleven of the major professions around 1985. He found that the percentage of Jews ranged from 1.3% among chartered surveyors to 7.8 among opthalmic opticians. At this time there were approximately 322,000 Jews in the United Kingdom in the total population of 56,379,000 (the figure in the 1981 census). Thus, in 1985 Jews were approximately 0.6% of the population. Even among chartered surveyors Jews were over-represented by a factor of 2.2, while among opthalmic opticians Jews were over-represented by a factor of 13.0.
17. As early as 1908 Jews began to outperform non-Jewish whites in the entrance tests for universities that were first constructed by the College Entrance Examination Board in 1899. Increasing numbers were gaining admission to the Ivy League colleges (eight private institutions of higher education often viewed by the public as some of the most prestigious universities worldwide and are often ranked amongst the best universities in the United States and worldwide comprising of  Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Yale University). In 1908 the percentages of Jews in all colleges and at Harvard were 7% and 6%, respectively, and by 1919 this had increased to 20% of the students at Harvard and about the same figure at Yale, Brown and Pennsylvania, while at Columbia 40% of the students were Jewish (Slezkine, 2004).
18. From 1957 through 1990 the average annual earnings of Jewish men were about 130% of those of non-Jewish whites (in 1990 $36,700 for Jews and $28,080 for non-Jewish whites) (Chiswick, 1985; Kosmin & Lachman, 1993, p. 260).
19. It has been found that Jews are considerably over-represented among the eminent in the United States. Weyl (1966) calculated that Jews were over-represented by a factor of 4.48 in seven reference books of the eminent (e.g. Who’s Who in America, American Men and Women of Science, Who’s Who in Finance and Industry, etc.). In an updated analysis of Who’s Who in America for the years 1994–5, McDermott (2002) has calculated that Jews were over-represented by a factor of 16.62.
20. According to a report by Will Maslow of the American Jewish Congress, “The percentage of Jews . . . who involve themselves in party affairs as policymakers and fund-raisers, is probably higher than that of any other racial, religious or ethnic group. The result is that Jews play a role in the political life of the country whose significance far transcends their proportion of the total population.”
21. Jewish writer Lenni Brenner has noted the actual voting power of American Jews is nearly twice their numbers: “They vote in greater proportions than any other ethnic or religious grouping. Ninety-two percent of all Jews vote in national elections compared to only 54 percent of the people as a whole. Jews may only be 10.6 percent of New York State, but they are between 16 percent and 20 percent of the voters.”
22. Up to 80% of eligible Jewish voters turned out to vote in the 2004 presidential election, compared to 50% of the electorate as a whole. In addition, registered Jews are twice as likely to vote. Combining the two multiplies Jewish voting power by a factor of three. Furthermore, 81 percent of Jews live in only nine states [New York, New Jersey, Florida, Massachusetts, Maryland, Connecticut, California, Pennsylvania and Illinois] making them a significant political bloc, especially on the national level. In presidential elections, those nine states cast 202 of the 535 votes in the Electoral College. Thus, the Jewish population could provide a swing vote in any close presidential election.

What is the source of all this Jewish economic success and wealth?

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The Jewish Perspective on Wealth

Steven Silbiger, The Jewish Phenomenon: Seven Keys to the Enduring Wealth of a People (2009)

Dr. Sowell discovered, "Even when neither education nor age is a factor, Jews earn more." Among families headed by males with four or more years of college and aged 35 to 45, Jews still earn 75% higher incomes than the national average with the same demographics. If it were as simple as just getting an education or developing verbal confidence, just two of the keys, Jewish success would have been emulated years ago.

One of Steven Silbiger's more compelling theses holds that the outsider mentality common to most Jews, as a minority, not only shapes independent thinkers, it also motivates people to prove themselves and gain acceptance. Fundamentally, according to Silbiger, Jews are rebels with a cause - whether it's Albert Einstein and the Theory of Relativity or Ruth Handler and her groundbreaking Barbie doll.

To support his point, Steven Silbiger quotes Sigmund Freud, who, in his "Self Portrait," wrote that the anti-Semitism he encountered in medical school "produced one important result. At a rather early date, I became aware of my destiny: to belong to the critical minority as opposed to the unquestioning majority. A certain independence of judgment was therefore developed."

Steven Silbiger contrasts the religious Jewish upbringing with the Christian religious upbringing, noting that in religious classes Jewish children are encouraged to ask questions. Christian children are given answers and are often discouraged from asking questions - often, to question is the near occasion of sin, an indication of lack of faith. This sets a vastly different foundation for the Jewish child versus the Christian child. Steven Silbiger theorizes that the Jewish child will carry this attitude of questioning on into the rest of his life, and this leads to a willingness to look at situations in new ways, to try new things, to be an entrepreneur. (Interestingly, Steven Silbiger claims that Jewish people, in defiance of the usual trend, typically become more liberal as their wealth increases.)

According to the New Testament, the Christian world has, at best, an ambivalent attitude toward money and wealth: "Easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God." (Matthew 19:24, Luke 18:25, Mark 10:25) "You cannot serve God and wealth." (Luke 16:13) "If we have food and clothing, we will be content with these. But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction." (Timothy 6:8-9) "For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil." - (Timothy 6:10).

For Jews, on the other hand, wealth is a good thing, a worthy and respectable goal to strive toward. What's more, once you earn it, it is tragic to lose it. Judaism has never considered poverty a virtue. The first Jews were not poor. The Jewish founding fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, were blessed with cattle and land in abundance. Asceticism and self-denial are not Jewish ideals. With your financial house in order, it is easier to pursue your spiritual life: "Where there is no flour, there is no Bible." The Mishna (a collection of books that outline the detailed laws for daily Jewish living) "Poverty causes transgression." (Hasidic folk saying) "Poverty in a man's house is worse than fifty plagues." (The Talmud, a collection of books of rabbinical commentary on the Old Testament).

A person with wealth, stands up. His wealth gives him a sense of confidence that allows him to act, a sense of self-worth that fills him with enthusiasm. He enjoys all that he is and all that he does. He feels important and this promotes his success. Thus his wealth is a key to prosperity - a key that opens the doors to his desires. 

• "The ground under their feet (Devarim 11.6). This verse, taught R Elazar, refers to a person's wealth - it stands him on his feet. (Pesachim 119a)
• Rav Shmuel bar Nachman said: When a man is wealthy, he shows his friend a happy face. (Breishis Raba 91.5)
• Greater is the merit of ones own labors, than the merit of the forefathers. (Tanchuma, VaYeitzei 13)
• Rebbi Chiya bar Abba said in the name of Ulla: Greater is one who enjoys the labor of his own hands, than one who regards Hashem with awe (Yiras Shamayim).
• While he who regards Hashem with awe is fortunate in this world ... he who toils, enjoys this world, and also delights in the goodness of the world-to-come. (Brochos 8a)
• Better is the person who lacks honor, but has a servant, than the refined man who has no bread. (Mishle 12.9)
• A beautiful home expands a person's thoughts. (Brochos 57b) Beautiful garments enlarge a person's thoughts. (R Elazar)
• The rich man's wealth is his fortress. (Mishle 10.15)
• The rich man has many who love him. (Mishle 14.20)
• Wealth adds many friends. (Mishle 19.4)
• There is wealth to be had; there is money in the streets. However, a person needs to want this money, to look carefully for it, and gather it up. For the Heavens guide a person in the way he wishes to go (Makkos 10b). 

True, there are hardships he must endure; he must learn to toil; he must train himself to wait, patiently. Still, if he wants it, it is there. The question is though, should he want wealth?

The very survival of a Torah life-style depends on a financial backing. To raise whole families, a nation who lives with true values, all requires successful economics. Thus every aspect of the Torah depends on wealth. 

• R Elazar ben Azarya would say: If there is no flour, there can be no Torah. (Avos 3.21)
• Food leads to laughter, wine adds joy to life, and money solves all problems. (Koheles 10.19)
• With the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread.” (Breishis 3.19)
• Rebbi Avahu taught: While the upper ones, the angels and other celestial beings, are nourished by the sheen of Hashem; lower beings, those who live in this world, must toil – if they don’t, they don’t eat! (Breishis Raba 2.2)
• To the man who says, “I will eat, drink and enjoy all that’s good without toiling, for I trust that Heaven will take mercy on me,” the Rabbis say, you are wrong!” The verse expressly states that, “You [Hashem] bless the deeds of his hands.” (Iyov 1.10)
• A person needs first to labor and work with his two hands, only then does Hashem send His blessing. (Tanchuma, VeYeitzei 13)
• Wealth that comes without toil, diminishes; but he who gathers in gradually, constantly, increases his wealth. (Mishle 13.11)
• Rebbi Yehoshua ben Levi said: Today is for doing, tomorrow is not for doing ... Today is for doing, tomorrow is for receiving reward. (Eiruvim 22a)
• Rava said: Invest a hundred zuz in business, and you eat meat and wine everyday; invest a hundred zuz in ground, and you eat salt and hay; moreover you sleep on the ground. (Yevamos 63a)
• Rav Yitzchak said: A person should always have ready cash, [that when a bargain comes his way, he may buy it – Rashi]. (Baba Metzia 42a)
• Rebbi Yehuda taught: Anyone who doesn’t teach his son a trade, teaches him to be a robber. (Kidushin 29a).

From the US survey known as the General Social Surveys (GSS) analysed for the years 1972–2004, cultural values of the respondents were measured by their responses to a question on the values parents would most like in their children. The survey gave 13 values and asks respondents to identify the one that they would most like their children to have, and also the three they would most like their children to have. These values are as follows: 

1. Success: ‘‘that he tries hard to succeed”;
2. Studiousness: ‘‘that he is a good student”;
3. Amicability: ‘‘that he gets along well with other children”;
4. Cleanliness: ‘‘that he is neat and clean”;
5. Considerateness: ‘‘that he is considerate of others”;
6. Control: ‘‘that he has self-control”;
7. Honesty: ‘‘that he is honest”;
8. Interest: ‘‘that he is interested in how and why things happen”;
9.  Judgment: ‘‘that he has good sense and sound judgment”;
10. Manners: ‘‘that he has good manners”;
11. Obedience: ‘‘that he obeys his parents well”;
12. Responsibility: ‘‘that he is responsible”
13. Sex role: ‘‘that he acts like a boy (she acts like a girl)”.

Jews obtained a mean of 7.48, while non-Jewish whites obtained a mean of 6.21 and is equivalent to 9.06 IQ points. There were eight values in which Jews were significantly different from others. Jews attach less importance to cleanliness, honesty, manners and obedience, but they attach more importance to considerateness, interest in how and why things happen, judgment and responsibility.

Steven Silbiger claims that these principles can be learned by anyone, and thus his argument is that these traits are cultural and not genetic.

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Seven Keys to Jewish Economic Success and Fabulous Wealth

By Steven Silbiger, The Jewish Phenomenon: Seven Keys to the Enduring Wealth of a People (2009)

1. Understand That Real Wealth is Portable; It’s Knowledge - there has been research evidence showing that Jewish children have higher educational aspirations, do more homework and watch less TV than non-Jews. Jewish families will highly support intellectual pursuits and encourage their children to invest in schoolwork. Jews attach a lot of importance to study and education and this socializes the children for educational and academic success: ‘‘Jewish youth used to spend long years bent over their books in an attempt to break out of the narrow circle of restrictions” (Slezkine, 2004, p. 252). Jews ‘‘were highly motivated to create a new and more secure life for themselves” which gave them ‘‘the willingness to work hard” (Rutland, 1988, p. 259). The idea is built on the paradigm that 'getting an education requires the ability to defer gratification for a bigger payoff later'.
2. Take Care of Your Own and They Will Take Care of You - to safeguard and enhance the health of their community, Jews zealously deploy their wealth for both charity and social  actions. They make money so hard, and they give so generously. In spite of the stereotype that they are miserly, Jews happen to be the most philanthropic ethnic group in the country. Total Jewish philanthropic giving totaled about $4.5 billion in 1997. Jewish Free Loan Societies help immigrants and other Jews in need. Apparently there are about 40 of these institutions around the country, and they make about $40 million in loans each year, interest free!
3. Successful People Are Professional and Entrepreneurs - specialised people earn from their skills.
4. Develop Your Verbal Confidence - assertiveness, a willingness to demand what is due, defy tradition, just to be able to have the balls to dare to be different. It is from the Hebrew word chutzpah ("gall, brazen nerve, effrontery, incredible 'guts,' presumption plus arrogance"). Avoid self-pity, let your language prop you and feed your ears with strength from your mouths.
5. Be Selectively Extravagant but Prudently Frugal - do not borrow not more than half what you earn. Spend what you can make, make more than you need to spend. To be rich, you need to save!
6. Celebrate Individuality: Encourage Creativity - Jews resemble some Protestants in possessing ‘‘individualistic, competitive patterns of thought and action linked with the middle class and historically associated with the Protestant ethic or its secular counterpart, the spirit of capitalism”.
7. Have Something To Prove: A Drive To Succeed - the mind is the most potent of drivers. Feed your mind with the positive psychological drive to succeed. Again define success in a global sense, to another is success to a second person your success is failure. Look outwards, it helps to reach out to see other strengths and role models. Then 'tune' your mind to conquer and deliberately design the success path!

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THE MOTIVE FORCES TO JEWISH ECONOMIC SUCCESS AND FABULOUS WEALTH

By Steven Silbiger, The Jewish Phenomenon: Seven Keys to the Enduring Wealth of a People (2009)

KEY # 1 EDUCATIONAL

1. Build a child’s self-esteem.

2. Build the ability to defer gratification.

3. Choose the best education possible.

4. Develop and demonstrate informed and literate habits (“Jews celebrate and promote books and reading like no other segment of society, accounting for between 50 and 75% non-institutional book sales in the USA”).

5. Create the education expectation.

6. Keep skills up-to-date even as an adult.

7. Have an educational incentive.

8. Believe that real wealth is portable; it’s knowledge (“The Jewish priorities consists of education, money and then material things. Money is the source of power and to acquire it without education will create a household with many thing, but with little security to maintain and support itself”).

9. Believe in being prudently frugal.

KEY # 2 ECONOMIC

10.Have an economic incentive.

11. Wealth is a good thing and a worthy and respectable goal for which to strive (“Poverty causes transgression”).

12. Wealth is a tool for survival.

KEY # 3 ENTREPRENEURIAL

13. Have a strong, burning entrepreneurial spirit.

14. Believe financially successful people are professional and entrepreneurs.

15. Encourage Creativity (“Ignore killer phrases and senseless rules; challenge widely held assumptions; be a good copycat; keep current: know the trends; create an idea-friendly home”)

KEY # 4 EMPOWERMENT

16. Have the ability to create, organize and utilize economic strength.

17. Firmly believe in “take care of your own and they will take care of you”.

18. The idea of individual empowerment should be deeply rooted in society.

KEY # 5 ENDURANCE

19. Be psychologically driven to prove something: A Drive To Succeed (“Make long-range goals; work harder at tasks requiring mental manipulation; take prudent risks; work for tangible and intangible rewards; take personal responsibility for decisions and create results; accept other entrepreneurs as role models; believe in own self-determination”)

20. Develop Verbal Confidence and Boldness (“Encourage children to ask questions; proactively explain new ideas to children and encourage public speaking and confident conversation. As verbally confident people, Jews ask questions, seek second opinions and do their own research”)

KEY # 6 “ENJOY LIFE”

21. Celebrate Your Individuality (“Be a member of a critical minority than an unquestioning majority”)

22. Be Selectively Extravagant

Resources:

* The Jewish Phenomenon: Seven Keys to the Enduring Wealth of a People by Steven Silbiger (2000),

* How to explain high Jewish achievement: The role of intelligence and values by Richard Lynn and Satoshi Kanazawa (2007)

* The Jewish Secret of Wealth: According to the Torah, Talmud & Zohar by Avraham Tzvi Schwartz (2006);

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jewish_American_businesspeople

Dealing with Political and Generational Succession in Zimbabwe

By Kufara Gwenzi

Published in September 2002 (Updated in June 2008)

Where does political power and influence lie in Zimbabwe? How is the strategic centre of power and influence defined? How is power and influence or how should it be generated?

In the context of politics in Zimbabwe, ZANU PF as a former liberation movement and has been the liberation ruling party since 1980. It is still being led by those who participated in liberation struggle against colonialism and subsequently founded the new Zimbabwe. This can be called the ‘liberation and founding generation’ (LFG). If President Robert Mugabe had outrightly won the March 29, 2008 election, the LFG would have continued to succeed itself. For fear of renewal, ZANU PF is in serious political and organizational paralysis and rigidity because the LFG are failing to comprehend or deal with generational and renewal imperatives.

The absence of a formal and well-planned natural progression of those who will take over after the ‘natural wastage’ of the LFG creates a risk of a threat to national security and national interests, if they are not defined partisanly.

“The role of the “elders” has seemed to recede. The elders emerged as a political constituency as a consequence of Deng Xiaoping’s 1980s political reforms, which encouraged veteran leaders to retire from front-line leadership positions to make way for younger leaders. In the 1990s, the elders were composed mostly of veteran revolutionaries who together founded the CCP, endured the Long March, fought the Japanese after 1937 and China Kai-shek’s Nationalist government after 1945 and founded the People Republic of China (PRC). This group dominated the leadership in the 1950s and again in the 1980s after surviving Mao’s Cultural Revolution.

“Their continuing influence was evident in the ubiquitous stories that circulated regarding their kibitzing in ongoing leadership deliberations. By the late 1990s, most of these leaders—including Deng himself—had passed from the scene. Today’s “elders” are largely “post-liberation and post-revolutionary” leaders who retired at the 1997 15th and 2002 16th Party Congresses.”- Chinese Leadership Monitor, No. 16, 2006.

Literally, the vanguard is a small troop of highly skilled soldiers that explores the terrain ahead of a large advancing army and plots a course for the army to follow. This concept is applied to the work done by small bands of intellectuals and artists as they open pathways through new cultural or political terrain for society to follow.

Politically, a vanguard is a small group of people at the forefront of a mass action, movement or revolution. The idea of a vanguard was developed by Vladimir Lenin because he believed that a mass uprising of the proletariat, without organization, would be too weak to stand up to counter-revolutionary mobilizations.

Writing in 'What is to be Done?', the political pamphlet first published in 1902, Vladimir Lenin explored the role of the "revolutionary vanguard" party. He argued that the role of the revolutionary vanguard is to nurture the appropriate awareness, and serve as the collective memory of the class - i.e., to help foster not only the class consciousness, but also the political direction, needed to foment proletarian revolution.

Vanguardism may more generally refer to cooperation between avant-garde individuals advancing in any field. In Zimbabwe, do we have a relatively small, loosely knit group of people with military and business background who can influence political behaviour, public policy formulation and decision making?

In the United States and other mature nations, this group is constituted by the nationalist bourgoisie in the corporate sector and those of military background. They control the principal players, institutions and whose opinions and actions influence the decisions of the political policymakers.

A Culture of Fraternal Apprenticeship

Related to the concept of vanguardism is Fabianism. The Fabian Society was founded in 1884 as an intellectual movement concerned with the research, discussion and publication of ideas by a group promoting non-Marxist evolutionary socialism i.e. center-left.

Fabians thought of themselves as a small elite group which would permeate the existing institutions of society, produce and influence the real leaders in all spheres of life, and guide social development toward its collectivist goal with the "inevitability of gradualness."

Fabianism was through-and-through managerial, technocratic and ‘plannist’. It is a philosophy of which was the inculcation of ideas is necessary to enhance individual character and eventually the broader society. An early Fabian publication wrote that they wished to be the ‘Jesuits of Socialism’. The gospel was order and efficiency. According to Fabians, people should be treated kindly and should be run only by competent experts.

The Fabians were working towards a new world by indoctrinating young scholars who would eventually rise to power in various policy-making positions throughout the world by infiltrating educational institutions, government agencies, and political parties. Their strategy was called the "doctrine of inevitability of gradualism," which meant that their goals would be gradually achieved. So gradual, that nobody would notice, or "without breach of continuity or abrupt change of the entire social issue." The secret was evolution, not revolution, or what Webb called "permeation."

The Fabians adopted the tactic of trying to convince people by "rational factual socialist argument", rather than the "emotional rhetoric and street brawls" of the Marxist Social Democratic Federation. In fact, that's how they got their name. The name Fabian originated from the Roman Consul, General Quintus Fabius Maximus, the Cunctator (‘Delayer’), who through patient, cautious, delaying and elusive tactics, during the early phases of the Second Punic War (218-201 BCE), enabled the Roman army to regroup and defeat Hannibal’s stronger Carthaginian army.

Fabius Cunctator's strategy which was to guide the Fabians was summarized in Frank Podmore's words: "For the right moment you must wait…when the time comes you must strike hard."

In military strategy, Fabian strategy is a strategy that seeks to buy time and wear down an enemy by carefully avoiding direct confrontation, pitched battles and decisive contests.

Graduates under the Rhodes Scholarship are ideologically Fabians. They are also deliberately middle-class in composition and appeal. They were and are not for building any mass movement at all. Fabians, like Rhodes Scholars today, are a small group who permeate the existing institutions of society, influence the real leaders in all spheres, and guide social development.

The American Federalist Society is a secretive legal association founded in 1982 by law students at the University of Chicago Law School and Yale University as a debating society from a conservative viewpoint in law school faculties. It is a network for right-wing lawyers to increase their influence in law schools and government through what is called “informal filtering role”. More than a third of the judges President George Bush has sent to Appeals Courts are members of the Federalist Society. That compares with zero for his predecessor, President Bill Clinton.

The Federalist Society is a well-oiled machinery out to remake the courts in the image of Robert Bork, the Republican Supreme Court nominee rejected by the Senate in 1987, who predicted that a new generation, "often associated with the Federalist Society," would transform the legal profession:

"It may take 10 years, it may take 20 years for the second wave to crest, but crest it will, and it will sweep the elegant, erudite, pretentious and toxic detritus of non-originalism out to sea," he said in a 1987 speech. Judge Bork now co-chairs the society's Board of Visitors with Sen. Orrin Hatch (R) of Nevada, a member and former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

"Twenty years later, the organization designed to carry forward Bork's jurisprudence is trying to get access to the top courts in the country”.

It has also evolved into a powerful network for young conservatives looking for clerkships or jobs in Washington, fueling the buzz that one does not get a top legal job in government without a tie to the Federalist Society. "Anyone who is ambitious knows you have to network," says political scientist Sheldon Goldman, who writes on judicial nominations at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. "With a conservative Republican administration in power, the Federalist Society is a wonderful opportunity to network."

Due to the strong influence of James Madison on the Society’s philosophy, the Federalist Society considers Madison to be their patriarch, hence the use of Madison’s silhouette as the Society’s official logo and took the name of Madison’s 18th-century Federalist Party as their own. Madison is generally credited as the father of the American Constitution and he became the fourth President of the USA.

In July 2005, the Federalist Society launched a state judicial selection project to try to dominate the state, as well as federal bench.

The Federalist Society is said to be simply the best-organized, best-funded, and most effective legal network operating in USA. Its rank-and-file includes conservative lawyers, law students, law professors, bureaucrats, activists and judges. They meet at law schools and function rooms across the country to discuss and debate the finer points of legal theory and substance on panels that often include liberals - providing friction, stimulus, and the illusion of balance.

The Society’s origins are traced back to 1979, a year before Ronald Reagan’s victory. A legal scholar named Michael Horowitz published a tract on the public-interest law movement, exhorting conservatives to overturn a half-century of liberal dominance of the legal establishment. This could be done, he wrote, by indoctrinating or winning over succeeding generations of law students, lawyers, and judges. By definition, the campaign had to be rooted in the fertile ground of law schools.

Horowitz’s concept was taken up with relish by senior members of the new Reagan Administration. They adopted a two-prolonged approach designed to ensure that the legacy Reagan would well outlast his Presidency.

The first, to reclaim the Federal courts from liberals, swept an array of conservative scholars and judges from law schools and state courts onto the Federal bench: the likes of Robert Bork, Ralph Winter, Antonin Scalia, Richard Posner, Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy.

The second track was even more forward looking and involved the apprenticing of a new generation of conservative lawyer-intellectuals-under-30 to the Reagan apparatus. This second track required fresh brains and hands, which is where the Federalist Society came in. The founding chapters of the Society were established at Yale, where Robert Bork taught before Reagan nominated him to the bench, and at the University of Chicago, where Antonin Scalia was faculty advisor and from whose ranks he would later recruit former student-Federalists to prestigious Supreme Court clerkships.

Relating to Zimbabwe's Circumstances

The people of Zimbabwe should be reminded that the concept of universal suffrage of ‘one person, one vote’ is convenient, BUT it is not central to the idea of selection and choice. It works at the level of endorsement. Hundreds determined fools can never win the day against one physically frail but wise old man. In fact, in Africa, the hundred fools would make a mob that needs close attention. Legitimacy is derived from essence of matter not numbers. Even if millions agree that ‘amai ngavaroodzwe’ (giving your mother away for marriage like a daughter), they will not have it their way.

Essence is the quality and character that gives something its unique identity from anything else. It is smoothing deeply intrinsic to and inherent in a thing or category of things.

To be systematic in bringing the young people in the political and public service fold is to ensure stability and continuity. Without a systematic approach, either the young people will be shut out or there will, in their desperation and anger ‘drive out’ the mature like we do when we are taking cattle out of the kraal.

“Orderly succession and rejuvenation of the leadership’s ranks were major emphases in the political reforms Deng (Xiaoping) introduced in the early 1980s (in China). For that purpose, a new body adjunct to the party (higher leadership structures) was created at the 12th Party Congress in 1982, onto which aging party leaders could retire and still have a backbench voice in current leadership decision making.” –Chinese Leadership Monitor, No. 10. By 2004, all leaders above the age of 70 had retired.

Although the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) “is still predominantly a Leninist party state, which monopolizes all the most important posts in the government", the 2007 17th Congress Politburo’s members embody the “post-revolutionary” characteristics sought by Deng Xiaoping ( who ruled for 11 years as the Paramount Leader) in promoting Party leaders since the early 1980s—that they be “younger, better educated and more competent” replacing the revolutionary agenda of Chairman Mao (the founding leader of China who ruled for 9 years) of class warfare and egalitarian social transformation.

The party reasoned that if the social elites, the “bourgeoisie”, are not given political voices in the party itself, they have sufficient resources and skills to emerge as a political opposition to the regime. Therefore there must be the “bourgeoisie” to lead the way in China’s effort to become prosperous and powerful. (One wishes the Zimbabwean current political leadership reads this!) These have been suited for the progress of China’s modernizing reforms as underpinned by four pillars:

1. Age: since the 1990s, the Politburo has continued the pattern of electing leaders who on average are in their early 60s. A candidate for the post of CCP secretary-general should in his 50s.

2. Education: a trend set in the 1990s, the Politburo has continued to elect leaders possessing university degrees, largely of engineers and scientists.

3. Regional balance: since 2002, the Politburo membership has been balanced between leaders from the coastal provinces—the backbone of economic reform—and those in the interior.

4. Military experience: since the 1990s, the Politburo leadership has continued to be strongly civilian. (Chinese Leadership Monitor, Number 23, 2008)

Generational succession should involve inducting the young people slowly in an apprentice format. This is a deliberate generational succession policy based on clear principles. Succession should not as a replacement or wholesale handover, but gradual strategic continuity that connects the mature and the young. The retiring generation should continue to have some influence over the direction of the Party to avoid dramatic and inorganic political changes.

Organically managed generational succession, using the process of mentoring and censuring, allows strict vigilance against efforts to subvert the integrity of national interests. Ultimately, the highest office in the land is a straight jacket whose occupant is expected to observe, respect and appreciate the objectives of national interests and security.

Unmanaged succession creates the risk of problems arising out of political experiments, social raptures and convulsive political tensions. Unmanaged succession makes the State or national institutions partisan, vulnerable, weak and unstable.

There is need to clarify transition and succession policies to avoid unintended consequences.

Such an institutional approach will make a political party guard against the ‘Gorbachev Syndrome’. A historical journey to explain the ‘Gorbachev Syndrome’ will be helpful. In March 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev took over as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union following the death of Konstantin Chernenko. A year later, he launched the policies of ‘glasnost’ (the opening or liberalization of the political system) and ‘perestroika’ (economic restructuring and reform). He did so under pressure from the USA. This led to the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991.

Nobody in his/her wildest dream ever imagined that within less than 5 years, Gorbachev would have administered the fragmentation and destruction of the Soviet Union.

We do not wish for a Stalinist Soviet political model in Zimbabwe, but to have a political system of a managed generational transition and succession process. For example, Gorbachev required reforming the Soviet Union Communist Party into a social democratic machinery, without having to destroy the Soviet Union.

We should learn from a smooth and carefully designed leadership, political and generation succession that occurred in China in November 2002. A key function of the Chinese Communist Party Congress (CPC) was to endorse the passage of power to the ‘Fourth Generation’ i.e. the CPC leaders who were aged between 60-70 years, taking over from the ‘Third Generation’, aged 70 and above.

Thus anyone above 70 years of age was not eligible for election as a Central Committee and Politburo member.

Analysts said an orderly power transfer was an achievement of China since the older generation did so gradually and gracefully to maintain political stability and ensure continuity.

Therefore, it is not enough to have the manner of choosing a new leader of the Party stated in the Constitution. For example, that he/she should get the support of so many provinces or that he/she should be proposed by so and so. Such a constitutional provisions are simply procedural.

A succession policy should be both constitutional and value-driven. It should adequately address ‘What’ and ‘Why’. It should also inform what basis should be used to settle on a particular person.

The incumbent should not shy away to indicate his/her preference without coercing members to support his/her preference.

A party that does not reproduce itself generationally faces extinction and has itself to blame. UNIP of Zambia and KANU of Kenya are telling examples of how not to do it, while Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) of Tanzania is a typical example to follow with customized variations. KANU and UNIP are no more because they failed to re-new and re-generate themselves across generations.

From being the ruling nationalists parties in Zambia and Kenya, both UNIP and KANU, are shadows of themselves. They are not even meaningful opposition parties by themselves.

Succession is “the act or process of following in order or sequence”. HOW do we ensure that leadership is not hereditary but “elected” in a way without an open and messy opposition, and after months in which significant power brokers manufacture “consensus”?

Succession and the choice of a person to lead should be guided by the following principles:

i. A sound consensus-building process, especially behind the scenes involving inclusiveness of internal competing interests.

ii. Fresh impetus, i.e. the creation of a renewed governance and policy formulation.
ii. Popular endorsement of the candidate who would have gone through the consensus.
iii. Consolidation of national interests and security, and a well grounded social market economy.

There is a very strong argument that politics and the economy would benefit from some fresh blood every 5-10 years. New leadership provides the opportunity for the nation-state to take stock and change tact under new leadership and be rejuvenated with a different but 'safe' hand.

Tanzania had its independence in 1961 and has had 4 presidents giving an average of 12 years for each president; Malawi (1964) 3 giving an average of 15 years; Zambia (1964) 4 giving an average of 11 years; Namibia (1990) 2; South Africa (1985) 3 giving an average of 7.6 years; Botswana (1966) 4 giving an average of 10.5 years; Kenya (1963) 3 giving an average of 15 years.

From 1949, China has had 6 presidents, thus an average of 10 years. The longest serving was Deng Xiaoping who held supreme power for 27 years roughly from 1978 to 1989 without officially holding the top political office. Thereafter, China has been on a roller coaster of renewal and Africans do not seem to learn from he hindsight of available experiences.

Zimbabwe still has one president in the 28 years it has been independent and anyone who may wish to compete with the only one, is considered as an imperialist agent.

A rigid political environment suffocates innovation and excellence for both the public and private sectors!