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After a long night of celebration of revolutionary victory, the first meeting of the cabinet of the new communist government of Nicaragua opened with the words: “So what do we do now?” Daniel Ortega and his comrades did not have an answer. The Sandinistas had all the requisite skills to make a revolution, but their inability to govern doomed it to be short-lived and futile. (more…)

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Frank Martell concludes his study of the Vanguard system—“the most important organizational advance since hierarchy.” Read Part 1 here.

The accomplishments of the Mongols in the thirteenth century illustrate the immense energy and efficiency unleashed by real meritocracy. Nor was this an accident; as already noted in the first part of this article, the Mongols deliberately created a system for developing military and political genius among their brightest youngsters. The effect was dramatic.

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Gerhard von Scharnhorst, 1755–1813

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Frank Martell looks to military history for a model for superior political organization

Late in 1916, Lenin told his tiny group of Bolshevik cadres in Switzerland that it was clear to him that they would never be able to seize power in Russia in his lifetime. Nothing could make clearer the way in which even an experienced revolutionary leader cannot know when his time may come. Some great political changes come about within a few years, but most result from struggles which must be measured in terms of decades. (more…)