Introduction

Did you sleep well? No bad dreams? Good – breakfast is ready, but there's no bacon as the wolves broke into the provisions tent last night. Our guide to the Leadership library will be Modrzhinskay, who is an expert on the Battle of Ideas, which must be won if the Leadership library is going to be born from the womb of the Management library. So think of Modrzhinskay as the midwife who will oversee this process. But I must warn you that, if you had problems with Gramsci and Williams, you may really struggle with Modrzhinskay: it is hard enough to spell or say his name, never mind explain his ideas, but he will do his best to help you. Remember that English is not his first language and he is more familiar with Leninism than Public Libraries, but he still has much to say that is relevant to our journey. He will try to avoid using jargon and difficult language, but sometimes this is unavoidable – new ideas need new words to describe them – and of course there is also the danger of ideas getting lost in translation. When looking at the map of our journey, Modrzhinskay will use a very special pair of glasses to focus his thinking. One lens is called Marxism and the other is Leninism. When you look through these glasses you will find that Marxism- Leninism will help you to see things that were previously hidden or invisible to your eyes. So be careful when you put them on. The world will appear very differently through them. Look up and you will clearly see the soaring peak of Ideology. So near, yet still so far.