does the movement need a leader?

[darcy]

this morning i recieved this in my inbox.


Does the movement need any leaders?

 Colin Barker asks whether giving leadership is elitist

 "WE DON'T need leaders." "We're for the widest democratic
participation-leadership stands in its way." "Leaders betray, only
 the rank and file is reliable."

 We often hear such ideas in movements today. I think they involve a
mistake, but a very understandable one.

 A century ago, left wingers like Daniel De Leon and Rosa Luxemburg
identified a new problem, emerging out of the
 developing organisation of working class movements.

 Professional leaders were coming to dominate the internal and external life
of national unions and socialist parties.

 At one and the same time they reduced members' control over their
organisations, and they softened opposition to the ruling
 class.

 Indeed, they became openly anti-revolutionary. The problem was not peculiar
to the US, or Germany, but reappeared all
 across the advanced capitalist world-not least, of course, in Britain.

 Past experiences

 To explain this, a cynical right wing German socialist, Roberto Michels,
invented what he called "the iron law of oligarchy".
 According to the deeply pessimistic argument of his book, Political
Parties, bureaucracy was inevitable.

 Furthermore it made socialism impossible. No movement, he said, could
succeed without organising itself, but organisation
 necessarily meant bureaucracy, and bureaucracy would always prevent
democracy.

 Thus a really democratic society could not be achieved. There was, he
concluded, no way out of this trap.

 A hundred years' experience with the Labour Party and with social
democratic parties in Europe might seem to prove his
 point.

 So might the past century's experience with the trade union leaders, right
up to Andy Gilchrist and the firefighters' FBU union's
 recent dispute with the government.

 Gilchrist seemed to have learned all his tactics from the Grand Old Duke of
York.

 If Western European and US experience suggested that Michels was right, how
much more did so called "Communism" in
 Stalinist Russia and Eastern Europe seem to strengthen his case?

 Leaders there didn't just let their followers down-they tortured and
murdered their critics.

 All in all, it sounds as if leadership is a bad idea! And opposition to it
is pretty understandable. But then there are some
 problems.

 For one thing, Michels based his case on the argument that most people are
gullible, which is why leaders always get away
 with it. Indeed, for him it's inherent in the human condition that there
are a lot of stupid sheep and just a few wolves.

 His own case is deeply elitist at its core. He allows no space for rank and
file resistance and organisation.

 Yet such resistance has been so prevalent during the 20th century that one
of Michels' critics suggested that beside his "iron
 law of oligarchy" we should place another-and opposite-"iron law of
democracy".

 Two utterly opposed "iron laws"?-that begins to sound what we Marxists like
to term "a bit contradictory"!

 Second, Michels and those who agree with him never really think through
what "leadership" means, and how it is not the
 same as "bureaucracy".

 What's the best way, as socialists regularly argue, to limit and defeat
union bureaucracies?

 Short answer, and the correct one-mobilise the rank and file. But doing
that also involves "leadership".

 In the FBU, for example, Gilchrist and most of the union executive wanted
to lead in one direction, but the supporters of
 Redwatch-an unofficial paper for militant firefighters-wanted to lead in
another. Opposing one lead means offering another.

 There is no escape from this logic.

 Within movements you sometimes hear people say, "We don't want leaders"-the
difficulty is, in saying this, they're offering
 leadership!

 Crucial principle

 Every time we have a conversation with anyone, we engage in leading and
following. Making a suggestion is giving a lead,
 agreeing is acting as a follower.

 Trying to persuade someone the earth is not flat is attempting to lead. In
everyday conversations, leadership may move back
 and forth from person to person. But that doesn't make it go away.

 Nor does it make leadership opposed to democracy. Rather, it makes it part
of democracy.

 If we shift the terms of the debate in this way, we can start to discuss
more rationally about the more important questions.

 How do we keep leadership accountable? How do we ensure that everyone with
something to say gets to say it? What kinds
 of leadership strengthen the critical powers of those who meet it, and what
kinds of leadership keep other people in
 dependence?

 Democracy-a crucial principle and goal for socialists-involves ongoing
argument. Argument means leadership-successful or
 otherwise.

 To deny it is a mystifying trick.



so i would like to hear all of your points of view.

[paulx]

Darcy,

The "no-leadership" argument is one we hear often from anarchists. It seems to be popular amongst american academics.

Anyone who has worked in a factory or office that has come under attack from the bosses knows that when you go into battle you need a strong, knowledgable and determined leadership. To go into battle on the industrial plane or on the political plane without leaders is a recipe for disaster.

The bosses make sure that on their side they have the best leaders they can muster. We would be stupid to go into battle without any leadership. Leadership gives direction as well as tactics and strategy. Without these things defeat is almost inevitable.

Although anarchist ideology is based on "no leaders" when it comes to the real world they are forced to abandon this nonsense and have leaders. In the Spanish civil war for example, not only did the anarchists have leaders but they had two ministers in the Popular Front government! So much for no leaders!

comradely
paul

[mir]

"You cannot make War without generals," and "It's better to have one bad leader then ten good ones."

Comrade

[djn]

Paul, your point is well-noted. Anarchist organizational principles emphasize no hierarchy, no leaders and quite oftenly, consensus voting. Anarchist groups quickly develop submerged hierarchies which can wield awesome power because anarchist organizational structures offer no checks on leadership (since there theoretically is none!). Anarchists fail to acknowledge the natural development of leadership in heterogeneous groups (and there is no such thing as a homogeneous group of people!).

The consistent failure, of all widely practiced organizational structures, in preventing oligarchy is not because of inherent problems in any hierarchy or bureaucracy. Rather, all such organizational structures are flawed in that they are purposely created to allow oligarchal development (see Michael Parenti's "Democracy for the Few" for how the American "democracy" was delicately crafted to prevent democratic influence in government). All states, nearly all workplaces and the entire global system is not oligarchal because of hierarchy or bureaucracy, but because all such power relations are established to ensure that democracy cannot flourish.

The key is in developing effective checks and balances in our organizational structures so the fullest amount of democracy can be achieved without compromising the ability of organizations to deal with critical issues. The inefficiency of consensus voting and decentralization leads to disaster. Strong leadership is required for effective decision making, and if properly checked, leadership will never seize power.

[Andi]

a singular leader for a single movement is historically unstable.

Anarcho-Syndicalism seems to put a nice way forward that doesn't need leaders.

It confuses people when leaders and the movement diverge e.g. Blair and the UK Labour Party, one can dispise Blair but still be loyal to the party and vice versa.

Going back to Mir's point.

Say if ONE bad general sent wave after wave of troops across a FIELD? Are you trying to say thats better than ten good generals deliberating over whether the field is MINED?

[mir]

Deliberating Generals all with different plans can never make up a plan on time if at all.  And if a General was bad, then get another one.

[Andi]

Historically disregarding human potential as a mere resource is capitalist and stalinist at worst e.g. Stalin got ride of generals and party leaders willy-nilly and was left with a emorphous bulk of unqualified and very unskilled and ill experienced politicos right up until he died.

Are you discounting that humans have individual experiences and knowledge for their individual tasks amongst the whole?

Probably not, but hey, supposition