No leaders need apply (1991)

From the November 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

The race is on to lead the workers of Britain into five more years of misery. Carrots are being dangled before us and promises showered upon us. Liars are telling us that life under the profit system can be made decent, and honest leaders are deceiving themselves that they can run the slaughterhouse for the benefit of the cattle.

Whoever wins, the evil of the two lessers, be it Major the mediocre or Kinnock the conman, one thing is certain: within a few years of being elected millions of workers will be blaming them for their problems. Such is the role of a capitalist leader: success in conning enough wage slaves to vote for them results in the harsh reality of having to do the dirty work of running capitalism and let the workers down. No capitalist leader remains popular for long for the simple reason that the system never goes on for long without creating new problems for which they are made to answer.

So it was that Churchill, the man regarded by millions of deluded patriots as their war-time saviour, was voted out of office in 1945 and, when re-elected in 1951, was seen as an incompetent Tory fool. Likewise Thatcher, the market goddess who had small businessmen cheering in 1979, was so hated by 1990 that her party had to ditch her or face electoral defeat. Today many commentators speak about the wisdom of Labour's John Smith: give him eighteen months actually trying to run the capitalist economy and taking the blame for it and see what they say of his wisdom.

Don’t blame the leaders

The workers are an ungrateful lot. No wonder the politicians treat our class with such contempt. Wage slaves rush into the polling stations and vote for leaders, only to boo and hiss at them once they have made the mess of things which they always do. Workers love the fake promises and then have the cheek to expect them to be carried out.

In fact, leaders cannot carry out the policies which they advertise to us at election time. Leaders cannot do very much at all—because leaders do not govern, but are governed. They are governed by the dictates of the profit system which runs according to the economic law of profit accumulation which is beyond their control. Leaders may want to build more houses or provide more jobs, close down dangerous power plants or clean up the air, but leaders do not own and control the resources of the society that they claim to be running. The small minority of millionaires and billionaires who do own and control the means of producing and distributing wealth make the real decisions. And nobody ever elects them. There are no elections into the capitalist class. The leaders simply do what they can, which is not very much at all, within the limits of the system which places producing profits for the capitalist minority above all else.

The leaders are not running the profit system; it runs them. So it is foolish to blame the leaders for the mess over which they preside. If it was not Lamont supervising the dispossession of homes and closure of hospitals and job losses, it would be Smith or someone else. There is no more sense in blaming the capitalists as people. It is not their fault if they live under a system in which they are legally entitled to be exploiting parasites. Who would blame anyone for being a millionaire rather than a wage slave? Blame serves no purpose.

Leaders can only lead if followers follow. A leader without a follower is like a shepherd in a land without sheep. Sheep need leaders—and, of course, they are regularly fleeced by them. Workers do not need leaders. After all, we run society from top to bottom: we build everything, make everything, dig and sow and teach and mend and carry and invent. Without our hard work the whole world would stop dead tomorrow. We do not need leaders to tell us how to produce and distribute the goods and services which we need. We do not need leaders to tell us how to live.

Workers do not need leaders, but we will be led as long as enough workers are willing to follow. Our class has spent so long following that many people have forgotten just how strong they are, how un-sheeplike the human is capable of being. We have been conditioned to obey and to follow. First religious following kept most wage slaves on their knees, then Liberal and other reformers got the workers' vote, then the Labour Party posed as a party led by workers for workers, and now, after all this history of humble following, the workers are almost afraid to think for themselves.

Consciousness the key

Workers will be led as long as they do not believe in themselves. The worker who is lost, alienated from his or her consciousness of how the world really is and how it could be. is an easy target for the political leader.

For socialists, who are workers who understand the system we are living under and know that it is only as strong as we are weak, consciousness is the most potent weapon. Give socialists a million bullets and they will be useless, but give us a thousand newly active minds and we are on our way. Only when a majority of workers know that there must be a new way of organising society, on the basis of production solely for need not profit, can socialism come about. Once that knowledge is in the minds of our class no government or army will shift it or defeat it.

For this reason the chief battle of socialists today is the war of ideas. Workers must learn to think for themselves. Reasoning scientifically, with experience as a constant guide, it will be clear to our fellow workers that this system must be removed and socialism established. The role of the Socialist Party is to put our ideas with force and clarity, not just as abstract theory or idealistic fancy, but always in relation to the real lives and struggles of our class in its inevitable conflicts with the rulers and exploiters.

The Socialist Party educates but does not lead. To lead is to ask others to follow. This party calls upon no-one to follow us. Indeed, followers are not wanted—they are unwelcome here. Unlike the arrogant leaders of the SWP, RCP and various other mixed-up initials reflecting mixed-up ideas, this party does not labour under the delusion that we are a vanguard to whom the message of socialism has been passed and workers are too thick to understand it. Those Leninists who do understand the case for socialism (and they are rare specimens) refuse to put it to the workers because, according to Lenin, the workers can only ever achieve a trade-union level of consciousness. The Socialist Party, in line with Karl Marx, asserts that only the workers can achieve the consciousness to bring about a free society: the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class themselves. Socialists have no leaders and those arrogant would-be leaders who want to talk about socialism while trying to tell other workers what to do need not apply to this party.

A leaderless society

Once the majority has established socialism, doing so without leaders, there will be no government and no state. The state is the machinery for class rule; no class society could exist without one. In a classless society the state will be dismantled immediately—there will be no Socialist State, a term about as meaningful as liquid ice. There will be no socialist government or President or leaders of any kind for the simple reason that in a society of co-operative equality there will be no followers. Socialism will be a leaderless. stateless, followerless community.

The government over people will give way to the administration of things. People will make decisions, utilising the information technology now available and will run social affairs locally, regionally and globally in accordance with different levels of decisions needing to be made. Democracy will prevail. If mistaken decisions are made there will be no leaders to blame, but all will need to pull together to rectify the damage.

Life without leaders will not only be more democratic and efficient, but psychologically liberating. The follower is bound to have a slave’s mentality. The free women and men of a socialist community will imagine and create and consume without the need to think of rulers and of the risks, often massive ones under our system, of our masters making a drastically wrong move. Right now we live under the shadow of a nuclear cloud. The leaders could push the button any time. No more leaders will mean no more need to worry about what the swines are up to. The only people we shall need to trust is ourselves.

The Socialist Party has made a small start. We are a party without leaders and yet we are not in chaos. What the majority says goes. Why not apply that wise system of organisation to society as a whole? Why choose between tweedledum and tweedledee when the next ballot paper is handed to you by the government official? Why not tell these swindling rogues and useless fools that we have had enough of their fatal sheep-herding? Why not vote for yourself—for a change?

Steve Coleman