Democracy or leadership? — the difference (1994)

From the November 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Regular readers of the Socialist Standard will probably be aware that the Socialist Party doesn’t have leaders. They will also hopefully be aware that the Socialist Party claims to be completely democratic, with each member having one vote.

The reason for this is that we realise that democracy and leadership are mutually exclusive. We argue that a democratic socialist society will not have leaders because if it did then it could never be fully democratic. The same applies to the organisation of a Socialist Party. 

So what’s wrong with leaders? Leaders are only necessary in a society where a minority own the means of living and the majority of the population arc exploited for profit. In a society based on free access to the means of living via common ownership, all there will be is democratic organisation. There wouldn’t be a propertied owning class or state — in other words no people with more rights than others, or leaders.

Some people confuse organisation with leadership. The Socialist Party may not have leaders, but it does have strong democratic organisation, in which the members have full control over Party office-holders. Democratic organisation is therefore completely different from leadership. If anything, a democratic party requires more organisation than a semi-democratic leadership party, because it relies more on the initiative of the membership.

This being said, the next area of confusion is the concept of “dominant personalities”. The argument here is that even if you don’t have leaders, and the organisation is democratically controlled by the membership, you will always have those people who are: more knowledgeable than others, better at arguing than others, and generally more influential and active than others. Of course, this is true, and again there isn't a problem here. The point is everyone has the same “legal” weight, so no matter how well known you are or how good you are at writing articles for the Socialist Standard, at the end of the day you only have the same “legal” power as the least able or active member of the Party.

A third point which is often raised is the assertion that any party whose aim is to change people’s ideas is de facto a leadership party. This is pure semantic quibbling. The point is, we don't propose to lead the revolution and we don't propose to exist as a party after the revolution.

Compare this with the SWP. They are an unrepentant leadership group that aims to lead the working class to a “workers’ state” that they will inevitably control. Their concept of democracy is “democratic centralism”. The basic idea here is that the membership democratically vote for their all-powerful leaders on the Central Committee. This is obviously open to abuse, but the main point is that having leaders of any kind can never be fully democratic. Having the right to vote for your superiors doesn’t make for a democratic organisation. Democratic leadership is a contradiction in terms. Leaders and leadership are therefore incompatible with democracy.

The Socialist Party is broadly organised along the lines of how socialist society will be organised. There will be those who seem more dominant and capable than others. A democracy of class-conscious workers will ensure that any leadership pretensions that any of these “strong" people might have will come to nothing. The nature of the “power structure” simply will not allow it.

When it has been proved that leaders are, have been, and always will be our enemy, do you really think a democratic socialist society will ever feel the need to reintroduce them? 

Dave Flynn

Letter: Shall we be corrupted ? (1975)

Letter to the Editors from the April 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Shall we be corrupted ?

I am an ardent reader of the Socialist Standard and a great believer in the case. My questions are if Socialists one day rule, what proof have the people of this country that the liberators will not become capitalists themselves? Hitler promised this and that and look what happened. The Russian people in the early part of this century fought and died for their beliefs and look at Russia today the worst capitalistic police state the world has ever known. There are scores of such happenings one could refer to, how do the British people know that the same will not happen here?

Also (I think many would agree) the past has shown as time drags on corruption and rot sets in everywhere. In the past wars and revolutions cleaned the dirt from the steps of the country for a while, but in this day and age the world cannot afford such drastic measures. What will the party do if the time ever comes, to clean and keep clean the welfare of the workers?

It would prove a lot if you did not publish and answer these questions.

Ian J. Wright

Sunderland.

Reply:

The SPGB differs from all other political parties in this country. We do not promise to do anything for you. We do not canvass for passive support so that we may rule, but ask for your understanding and active participation in the task of ridding the world of capitalism.

While the working class continue to put their faith in leaders they will continue to be disillusioned by political treachery, double-dealing and broken promises. We ask the working class to trust in their own abilities. They already run a complex world system from top to bottom and could quite easily run a Socialist society in their own interests. All that is needed is Socialist knowledge on the part of the working class. With this they can liberate themselves by voting Socialist delegates to the centres of political power with a mandate to abolish capitalism.

A conscious Socialist majority cannot be sold out, side-tracked or misled by leaders. In the absence of leaders promising to do things for the workers the “corruption” or degeneration of the revolution will be impossible. Delegates will be held to the sound Socialist political principles clearly understood by those who elected them.

Our correspondent has a number of other misconceptions about the SPGB’s case. First, Socialism will be world-wide in nature. It cannot exist in one country only. Second, Socialism will mean an end to the working class and the capitalist class—both will disappear; together with the need for a repressive state machine needed by rulers to keep the ruled in their place.

Editors.

Churchill in perspective (1965)

From the March 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sufficient time has passed since Churchill’s funeral for popular emotions to wane—but not sufficient yet to make it likely that his words and deeds will be subjected to any analysis for popular consumption. No doubt historians in the future will discover reasons to doubt his greatness, but there is no need to await the passage of time.

In what way can he be considered great? His actions concerning the working class, his military prowess, his flair for foreign affairs?

It was he who called out the troops during the Dock Strike in 1911. He was Chancellor of the Exchequer in the government which put on the statute book the 1927 Trades Disputes Act, prohibiting strikes by one group of workers in sympathy with another, curtailing the right of picketing, and preventing the Civil Service unions affiliating to the T.U.C.

He recognised the inability of economists to understand capitalism, and he admitted inadequacies in the system, particularly “the strange discordance between the producing and consuming power.” (Daily Telegraph, 20.6.30.)

The News Chronicle (10.11.43.) reported him as saying,

“I regard it as a definite part of the duty and responsibility of this National Government to have it set about a vast and practical scheme to make sure that in the years immediately following the war there will be food, work and homes for all.”

But by 1948, the war over and there not being the same need to urge workers to greater efforts, he was arguing against “precise elaborate programmes.” In 1952, back in office, he was stressing the need for three years to elapse before any improvement would show. He left the government in 1955 and today the old problems of “food, work and homes” are still with us.

Churchill the military man certainly had some grand concepts. Commenting on the expeditions to Antwerp and Gallipoli, the Encyclopaedia Britannica says:

“In both cases the strategic concept was brilliant, but the forces required for their success were not forthcoming, and Churchill’s own impatience contributed to their failure.”

It reports Churchill as describing the Dardanelles campaign as “a legitimate war gamble.” (The Encyclopaedia Americana records the British losses as over 33,000 killed, 78,000 wounded and 7,000 missing. Turkish and French casualties were also very high.) What sort of man can make a legitimate gamble of the lives of hundreds of thousands of men?

In the second volume of the Official British History of the Second World War by Major L. F. Ellis, it appears that in 1940, when Churchill was being built up as the great war leader, his telegrams and messages to Lord Gort, Commander in Chief of the British Expeditionary Force were, “not always relevant” and he “did not grasp the nature of the German threat to the B.E.F. as a whole, nor the weakness of the Belgian position.”

What is the basis for Churchill’s claim to greatness in the field of foreign affairs? It is said that he was one of the few who in the Thirties understood the ambitions of Nazi Germany. But his own words show that he was not opposed to dictatorship in principle.

After the 1914-18 War, he stated his policy as “Peace to the German people, war on the Bolshevik tyranny.” In 1927 he was “charmed, . . . , by Signer Mussolini’s gentle and simple bearing, and by his calm, detached poise in spite of many burdens and dangers.”

The Evening Standard (2.4.37.) reports Churchill as saying,

“It is certain that if Franco wins. he will be in no position to interfere with British and French interests in the Mediterranean. The Germans and Italians will have little or no influence upon Spanish policy once the firing stops.”

But by April 5th the same paper reports him as saying, “A thoroughly Nazified Spain, retaining its German nucleus, may well be a cause of profound anxiety to both France and Britain.”

Events were causing him to change his words, and not only towards Spain :

“We should not go cap in hand to Soviet Russia, but how improvidently foolish we should be. … to put needless barriers in the way of the general association of the great Russian mass with the resistance to an act of Nazi aggression (News Chronicle, 10.5.38.)

Compare this with his statement, reported in the Daily Telegraph, (7.11.38.); “I have always said that if Great Britain were defeated in war, I hope we should find a Hitler to lead us back to our rightful position among the nations.”

It cannot be more clear, Churchill was not oppose to the Fascist powers as long as they did not threaten British capitalist interests. He thought “great men” could secure Britain’s position in the world, but after the war he had to accept that Britain, compared with the USA and Russia, was a second-rate power. No Hitler or Churchill can do anything to change that.

What, then, has Churchill achieved? The economic, social and political problems remain broadly the same as 90 years ago — war, want, insecurity are as current now as when he was born. Perhaps there was some truth in the description of him by another, similarly unsuccessful and similarly revered, capitalist politician, Aneurin Bevan: “the mediocrity of his thinking is concealed by the majesty of his words.”

Churchill was a member of the British capitalist class and he served his class well. He maintained a constant anti-working class attitude throughout his life. In the military and foreign fields he was no more successful than other possible leaders. He became the spokesman for British capitalism during a period when its future was endangered, and used his gift for words to spur the working class to greater efforts for the benefit of their masters.

In death, as in life, he served our rulers well. The pomp and ceremony of his funeral was a circus for the diversion of the working class. The entire pulpit–religious, political, press and radio–have been loud in his praise. Here was a man, they said, for workers to look up to, to recognise as a leader, and in so doing to pay homage to future leaders and to the principle of leadership.

Here perhaps we may rephrase Bevan’s comment, and apply it to all leaders—The failure of their actions is concealed by the majesty of their promises.

Where did Churchill lead the workers? Where will any leaders take them? Workers have only to reflect on their experiences—not for Churchill and his class, but for those they dominate, is it a life of blood, sweat, toil and tears.

And it will remain so, until the same workers who are now deluded into an hysterical hero worship of men like Churchill, learn that their interests lie in dispensing with leaders and setting up a social system in which all men stand equally.

Ken Knight

Election Special: Leaders and Led (1964)

From the October 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the issues in this election will concern the personalities of the various political leaders. Many people will vote for the Labour Party because they like Mr. Wilson, or for the Tories, because they admire Sir Alec Douglas-Home. The assumption behind these votes is that, whoever the leader happens to be, it is necessary that somebody holds the job.

But is this true? There are innumerable leaders in the world today—political, religious, trade union, and so on—yet none of them is capable of doing anything about the world’s problems. And this applies equally to the leaders of the past, who spent a lifetime assuring people that they could do something about capitalism's ailments but died with the world in just as big a mess as ever.

In spite of this, the working class continue to put their faith in leaders. As one set fall from grace, the search is started for a new set and each time the searchers convince themselves that they have at last found the honest, consistent and capable men they would like to have at the top. They never, apparently, consider the proposition that all leaders are futile.

Leaders, in fact, exist by virtue of the ignorance of the people they lead. And the more emphasis is put upon the leader, the more gullible and unthinking are the followers. Yet what point is there in a leader who has to listen to the rank and file? The ultimate logic of leadership is the dictator.

With political understanding, leaders are unnecessary. When the working class have grasped the nature of capitalist society, when they understand how it inevitably produces war and poverty and insecurity, they will be immune to the blandishments of aspiring leaders.

With knowledge the people of the world will understand the cause of capitalism’s problems, and realise that they will only be solved by the establishment of Socialism. That will need, not leader,, but a consciously Socialist working class.

Until that happens we face the chaos and brutality of capitalism. When it does happen, there will be a world of happiness, freedom and plenty.

That Blessed Word : Unity ! (1908)

From the July 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard 

(Con)Fusion in America.

A few years ago the question of Socialist unity engaged the attention of the two “Socialist” parties in this country. Votes were taken of the rank and file and large majorities voted in favour of fusion, but as the leaders did not desire fusion they did not allow it to come to pass.

Similarly the cry for “unity” has been raised in America, and again those first in raising the cry have been the smallest of the parties concerned.

As in England a knowledge of the mental make-up of the parties enabled many to see through the fake proposal, so will similar knowledge of the American “fusionists” enable us to value their “unity” cry for what it is worth.

In 1896 the Socialist Labour Party of America declared for the “new” Trade Unionism, and started the Socialist Trade and Labour Alliance, a union affiliated to the Socialist Labour Party, and out to smash the “pure and simple” trade unions. This caused a “split” in the Socialist Labour Party, a large section leaving and, with the “Social-Democracy” of Eugene V. Debs, forming the Socialist Party of America.

A fight then commenced between the two, most of the fighting being done by the Socialist Labour Party, who long and loudly denounced the prominent members of the latter party— Debs, Carey, Mother Jones, Simons, and so on—as “freaks,” “frauds,” and “fakers,” while the Party as such was in turns termed the “Multi-cocoa Party,” the “Kangaroos,” in fact, anything but a Socialist party, and no Socialist Labour Party member was allowed on their platform except in opposition.

After some nine years of this fighting, and at the same time attempting to organise the working class in the Socialist Trade and Labour Alliance, the membership was found to be declining at such a rapid pace that something had to be done.

Mr. F. Bohn, organiser, visiting Chicago, found himself among the “freaks,” “frauds,” and “fakers” that the S.LP. and the S.T. and L.A. were fighting—Mother Jones and A. M. Simons among them—and without instruction from either the S.L.P. or the S.T. and L.A. (his paymasters), he joined with them in signing a manifesto calling for a new union to be formed. In thus proclaiming the failure of his own union Bohn was supported in the Weekly People by such writers as Olive M. Johnson and Dan. De Leon. The Socialist Trade and Labour Alliance was thus crucified, betrayed by the leaders of the S.L.P. into the hands of the “freaks,” “frauds,” and “fakers,” and a new union—the Industrial Workers of the World—was formed. This new union, having for its object the organising of the workers to “take and hold” what they produce, enrolled a large membership, including men of all shades of political thought and of none. Those who had been “freaks” and “fakers” now became honest and earnest comrades on the economic field ; and to hide political differences politics were relegated to the rear, economic organisation and action being given the place of prime importance, and Mr. De Leon, editor of the American Weekly People, “discovered” that Marx had in 1869, said somewhere, sometime, to some one, that “only the economic organisation could set on foot the true political .party of Labour.”

Did Mr. De Leon know this before he helped to form the Socialist Trade and Labour Alliance, and before he joined the Socialist Labour Party, or is it now that he is wangling ? As there is no evidence that Marx ever made such a statement, I beg to answer the latter question in the affirmative.

But in case Marx is not sufficient, Engels is dragged in, and one need not be surprised if at any time we are told that Christ talked Industrial Unionism in the Sermon on the Mount, or that even if he did not, what he did say may be “adapted to American conditions.”

When, as a result of capitalist persecution, W. D. Haywood had become the momentary idol of thousands of American workmen, and, while still in prison, was nominated by the Socialist Party as candidate for Governorship, the S.L.P. found itself in a dilemma. Haywood was member and nominee of the “rotten” Socialist Party —yet he was a member of the pure I.W.W. According to the S.L.P. rules they could not support him, but could they risk opposing the popular Haywood ? Eventually the Colorado State Executive decided to call upon every member of the S.L.P. in Colorado to withdraw from the Party until after the election, so that they could vote for Haywood ! This remarkable wangle was supported by O. M. Johnson and Mr. De Leon, and we were told the S.L.P. refused to oppose Haywood politically because they were supporting his “economic side” !

On his release from prison, however, Haywood toured America for the Socialist Party. This roused the ire of the S.L.P., who then denounced him as a coward and a craven.

Meanwhile the I.W.W., which for a time had proved a happy hunting-ground for S.L.P. literature sellers, had had a serious split. Most of its original founders had left it. E. V. Debs, had joined the staff of the Appeal to Reason, an anti-I.W.W. paper, and those who were left were largely inclined towards the Socialist Party. This not suiting the “fighting” S.L.P., who, not content with fighting the “cravens” like Haywood, outside, and the “physical force-ists” like Williams, inside, wanted a new excuse for a declaration of war on the Socialist Party, up went the cry for Socialist “unity.”

The E.C. of the S.L.P. invited the Socialist Party to consider proposals with a view to fusion, knowing they would be rejected. They were rejected, and now the S.L.P. can forget the fond embraces indulged in with the “freaks,” “frauds,” and “fakers” at the funeral of the Socialist Trade and Labour Alliance, and clears the decks anew for hostilities.

Had the “unity” proposals been accepted bj the Socialist Party and a juncture fixed up, splits would, of course, immediately have followed; but the chance would have been taken. and the S.L.P. would have been scuttled and swallowed up in a new party, with the consent and approval of its friends, as was the Socialist Trade and Labour Alliance in 1905.

In either case it was a wangle on the part of the S.L.P. leaders, a case of heads I win, tails you lose, but the Socialist Party leaders declined to enter the game.

It will thus be seen that, as in Britain, so in America, the “fusion” trick is but a move in the long game practised by faction leaders at the expense of the principles they are supposed to be advocating. It is therefore, up to the rank and file, as the Americans would say, to checkmate the players, to overthrow the “leaders,” the “intellectuals,” to act on the truly Marxian dictum that “The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself.” When they will place principles above personalities, and understand the difference between capitalist reform and social revolution, they will find there is but one party for them. Here it is The Socialist Party of Great Britain ; in America it has yet to be born.

A. W. Pearson

Letter: Structured party (2006)

Letter to the Editors from the December 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Structured party

Dear Editors,

I am a bona fide socialist and I will never be anything else. I am totally opposed to inequality, exploitation, oppression, poverty, hunger, war and everything associated with capitalism. However I do find fault with your outlook. I can’t see how we can challenge capitalism without being organised in a structured socialist party with an elected leadership. I believe that the leadership should have no special privileges , but to vigorously pursue party policy which would be decided at conference.

You criticise Lenin and Trotsky in your ideas, but I think the Bolsheviks’, with Lenin and Trotsky, was the most correct that the Russian revolution could have been in organising socialism in that era. So I would like you to educate me by explaining a better way of achieving socialism.

C. Dobson, 

Wigan

Reply:

We do stand for a “structured socialist party” but on quite different lines from Lenin and the Bolsheviks.

Starting from the view that, left to themselves, the working class can only develop a trade union consciousness, they stood for organising as a vanguard party to lead the workers. They also said that this party should be organised on a top-down basis with a “leadership” which, while perhaps formally elected, had the power to make policy and order other members what to do. Such a structure may have been necessary to overthrow Tsarism but not to establish socialism – which they didn’t anyway, only a form of state capitalism.

We say that the socialist political party should be organised on a quite different basis: the power to make policy should lie with the membership through delegate conferences and referendums; there should be no party leadership, only an executive or administrative committee charged with arranging for the policies decided by the membership to be implemented. We also say, contrary to Lenin, that workers can advance beyond trade unionism and can understand socialism. When a sufficient majority of them have, and have organised themselves democratically, ready to take over and run society, they can send mandated delegates to parliament to take control of political power and use it to end capitalism and coordinate the change-over to socialism – Editors.

Leadership and Lenin (1949)

From the December 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

The idea of “ Leadership ” developed alongside the growth of private property; it was a reflection of class-divided society, and the leader or leaders always represented property interests. Behind the idea was the theory that a few are born to lead whilst the many are born to serve. Over 2,000 years ago Aristotle, a Greek philosopher, put the idea this way;—

“He who can foresee with his mind is by nature intended to be lord and master, and he who can work with his body is a subject, and by nature a slave."

“And so in one point of view, the art of war is a natural art of acquisition, for it includes hunting, an art which ought to practice against wild beasts, and against men who, though intended by nature to be governed, will not submit, for war of such a kind is naturally just."

In the last century Thomas Carlyle, in his essay on Chartism, put the idea in a more polite form:—

"Surely, of all 'rights of man,' this right of the ignorant man to be guided by the wiser, to be, gently or forcibly, held in the true course by him, is the indisputablist. Nature herself ordains it from the first; Society struggles toward perfection by enforcing and accomplishing it more and more . . . In Rome and Athens, as elsewhere, if we look practically, we shall find that it was not by loud voting and debating of many, but by wise insight and ordering of a few that the work was done. So is it ever, so will it ever be."

As soon as the workers began to combine to try to obtain some amelioration of their conditions their Movement was also cursed with this idea of leadership, and a contemporary of Carlyle, William Lovett —a working man who drafted the six points of the Charter —complained bitterly about it: —

“They were always looking up to leadership of one description or another; were being swayed to and fro in opinion and action by the idol of their choice, and were rent and divided when some popular breath had blown that idol from its pedestal. In fact the masses, in their political organisations, were taught to look up to 'great men' (or to men professing greatness) rather than to great principles."

Despite Lovett’s complaints the leadership idea was firmly entrenched in the radical and social democratic movement, and became one of the pedestals of Bolshevism. Lenin, the most prominent of the early Bolsheviks, had a complete contempt for the workers, looking upon them as just pawns in the struggle for power. In a pamphlet written by him in 1902, entitled “What is to be Done,” he indicated the attitude that governed his actions. The following quotation will make clear what this attitude was: —

“We said that there could not yet be Social-Democratic consciousness among the workers. This consciousness could only be brought to them from without. The history of all countries shows that the working-class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade-union consciousness, i.e., it may itself realise the necessity for combining in unions, to fight against the employers and to strive to compel the Government to pass necessary labour legislation, etc.

The theory of Socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical and economic theories that were elaborated by the educated representatives of the propertied classes, the intellectuals. The founders of modem scientific Socialism, Marx and Engels, themselves belonged to the bourgeois intelligentsia." (pages 32-33.)

“The workers can acquire class political consciousness only from without, that is, only outside of the economic struggle, outside of the sphere of relations between workers and employers." (page 76.)

Lenin was arguing against those who contended that only the trade union struggle mattered, but in doing so he showed his hand. It may be pointed out, in passing, that it was largely from the theories of French, German and English working men that Marx and Engels acquired the knowledge that they systematised into scientific Socialism.

Lenin was an opportunist struggling for power and when it suited his policy he glorified the intelligence of the workers (see for instance his arguments in favour of trusting “ the masses ” in “Lessons of the Russian Revolution," page 24) pouring scorn on the alleged intricacies of organisational functions; later on he was just as emphatic in the opposite direction. This whole organisational policy, however, was built upon the idea that only a few possessed the intellectual capacity to direct the masses, and this was his interpretation of the “ Dictatorship of the Proletariat." Let us just give an example of how he wrote when he was appealing for working class support:—

“Capitalist culture has created industry on a large scale in the shape of factories, railways, posts, telephones and so forth, and on this basis the great majority of functions of ‘the old State' have become enormously simplified and reduced, in practice, to very simple operations such as registration, filing and checking. Hence they will be quite within the reach of every literate person, and it will be possible to perform them for the usual 'working- man's wage.’ This circumstance ought, and will, strip them of all their former glamour as 'Government,' and. therefore, privileged service.

The control of all officials, without exception, by the unreserved application of the principle of election and, at any time, recall; and the approximation of their salaries to the 'ordinary pay of the workers'—these are simple and ‘self-evident' democratic measures, which harmonise completely the interests of the workers and the majority of peasants; and, at the same time, serve as a bridge, leading from Capitalism to Socialism." (“The State and Revolution," page 46.)

The above was written just before the Bolsheviks obtained control of State power; after this was accomplished the tune changed. To illustrate this change of tune here are some extracts from “Resolutions and Regulations of the Tenth Congress of the Russian Communist Party (29th March to 4th April, 1920) Published by the Executive Committee of the Communist International. Moscow, 1920." In considering these extracts it must be remembered that Lenin was the dominating figure in both the Russian Communist Party and the Communist International-

“The Congress makes it obligatory to all members of the party mercilessly to fight that particularly obnoxious form of ignorant conceit which deems the working class capable of solving all problems without the assistance in the most responsible cases of specialists of the bourgeois school. The demagogic elements who speculate on this kind of prejudice of the more backward section of our working classes can have no place in the ranks of the party of scientific Socialism.

Registration of individual output or productivity of labour and the granting of corresponding individual premiums must also be carried out in a way suitable to administrative technical staff. Better conditions must be secured for our best administrators and engineers to enable them to make full use of their capacities in the interests of Socialist economy.

A special system of premiums is to be established for those specialists under whose guidance the workers can attain the necessary qualifications to make them capable to accept further independent posts.'* page 16.)

Gone was simplicity, election of officials, equality of wages and the rest of the support-catching slogans. In place of them the iron hand of dictatorship and of the “intellectual minority” was revealed. Many pages of the report were given over to arguments alleging the necessity and advantages of one-man management and responsibility. It is interesting to notice that the penalties to be imposed for failure to fall in line with labour discipline included internment in concentration camps. This shows that forced labour and concentration camps were used to bolster up dictatorship at the beginning of Bolshevik rule.

“The way to fight this labour desertion is to publish a column of desertion fines, the formation of labour detachments of deserters under fine and finally internment in concentration camps.” (page 20.)

The quotations we have given will show that leadership, an attribute of private property society, which has cursed the working class’ movement from its inception, was elevated into a guiding principle by the Bolsheviks, and sedulously followed out up to the present, bringing with it domination and the “flesh pots of Egypt” to the privileged minority whilst the masses suffer penury, hard labour, and the threat of the concentration camps or worse.

(All italics in the quotations arc in the originals.)

Gilmac.

Fabian Notes. (1907)

From the February 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The government of the future will be by experts and we, naturally, want to be the experts.”

(H. Snell speaking for the Fabian Society.)

* * *

So now you know, if you did not before, what the Fabian Society are after. Their “Socialism” is government by bureau, and “naturally” (sweet word) they want to be the bureaucrats. “Naturally” they want the plums. “Naturally” they want to sit in the seats of authority and arrange things for the benefit (naturally for the benefit) of the other and somewhat lower orders who do the mere producing.

* * *

“Naturally” these producers will be unable of themselves to administer their own affairs. Because “naturally” such delicately intricate work as will “naturally” be involved in the manipulation of affairs of state, “naturally” demands a special type of mind, specially trained. And obviously, not to say “naturally” the working class qua working class,— the working class that is to say per se,—do not possess such necessary and entirely essential qualities. They must “naturally” look for their administrators, therefore, among the cultured class who, “naturally” endowed with imperial qualities have consecrated their lives to their development and with infinite pains have, rendered themselves fit to enter into the holy of holies from which will issue those inspired directions and words of good counsel without which the labourers in the vineyards (and other places) will be as sheep without a shepherd, as little children stumbling in the dark.

* * *

The members of the Fabian Society having quite clearly all the special equipment necessary, therefore quite “naturally” desire that the working class shall acclaim them the saviours of Society and signify implicit confidence in their capacity by unhesitatingly conceding them the right to govern.

* * *

But I think, I say I think, it will not work out quite like that. I think, mark, I think that there will be some little hesitancy before the working class admit the necessity for the creation of a bureaucratic staff, or a star chamber, or a holy of holies even to such fierce democrats as the Fabian Society. I think it not unlikely that the working class will look somewhat dubiously upon a method of government such as they have been somewhat painfully familiar with for several generations and may even conclude that, on the whole, they would prefer to try something else—a method, for example, by which they themselves would be the dictatorial authority expressing their requirements through administrators who would be mere delegates with their instructions in their pockets. The intellectual equipment of administrators in these circumstances need not necessarily be exceptional.

* * *

Of course the Fabian Society will unanimously agree that such a hypothesis is entirely grotesque. And as the Fabian Society are experts in the grotesque their view may quite properly be given the consideration it so well merits. But as this is my funeral, they need not distress themselves too severely even if I persist in pressing the probability of their super-excellent services being in small demand, and proceed to submit that their idea of government under Socialism is likely to be regarded as antiquated and fitting only to the conditions which obtained in the nightmare days of capitalism. However preposterous it may seem to them, I think it quite possible that as there will be no interests to administer except the interests of the working class, the present geographical unit of alleged representation, based as it is upon the private ownership of the means of life, will be superseded by representation of labour departments. The honourable member for East Loamshire will give way to Citizen Smith, the delegate of the Gasworkers and General Labourers’ Federation or some such labour organisation. As, so far as I have been able to observe, the Fabian Society’s idea of the government of the future rests upon the continuance of the present bureaucratic forms, such an alteration would tend to have the effect of knocking the Fabian Society’s heaven-sent powers somewhat acock.

* * *

Let me submit with becoming humility that the Labour organisations of the future being composed of moderately intelligent men (such intelligence being necessarily antecedent to the Socialist State) might understand almost, if not quite, as well as a Fabian expert—I am charitably assuming that the Fabian expert is not knocked acock as aforesaid—what they required for their own comfort and happiness and might (it’s a most outrageous proposition) even be in a better position than the inspired governmental Shavian to decide upon such changes in the machinery and methods of industry in their own department as would facilitate production and ensure them greater leisure and less arduous labour. And their conferences would instruct their delegate accordingly.

* * *

It’s an interesting subject and my vagrom speculations could, I am sure, be extended to cover several more columns at least. But the exigencies of space and pressure of many matters force me to an immediate closure. I will only add that in all my anticipations of the probable outworkings of the Socialist Society of tomorrow I can, without allowing my imagination to riot, easily conceive that there will be no overpowering necessity for any legislative holy of holies or for any administrative caste, or for any bureau of inspired experts. And however natural the longing of the “culchawed” Fabian may be for the seat of authority and the halo of beneficent superiority, it may well chance that he will not be appreciated at anything like his own estimated worth, and it may even happen in that event, that he will find himself in the unhappy position of being obliged to devote himself to the acquisition of some information likely to make of him a useful member of Society. I would therefore respectfully advise him to start trying to pick up the rudiments of a helpful calling—say woodchopping—lest the revolution overtake him while he is still endeavouring to articulate his vain regrets—his very vain regrets.

A. James

Whispering Sweet Nothings (1995)

The A Word in Your Ear column from the June 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blah, blah; blah, blah; Blair, Blair. This column has decided that a change is as good as a rest and it is time to commit ourselves to utterly platitudinous cliches. Away with this talk of bosses, wage slaves and unseemly class struggles. What politics needs today is a good dose of empty rhetoric—and by Jove, we’re out to let you have it, bang between the eyes (as our role models, the boxing commentators, say).

A political cliche in the hand is worth two in the bush, and a stupefying slogan in time saves nine.

Perhaps there is some truth in the observation that most political speeches these days read like the outpourings of a cheap word processor which has been deprived of human contact, but let none be deceived that cliches are a recent invention. Even before the inane banalities of Major Clinton and Paddy Blair, creative depths were reached by orators of old whose capacity for saying nothing was in direct proportion to what they had to say.

Take Hitler, for example. By most historical accounts this “evil genius” had verbal powers which could hypnotise a crowd faster than Churchill could down a litre of brandy. In fact, Hitler was a transparent nutter, a loud-mouthed cliche-merchant who, without the musical build-up and the theatrical setting would have been regarded merely as an out-of-work painter with an irreparable groin injury. Watching newsreels of Hiller’s rants, as well as those of Mosley’s pathetic echoes, is an invitation to a cliche-spouting competition. Take away the mass unemployment, hyper-inflation and defeat in a recent world war and Hitler's platform at Nuremberg would be about as popular as the Catholic Evidence {sic) League in Hyde Park on a drizzly Sunday. Or take Thatcher. (Take Hitler, take Thatcher. . . take the bloody lot of them.) another sufferer from chronic verbal diarrhoea. Takeaway the TV cameras, the specially-invited audiences and the VIP label and put Maggie on a platform in any high street in Britain; she wouldn’t last ten minutes. Which is nine minutes longer than her successor would last and longer still than Reagan who reportedly went through the entire 1984 presidential election campaign without responding to a single spontaneous question.

Cruel commentators have labelled New Labour’s new-look, brand-new, extra-new-ingredients, we’ll-swap-four-of-your-old-claws-for-one-of-our-new-ones Object as being a bit. . . er, wordy . . . and, well, empty. Hot air, to be precise. The Blur leadership need not feel slung by such criticism, for in committing themselves to such apple-pie platitudes they are merely following a long-preserved record of cliche, going back to their party’s founder. Defining socialism in June 1896, Keir Hardie surely surpassed even the new Clause Three-And-A-Quarter when he explained it to mean “brotherhood, fraternity, love thy neighbour as thyself, goodwill towards men, and glory to God in the highest”. Now, that is what you call a relentless commitment to unadulterated cliche.

So what if almost everything that every politician says sounds the same? Has it not occurred to Generation X, whom the sociologists tell us are characterised by a universal disdain for politicians, that they sound the same because they stand for the same thing? Try selling Coke and Pepsi without, after a while, descending to cliches about fizz, bubbles and cold soda on a hot day. Nobody accuses Pepsi ads of dwelling on the obvious merits of ice-cold drinks or Kellogg of talking too much about breakfast instead of lunch, or Punch and Judy of pursuing the same boring quarrel when they could always go to Relate and patch things up. So why expect defenders of a social order which should by rights have been put on the scrapheap with the Hillman Minx to have anything original to say?

It is high time that voters stop bleating about the cliched vacuity of those who seek to lead them and realise that secondhand tripe is quite good enough for anyone seeking to be led. Or, to put it another way, "You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it think”,

Steve Coleman

Asked & Answered. (1912)

Letter to the Editors from the June 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

[To the editor.]

Manchester, 12.5. 1912.

Sir,—Your article in the current issue of the “S.S.” on “Why we oppose Labour Leaders,” prompts me to reply as follows.

In the first place what do you mean by “Labour Leaders” ? My conception of the term may or may not coincide with yours, but to put it to the test let me define what I take the term to mean.

I would say that a “Labour Leader” is one who, in the opinion of the rank and file of the organisation he belongs to, political or industrial, is the most capable exponent of that organisation’s principles. The most capable man to be found in the organisation who, in addition to expounding its principles and objects, can effectively retaliate and confound its critics. Thnt is my conception of a prominent man in “Labour circles,” who nowadays is popularly termed a “leader.”

But this applies equally to the S.P.G.B. Does it not elect its representatives in debate ? Do not the industrial organisations elect their “leaders” in like manner ? Aye, even more democratically than does the S.P.G.B. its debaters and official speakers, for the S.P.G.B. Executive have absolute control over the appointment of them, while a trade union does elect, either by ballot of the membership or at its business meetings, its officers and representatives. So, to speak, as your article does, of “placing themselves at the head” of their organisations is hardly correct—as your contributor admits later on, when he says that “leading, after all, is by consent,” which is somewhat different to “placing themselves.”

Personally, I am inclined to think that leaders are more or less necessary to any movement. Take, for instance, the official organ of the S.P.G.B. Its articles generally come from the same pens month after month, and those articles are taken by almost every member of the Party as the official utterances of the whole Party, yet the decision of that is vested in either an editorial committee or the whole Executive. Where do the rank and file come in ? It has to be published before they can agree or disagree, and if they disagree, as did a section of your members over the “W.B.” (Upton Park) reply (Feb. 1910), they have an almost insuperable task before them to convince, not the Party, but the Executive Committee. Anyhow, that by the way.

To my mind, so great a number of the working class have the unfortunate practice of “following” that I am inclined to think that even on the stroke of capitalism’s doom they would be “following” rather than “conscious” of their “historic mission,” and would enjoy the “fun of the fight.” For the same contributor, in his article “Might is Right,” tells us that it is only “opportunity” that is wanted to establish the workers’ right to the full products of their labour, brought about, of course, by might. Whether each and every one of the struggling workers is to be a conscious instrument or merely a “tool” in the execution of their mission we are not told. Men will “follow the crowd.” Again, there are men who lead and at the same time preach doctrines identical with your own. They lead because the “led” recognise their ability and worth. I myself have questioned the “led” on such occasions, and frequently they have been unable to say in anything like an intelligent manner, much less clear, why they allowed them to lead, or themselves to be led.

Fraternally yours,

Edwin Garvey.

——————————————–

My dear Mr. Garvey, though, as a student of Darwin, I am well aware that some people do have funny children, I really am surprised at you. If you have been a purchaser of the “S.S.” ever since “Might is Right” appeared, and have learnt no more than this, then we have been taking your money for nothing, and I must see about getting it refunded.

Your conception of a “Labour leader” indeed. Well, you must have got it from the “Labour leaders” themselves. It is just what they say about themselves whenever they can get a mug to listen to them.

But you must have had somebody in your mind, Mr. Garvey, surely. Who was it ? Was it the Right Honourable John Burns, who so warmly defended the Featherstone butchery ? Was it Mr. Philip Snowden, M.P., who exhibits such fine contempt lor the “drink-sodden democracy” ? Was it Mr. J. R. MacDonald, who called the Civil Servants sponges and said that it is “high time” they were told they would have to submit to the same terms as labour in the outside market ? Was it Mr. H. Quelch, whose only definite principle is what he calls the “One-and-one Principle” ? Was it Mr. W. Thorne, M.P., who assured his audiences from his election platform that he did not stand as a Socialist candidate, and then said, on the balcony of the Stratford Town Hall on the night of the “count” : “It is a great victory for Socialism and Labour” ? Was it any one of the forty-two so-called Labour M.P.s who sit cheek by jowl with tbe Liberal party in the House of Commons, and dare not vote for their own amendments for fear of embarrassing their allies ? Who was it, good friend Garvey, whom you took for type when you painted what you term your conception of a “Labour Leader” ? Perhaps you nodded in some tin chapel, where your hero was sacrificing himself to make a “Pleasant Sunday Afternoon,” and you got him mixed up with the stained glass angels on the windows.

Now I will give you my conception of the term “Labour leader.” First and foremost he is one who desires to lead. There may, course, be various reasons for this desire. It may arise from sheer egoism—the craving to loom large in the public eye ; or it may proceed from the lust of pelf. But commonly it is due to an admixture of reasons, in which the chief and guiding one is the consideration of the eternal, omnipresent, almighty question of bread and butter. But there it is—he wants to lead, he must lead, he will lead, and, say you and the likes of you, he shall lead. It is that, and you, who make the “Labour leader,” or, that I may not fall behind you in| humble respect for His Nibs, the “labour Leader.”

The second point is that the “Labour leader” must have no principles. Principles are very ugly customers in the eyes of the “Labour leader.” They demand a certain consistency of action which is beastly awkward to the political weathercock. In addition to this, and vastly more important, men who have principles and understand them cannot be led. They are the masters of the situation. They know whither they want to go, for the road is clearly pointed out by their principles. Their collective understanding of these principles, and their collective wisdom, and courage, and determination in the prosecution of the line of action which these principles demand, far outweighs that of any individuals. What men with principles want, therefore, are not leaders and bosses, but servants to do their bidding. This the “Labour leader” understands well enough, and so he has no concern with principles. Indeed, so far, Mr. Garvey, is your conception from, being correct in this particular, that the “Labour leader” cannot arise in an organisation which is firmly grounded upon any set of principles.

It is a very clumsy dodge of yours to profess a conception of a “Labour leader” in such form as precludes him from being a leader, and then asking where he differs from an S.P.G.B. representative. But again you show that it is your misfortune to have to look on these things through eyes which, to put it with becoming courtesy and gentleness, do not focuss accurately. An S.P.G.B. debater is appointed by the E.C. for a specific and temporary purpose. He is not an official of the Party, for there is no office of Party Debater, as there is of Party Organiser, Party Treasurer, and so on. If there were it would be filled, as these offices are, by the Party membership. But the E.C. appoints debaters because the membership elects them to perform that duty among others.

And as for your remarks concerning the publication of the Party Organ, you answer yourself when you say : “It has to be published before they,” the rank and file (your expression, Mr. Garvey, not mine) “can agree or disagree.” Exactly, and I should not be surprised if you have hit upon the very consideration that moved the Party membership to saddle the E.C. with the task of getting it published. Every dog has his day—go up one.

“Where do the rank and file come in ?” you ask. Every member of the Party comes in where and when he receives his copy of the issue. Every member of the Party has an opportunity to agree or disagree before he takes any part in pushing the sale of the Organ. What more would you have after confessing that the paper must be published before they can agree or disagree ?

Your statement that a section who disagreed with the Party position on a certain matter had an almost insuperable task to convince the E.C. falls a trifle short of the truth. They had an absolutely insuperable task, and when they tried to convince the Party, the task was just as insuperable.

The article “Might is Right” does not contain the statement you attribute to it, nor anything like it. Your statement is rubbish and falsehood. As a matter of fact, the opportunity is always present when the workers are sufficiently educated and organised to seize it. And the inconsistency you fancy you can detect in the article you criticise vanishes directly you ask yourself whether, before a person can place himself at the head of a body of men he must be permitted to do so —in other words, he leads by consent.

Your inclination “to think that leaders are more or less necessary to any movement” betrays the Anarchist. The Socialist knows that the strength comes, not from “prominent men,” but from the class as such. While the class has no definite guiding principles, it will be the prey of so-called Labour leaders. The Anarchist, the Individualist, the man who is “inclined to think that leaders are more or less necessary to every movement” has no faith in his class, but only in individuals. Such alone are they who, “even on the stroke of Capitalism’s doom, would be following,” creating confusion, ignorant of the real object, blind to the real enemy, halting when they should march, sparing when they should strike, stampeding when they should snatch the fruits of victory from a beaten foe. Once again I proclaim, as many Socialists have proclaimed before me, and as my comrades are proclaiming from our platforms day by day, there is no hope save in the class. There is no hope save in the class. There is no hope save in the working class understanding, not their but its own politics. Therefore the Socialist, who has faith in the inevitability of Socialism, has faith also in the working class. He has faith in its intellect, faith in its courage, faith in its tenacity, faith in its mission, and therefore faith in its triumph. Those who doubt in any one of these matters cannot be Socialists, are unworthy to stand in the ranks of those who are fighting the battle of the working class. They doubt their class ; they have contempt for the capacities of their class ; they can be nothing but enemies of their class. If they be men who have had ample opportunity to learn the truth, then the beet place for them is in the ranks of the B.S.P., where they can sit in open-mouthed adoration of those “leaders” whom they appraise above the class they are part of.

A. E. Jacomb

Letter: Workers and Leaders (1976)

Letter to the Editors from the June 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

I have two basic questions about Party members and one question about a statement in the 70th Anniversary issue of the Socialist Standard, which I read avidly.

Question 1: Are any Party members wage-workers? Question 2: If not, how do you pay for food, accommodation and the other basic needs of life under the capitalist system?

On page 90 of the 70th Anniversary issue is printed a picture with the statement “No Leaders — the Executive Committee in Session, 1956”. I wonder how you qualify what seems to be a double-standard statement?

I am a sympathizer with Socialism, common ownership, but I am not yet a member of the only Socialist party, the SPGB (my age is 17). But I hope to become a member and learn much more about Socialism in the near future.

Barry Phillips

London SW9

Reply:

Nearly all the members of the SPGB are wageworkers. That is why we are Socialists. Socialism is the expression of the material interests of the working class, the nine-tenths who under capitalism have no choice but to sell their labour-power and be exploited. Having to “pay for food, accommodation and the other basic needs of life” is capitalism’s atrocious arrangement by which wage-workers perpetually go without; Socialism means free access by everyone to whatever is produced.

Leaders are people with followers. The Socialist Party has an Executive Committee and a General Secretary and members who do various other named jobs. They are elected by the membership, and none has a hope of exercising special influence or making our decisions for us; the constitution of the Party is framed to prevent that. The EC’s function is to put the wishes of the membership into effect and see to the Party’s routine business. That’s all.

Incidentally, Executive Committee meetings on Tuesday nights are, like all transactions of the Party without exception, completely open. If you want to know how it works you may walk in and see and listen.

Editorial Committee.

Pathfinders: Attack of the zombies (2024)

The Pathfinders Column from the April 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

The US presidential election campaign is set to move into high gear this year with both sides attacking the mental capacities of the other side’s leader, one as senile and the other deranged. There is something zombie-like about Biden and Trump, the one peering through screwed-up eyelids as if half-asleep and always baffled, the other pontificating on his own magnificence in the strangulated voice of hubris at full stretch. But it’s not as if US workers would be any better off if two different capitalist zombies were battling it out for leadership, the whole concept of leadership itself is a kind of zombie cult.

New research from Queensland University has identified a problem of ‘zombie leadership’, a set of ideas about leadership that remain popular while being generally ‘poisonous for organizations and society’. ‘It’s known as ‘zombie leadership’ because despite being demonstrably false, these claims refuse to die,’ says Professor Haslam, of the University’s School of Psychology. ‘One example is the assumption that leadership is exclusive to people with special qualities which set them apart from the masses’ (tinyurl.com/2s4b833z).

This is self-evidently a false assumption, when you look at the calibre of most political leaders. The only special quality many of them have is a narcissistic sense of Divine Right which is impervious to criticism or even rational thought. But zombie leaders make for zombie followers, who refuse to believe the evidence of their senses and remain convinced that leaders in general are a superior species.

The researchers point to other noxious but unchallenged preconceptions, like the idea that people can’t manage without leaders, and that leadership is somehow good by definition. They argue that these ideas have no evidential base but persist because they flatter ruling elites (of course) and also appeal to anxious people who feel they have no control in the world, with the result that they help to ‘justify inequalities of esteem, recognition, and reward.’

They are correct on all counts. But they don’t say that all leadership is bad. They see ‘good’ leadership as an inclusive group process in which people feel appreciated, ‘grounded in relationships and connections between leaders and those they influence.’

Recently the Economist ran a podcast series called Boss Class, which aimed to offer useful advice to managers trying to improve their game and get better results out of their workers. Much of the discussion revolved around similar ideas of democratic participation, listening, appreciating, and recognising what individuals are good at and what they’re not good at.

The problem with all this, from a socialist perspective, is that it’s largely pious bullshit which either does not understand or refuses to admit the basic realities of capitalist employment. While it’s undoubtedly better to have a nice boss than a nasty one, the fact is that workers are not there by choice, they are coerced by economic necessity into labouring to make someone else rich, and no amount of smarmy management-speak can disguise the conflict of interests between workers and management that is an integral part of the class war. Many workers instinctively recognise this, and are not fooled into working harder or for free just because the boss smiles at them and calls them by their first name. Unfortunately though, many other workers are conned into thinking that the boss is their friend, and they are consequently hit very hard when the cost of living goes up but their wages don’t, or when they suddenly face redundancy after years of loyal service.

It really doesn’t take much to find examples of people cooperating perfectly well without leaders. One recent news article looked at a Suffolk commune that’s been going successfully for fifty years with everyone pitching in and nobody feeling the need to be Napoleon, although the place looks palatial so the buy-in would no doubt exclude the average sans-culotte (tinyurl.com/3xpdhajr). Even without doing any reading at all, most people can probably call to mind incidents from past experience where they worked cooperatively with other people on a common goal without anyone taking a leadership role. It’s really not hard. People do it all the time. That’s why socialism will work.

Surprisingly, there are even some capitalist companies which have got rid of management structures and have no actual bosses, like the Morning Star tomato processing company in California (tinyurl.com/mstnuhdr). But these tend to work in practice like cooperatives, where workers essentially have to exploit themselves if the entity is going to compete successfully in the marketplace against other companies with no tender scruples about screwing their own workers. And screw their workers they must, even if they’re nice and polite bosses who know everyone’s name, because the logic of capitalism is to grow or die, and that means skinning the workforce every chance they get.

Socialists have an understanding of leadership which is somewhat different even from that suggested by the Queensland study. We don’t have leaders and we regard hierarchies as intrinsically anti-democratic. But to say we don’t believe in leadership under any circumstances is not accurate. In fact, as Engels pointed out in response to some people fetishising anti-authority, there are times when it would be damned silly and even dangerous not to have an expert in charge, like on a ship at sea (On Authority, 1872).

In fact we think leadership should be encouraged in everyone – if by leadership we mean a willingness to take the initiative, problem solve, show others the way, and inspire them to take part in a collective cause or a project. That’s how we’ll get socialism, after all, by you and everyone else having the courage to stand up and be first, not sitting and waiting like a zombie for someone else to tell you what to do.

Paddy Shannon

‘Take me to your leader’ (2023)

From the December 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

These five words became the supposed, and somewhat clichéd, request made by any alien stepping from their flying saucer. This brief statement makes a huge supposition; that a society so much more advanced than ours that it can traverse light-years of space still has leaders.

Not so different to humanity at present then. The implication is that leaders will always be a necessary feature of any society. So, no possibility of socialism anywhere in the cosmos, never mind on Earth.

Fiction is often either reflective of what is, or speculative of what might be. Whilst science fiction has an honourable tradition of posing questions as to possible things to come, in this case, the alien(s) represent the world landed in, not some distant galaxy far, far away.

The role of leader in human society has taken a variety of forms, the monarchs of feudal times eventually giving way to presidential heads of state as capitalism developed. Even if, as in Britain, when there is nominally still a crowned head, the king or queen fulfils the role of president. The only difference is the method of selection, by ballot or birth.

It is not only states that have leaders of course. Industries have CEOs, with boards of directors and their chairmen/women.

The Socialist Party is an unusual political organisation in that it does not have leaders. Parties of the openly capitalist sort, usually locating themselves on the right wing, very much favour strong leadership. Those that would identify themselves as left, even those claiming to be socialist, also have prominent roles for leaders.

An ever-present problem for all leaders is that while they occupy the top spot, there are members of their own parties continually plotting their downfall to further personal ambitions. Even those who have no realistic chance of ever achieving exalted prominence will eagerly conspire against their leader if they feel their immediate interests are served. Never allow principles to intrude on personal advantage.

The recent example of Jeremy Corbyn’s brief flirtation with high office is such a case. As Labour Party leader and, therefore, potential future prime minister, he did not exhibit unequivocal loyalty to the British state or its allies.

A toxic mix of media vitriol and Israeli self-interest was unleashed with the added force of his own MPs, fearing for their seats, becoming willing accomplices in his political assassination. The anti-Zionism equals anti-semitism campaign proved, despite its absurdity in the main, a potent force.

However, as is usually the way with a poisoned chalice, it remains toxic for whoever next sups from it. Keir Starmer, proving his overwhelming loyalty to his own ambition, used the anti-Zionism equals anti-semitism weapon to quell and remove any lingering Corbynites, even expelling the man himself from the party he’d led.

However, what Starmer didn’t foresee was the 7 October Hamas atrocities in Israel followed by the savagery of the Israeli response. As the number of dead in Gaza rose beyond 10,000 Starmer found himself politically hobbled by the very weapon that brought him the leadership.

Unable to denounce Israeli military actions or even call for a ceasefire without giving rise to accusations of, by his own use of the term, anti-semitism, his leadership was undermined. Labour politicians at local and parliamentary levels must either resign and undermine him, or deny their own consciences.

Leadership implies control and elevated insight when situations arise. The Boris Johnson Tory administration very quickly began to unravel when his government, based on charismatic populism but with little substance even in terms of its own politics, was confronted by the public health crisis of Covid.

The present inquiry into the handling of that epidemic has revealed self-interested factions vying for influence, but with nothing other than invective to say to each other. At the pinnacle of this maladministration teetered the former Prime Minister who less than a year previously had been lauded for his leadership in turning the ‘red wall’ blue. An appropriate colour considering the language of choice, or the choice language, of his ‘team’.

It has been said that anyone wanting to become a leader must possess a personality that should debar them from becoming one. It is a role for a human demiurge to create a political world in his or her own image for which the required infallibility is always lacking.

Even a cursory scan of history in the capitalist era demonstrates how misguided it is to place human hopes and aspirations in the hands of leaders no matter what qualities they claim to have to navigate ‘their’ people to a better future.

The Russian revolution, whatever the claims of Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin, did not, and could not, lead to human emancipation and socialism. A Führer only leads to barbarity via the rhetoric of lebensraum and a Third Reich. The ‘Great Helmsman’ steered his state vessel onto the rocks of the Cultural Revolution.

Following a leader amounts to an abnegation of responsibility. It is people wanting an individual to deliver a better way of living for them. There is a better way for humanity to live, but it will never come about at the behest of some enlightened leader.

That better way – beyond capitalism and its attendant problems of exploitation, poverty, nationalism and war – is socialism. A moneyless worldwide commonwealth to which people will contribute in the very best way they can and have their needs met. A truly democratic society without need of, or any role for, leaders.

Should a flying saucer or otherwise unimagined vehicle traverse the cosmos and land on Earth, when the being steps from the craft a universal translator may allow a question to be clearly posed: ‘You want to take me to your leader? Why are you still inhibiting human progress with leaders?’

Dave Alton

Editorial: Leaders, get lost! (2006)

Editorial from the October 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Countless column inches and seemingly endless hours of news reports have been given over to the leadership crisis the Labour Party is currently engulfed in. Speaking up for Prime Minister Tony Blair, former Home Secretary Charles Clarke said Blair would stand down when he was good and ready to do so and he accused Chancellor Gordon Brown of “absolutely stupid” behaviour in challenging Blair, commenting that Brown needed first to prove his fitness to lead.

Fitness to lead? Now there’s a thing. It assumes leaders have some special qualification acquired over years of study and self-sacrifice when the only real qualification is the ability to hoodwink others into thinking you possess knowledge and qualities they do not. Unlike other professions – doctors, surgeons, architects, physicists – whose skills come via many years of hard slog – politicians require none whatsoever. The only requisite credentials needed when standing for election are that you are over 21 years of age, not insane and with no recent prison record.

Despite this, many workers think we cannot function without leaders. This is a fallacy and one perpetuated by the ruling class to help them maintain their control over our lives. Indeed, so prevalent is this philosophy, that from the cradle to the grave we are taught to mistrust our own intelligence and to feel somewhat inadequate, to look up to our ‘betters and superiors’ (schools, church, politicians, parents etc) for their expert guidance and to accept without question the plans they draw up for our future.

It is assumed by many that leaders run the world. Well, we think it is we, the workers, who run the world. Politicians might make government policy, which becomes law, but it is we who build and work the hospitals and schools. It is we who build the bridges, roads and railways, ports and airports; all the products that humans need to survive. It is we who produce everything from a pin to an oil-rig and provide humanity with all the services it requires – we the working class! We don’t depend on leaders for these skills or for their guidance. They have no monopoly on our knowledge and intelligence or on the inventions we dream up to enhance the quality of life. If all the worlds’ leaders died tomorrow, few would really miss them and society would function just as before.

The concept of leadership has emerged with class society and will end when we abolish class society, when we abolish the profit system and all that goes with it. The master class have been allowed to lead because of their control over the means of living and by virtue of their control of the education system and their monopoly of the media and other information processes.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The greatest weapons we posses are our class unity, our intelligence, and our ability to question the status quo and to imagine a world fashioned in our own interests. Leaders perceive all of this to be a threat and so will do anything to keep us in a state of oblivion, dejection and dependency. Our apathy is the victory they celebrate each day. Our unwillingness to unite as a globally exploited majority and to confront them on the battlefield of ideas is the subject of their champagne toasts.

Remember this as the battle for leadership of the Labour Party hots up.

Editorial: Lessons from the German elections. (1930)

Editorial from the October 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

Germany has just had a general election, the results of which call for some comment.

One of the most striking lessons of German politics since the war has been the steady fall in the voting for the German Social Democratic Party. In 1919 they had the vote of 45 per cent. of the electorate ; since then the vote has steadily declined until in this election they have secured only about 25 per cent. of the votes cast. Yet in 1919 German Social Democracy had control of Governmental power, and one of its leading members, Ebert, was German President until his death in 1925 !

What is the explanation of the fall in the Social Democratic vote? The answer is simple.

In the years before the war our “labour” opponents, who opposed our revolutionary attitude, brought forward the alleged progress of the movement in Germany as evidence to support their reformist policy, and pestered us with “the growth of the Socialist vote in Germany.” The war destroyed a good deal of this sand castle and made plain what little progress Socialism had actually made among the people who made up the German Social Democracy. The post-war years have made the position still more plain, and have gradually disillusioned and discouraged a large number of the blind followers of the one-time worshipped “leaders.”

The millions who voted “Socialist” in Germany were like the millions who voted “labour” in England—they did not understand or desire Socialism as they did not know what it involved. At the most what they wanted and expected was an amelioration of the worst of the evils that they suffered, and they relied on the promises of the German Social Democratic Party and the English Labour Party to obtain this result. But Socialism is the only means by which the workers’ position can be materially improved; while capitalism remains in existence it must necessarily go on producing the evils of capitalism. Therefore, as neither of the Parties had a Socialist electorate behind them, conditions have got worse instead of improving—to the disappointment of the electorate.

The failure of the Gorman Social Democratic Party to live up to its promises, although it has been easily the largest Party in Germany since the war, and also the fact that it has in various ways assisted the German capitalists in their exploitation of the workers, is the explanation of the disappointment and disgust of increasing numbers of its former supporters.

It will be noticed that the Communist vote is higher this election than in the last, but they have obtained a lower percentage of the votes cast this time than they did in 1924. They have temporarily gained owing to the political ignorance and hopelessness of part of the electorate. However, the life of a Communist Party is one of ups and downs—mainly downs of late years.

The Fascist Party (or German National Socialist Party, as it calls itself) represents in the main the groups of officers, small investors and small proprietors that have suffered economically during the post-war period, but its main actions are determined by German heavy industry, from which it draws a considerable part of its funds. It suits the large German capitalists to use this body as strike breakers and bogey men to keep down wages and frighten any drastic reforms out of the minds of the Social Democrats.

The irony of the situation is that the German Social Democrats are largely responsible for the existence of this body, as they directly and indirectly assisted in its formation. When in power in 1919, they welcomed the returning soldier back “to his own country,” but decreed that the private soldier should lay down his arms whilst the officers could retain theirs. The S.D.P. also assisted in the formation of armed bodies that were afterwards used against them.

The German Fascist Party came into being as the result of the dissolution of groups which originated from the “Orgesch,” a group formed in Bavaria by a state official named Escherich. The elements composing it were in the main the same then as now. Its aims were similar to those of the Italian Fascisti, to whom it gave, assistance in 1921-22.

Anyone who reads, in the “18th Brumaire,” Marx’s description of the “Society of December,” the hirelings of Napoleon III in the middle of the last century, will recognise the similarity in constitution and methods between it and the German and Italian Fascisti, and also how large capital uses such bodies for its own ends.

The German election was fought on the question of increased taxation to meet the growing unemployment problem. The issue was one that admirably suited the Fascists, who put forward airy phrases about better management of funds and the reduction of expenses ; and also endeavoured to play upon patriotic feeling aroused by the heaviness of the war indemnity.

As the German S.D.P. have not advocated anything beyond ordinary capitalist measures to meet Germany’s difficulties, their answer to the opposition is weak, and they suffer from the swing of the pendulum.

The leaders of German Social Democracy who took over power with quaking knees after the war were afraid to stand or fall by their former protestations. Now, after devoting themselves during these years to the salvation of German capitalism, they are losing support among the workers. Some of their members, such as Noske, have acquired reputations for blood-thirstiness and treachery to the working-class that will be remembered and will help the German workers to realise that they must rely upon their own knowledge and their own efforts to free themselves from capitalist bondage, and cast off the outworn and slavish idea of leadership.