05/02/18
Leninists and anarchists often conflate leadership with rulership. Leninists want leadership in the mode of rulership. Anarchists often want a lack of leadership altogether. Rulership is a form of authoritarian or arbitrary rule rooted in centralized forms and/or content of decisions that violate what should be minimal rights that people have.
Marxist-Leninists often conflate any kind of leadership with authoritarianism. Marxists-Leninists point out with precision that anarchists often refuse any kind of leadership in an attempt at purity. Even though Marxist-Leninists correctly diagnose a problem of leaderlessness in some anarchistic movements, they propose a kind of leadership rooted in centralized forms–from political parties to political economic bodies–that make policy over and above (and rule over and above) people and workers as an attempted transition towards common ownership of the means of production and a moneyless, stateless, classless society (a development that such means have no once developed). Such a centralist move functions more as a way of quashing ideals/practices/revolutions worth fighting for–and prescribing leadership to do so–rather than bringing forward principled leadership to principled movements. Such a Marxist-Leninist move sidesteps how leadership can work without rulership in favor of a form of political economic rulership that is not worth fighting for–and is at best a lesser evil compared to something even worse.
As we can see in the philosophical anarchist approach–found in the philosophies of Godwin, Rocker, and Chomsky–not all authority is justified, the burden of proof is on authority to be justified, authority can rarely meet such a burden of proof, and when it cannot meet such a burden of proof it should be dismantled. Bakunin has a similar but different conception of justified authority; Bakunin advocates for respecting expertise, going to multiple experts, and making up one’s own mind for oneself about who to agree with. These classic anarchist notions point towards a flexible yet skeptical take on leadership which differs drastically from advocates of structurelessness.
The most coherent praxes of classical anarchism focused on various formal organizations such as communes, cooperatives, trade unions, and affinity groups in the mode of struggle towards creating common ownership of the means of production and social freedom more broadly. In such horizontalist forms people make decisions together–in free association bounded by non hierarchical limits–and participatory implementation is done by individuals and collectives. We ought to find forms of leadership that are in harmony–and conducive to– non hierarchical relations. Leadership can take the form of taking initiative. Leadership can take the form of proposing ideas. Leadership can take the form of being the first to deliberate. Leadership can take the form of dissenting. Leadership can take the form of implementing decisions made by the base. Leadership can take the form of going first. Leadership can the form of mandated and recallable non-authoritarian roles (such as secretary, facilitator, notetaker, treasurer etc). Leadership can take the form of expertise. Libertarian socialists should create a form, content, and strategy for different kinds of leadership in harmony with their values rather than let leadership be the monopoly of hierarchs.
The New Municipal Agenda 