Why we don’t need “leaders”, for working class self action

A lot in our movement put our failures and lack of progress down to the wrong leadership and we simply need better leaders and we will be much better off. If only it was that simple ay? I was once a member of a vanguard Trotskyist party the Socialist party of England and Wales formally known as the militant tendency. I found this strain of Marxist politics rather insular and often backward looking in its outlook. “The "vanguard of the proletariat" is a concept common to both the Leninist and Trotskyist strains of communism, and it is nothing more than a convenient precedent to seize and hold power. In post-revolutionary Russia, it saw the self-organised soviets infiltrated and commandeered by the Bolsheviks, the army re-centralised, and the establishment of a counter-revolutionary dictatorship. Vanguardism is a dead-end for real, libertarian socialism. In times when it had a chance of gaining power, it was a vehicle for dictatorship. Now, the point is to boost the numbers, fill the coffers, and sell the papers. Some groups, such as the Socialist Party - being formed from Militant Tendency - do have the upside of actually getting involved in workers' struggles in practical ways. But they hold to the same belief in workers' needing revolutionary leadership, and the same tendency towards building front groups As class consciousness begins to slowly grind into a very slow movement in progression is something to be welcomed naturally as those of us who wish to change the world for the better. But as consciousness increases, we also need to be aware of – and to challenge – illusions in official leadership and hierarchies. This goes for the Labour Party, of course, and for the numerous other sects which style themselves as our vanguards and revolutionary leadership. But, in the particular arena of industrial disputes, we need to be particularly wary of the influence and intent of the trade union leadership. As Anton Pannekoek wrote, the leaders and bureaucrats of the union movement “sit in conferences with the capitalists, bargaining over wages and hours, pitting interests against interests, just as the opposing interests of the capitalist corporations are weighed one against another.” This is how “they learn to understand the capitalist’s position just as well as the worker’s position” and so take it upon themselves “to regulate class conflicts and to secure industrial peace.” Though portrayed as enemies or rivals, trade union leaders and bosses end up collaborating to quell industrial unrest to the detriment of workers Many will say well if you think we don’t need a leadership how will we ever get anywhere. This is a hugely defeatist position which makes out the working class are incapable of thinking and acting for themselves. To create change workers must start to feel their own collective power and possibilities of action from below. The main vehicle for that is the mass assembly. Workers build confidence in their own strength through collective action, and an integral part of that is the ability to make decisions for ourselves. Thus, rather than limiting the input of the workforce to a statutory ballot, after which union leaders and executive committees decide the timing and the form of action, assemblies of all workers involved in a given dispute allows for this open debate and decision-making. It makes it easier to organise pickets, plan solidarity and fund-raising actions, and generally maintain the strength of an action. Where mass assemblies are not practical, for example in disputes and actions spread across a broad geographical area or involving a number of sites, an elected strike committee is the next best option. Such a committee should be composed not of representatives imbued with the power to make decisions for their constituents, but of delegates with strict mandates who are accountable to those who elected them and instantly revocable. In establishing such a committee, those taking action are able to coordinate their activities efficiently and respond to issues rapidly whilst still making sure that it is ordinary workers who are calling the shots, beyond the reach of the demobilising forces of trade union bureaucracy. This also, again, reinforces the idea that workers are able to take action of their own accord, as a class, and helps to build the confidence and consciousness required not only for significantly larger actions such as a general strike but also to reinforce how things will look in the event of a radical re-organisation of society in workers’ interests. Ultimately, workers need to self-organise. Yes, we need to rid ourselves of the dead-weight of union bureaucracy, but that does not mean installing an out-of-touch vanguard in their stead. Serious and effective resistance to the class war can only come from below, at the hands of people who are willing to take direct action but who also realise that looking revolutionary isn't the same as being revolutionary. In the workers’ movement, solidarity isn’t just a word. It is a weapon. It is the basic principle behind working class people combining to defend their collective interests and reciprocally supporting each other’s struggles. In practical terms, it can take many forms; from joining and supporting the picket line of another workforce to donating money to those who have withdrawn their labour. The latter is particularly important if we want to build a culture of industrial action that is independent of union bosses, because the availability or refusal of strike funds is one way in which they are able to demobilise people and turn action on or off as they see fit. Hence the importance of locally controlled strike funds. Such monies do not, obviously, spring up out of nowhere. By bringing the control of funds back to the grassroots, so we also bring them the responsibility for raising them. There are a number of ways to do this. Self-organised groups, such as Liverpool Antifascists, use benefit nights and gigs to raise money. As they put it, “these events not only serve to raise money … but to lay down links in communities and raise awareness of the … cause.” Thus, not only do such actions raise cash, they also forge the community links and sense of comradeship that is equally vital to maintaining struggles. In particular, this is a good way of drawing those outside of the affected workplaces into the action, and they can be encouraged to contribute to the fight not only financially but by turning up at pickets or demonstrations as well. Practical solidarity and mass picketing Not all disputes follow the same pattern. As such, there is no single formula that can be prescribed to guarantee success. However, as a general principle, building practical support and solidarity is integral to any potential victory. Particularly, as in Britain, if you are standing up in defiance of restrictive laws. The broader the base of support for an action, the harder it is for the bosses or politicians to make workers suffer any backlash.” In order to challenge the cuts agenda, we do not need to “win the argument” or to elect the right people into power. We need to shift the balance of power back in favour of the working class. This can only be done by encouraging people to self-organise and take control of their own struggles, in the community and in the workplace. 1. Rank-and-file control The point of direct action is that the working class do not put pressure on those in authority to negotiate, nor work in partnership with them to solve common problems. Instead, we identify what we want and either take it or force those in power to concede it to us. As its essence lies in un-mediated class struggle, by definition it cannot be directed from above by any self-styled revolutionary leadership. Direct action has to be initiated, and led, from below by the rank-and-file. This acts as a safeguard against being demobilised from above by bureaucrats or politicians who will put their own careers ahead of class interests; but it also serves as a demonstration of our own power. By organising in this way, we learn to exercise that power without the need for political leaders or vanguards. This not only allows us to challenge the present rolling back of workers’ rights and defend the status quo, but also to look beyond it and question the way that society is organised as a whole. With quotes and extracts by Phil Dickens over at http://propertyistheft.wordpress.com/2011/03/18/standing-on-the-picket-line/ A And http://propertyistheft.wordpress.com/2011/02/28/defeating-the-cuts-an-anarcho-syndicalist-strategy/

The question of leadership

I have been in organisations with strong and weak leadership and have come to the conclusion that leadership itself is fundamentally flawed in many ways. During my time in the socialist party we were told the working class needs new fighting leadership but I am not sure this is quite true on many levels. Of course we were told while a member of such sects that Trotsky’s famous quote that the crisis facing the working class is the crisis of leadership and some seem to have taken this particular quote to the point of dogma and frozen it in time and done little with it sadly. I am a believer that we are our own leaders and that leadership as a concept is a concept for bureaucracy. I think we all have it within us to lead and control our own struggles now. Why do we need a self appointed leadership to control and manage our own struggles they are ours for a reason surely? I have firm belief that the working class can lead its own struggles and battles without a leadership. In fact leadership starts from within and some take it further but if we all lead our own struggles by not giving our struggles over to some far distant appointed body we can remain in control. In fact I believe now that if we reject the concept of leadership in the term understood today anyway which of course can and will change in time is no blueprint for success at all. I do think that if we, we own and control our own struggles we cannot and will not be sold out by leaderships and bodies looking to act and speak on our behalf. Only us the workers the rank-and-file of the movement and the world can control and affect change. Lets be honest when has a leader ever acted in our own interests. Once we have given permission to someone else to decide what is best for us we have in affect already lost because we can no longer affect change ourselves it is down to someone else not us. Leadership as a concept is not a bad thing but it is how that power of change and understanding shifts from us to a body of people we are trusting to act and speak on our behalf. I am naturally dis trustful of leadership due to my experiences some may have good experiences but I do think in the end we will all see leaders or those who claim to be our leaders in the light cold light of day for all to dsee as opportunists . The mass's have the answer and will not be fooled some may be some of the time but not forever. Workers and those at the bottom of the pile will have nothing to loose very soon and then you will see a fight back and this will be spontaneous and leaderless. For this to succeed people will need to learn for themselves and take each step at a time if they loose they must take that on the chin and learn from it not look to leaders to make things better as they simply will not they will act in their own interest as they always have done and always will.

How Stalinism distorts Marxism

Stalinism as an ideology is a dieing set of ideas but for decades it distorted the true ideas of Marx Engels and Lenin too. I thought I’d give some examples and explained perhaps why the Stalinists looked to distort the real ideas of Marxism over the years. Stalinism basically the safe guarding of the bureaucracy the elite in the labour movement quite often was something born out of Stalins ideas in the Soviet Union. Those who like to draw the conclusion that Lenin’s ideas were carried on to their natural conclusion by Stalin are completely incorrect in many ways. Stalin was a brutal dictator and abused Marxism to fit in with his own agenda unlike Stalin Lenin was a big supporter of debate and discussion rather than persecution and murdering your opponents who seem to be a threat to your leadership. Lenin debated with them, fiercely demanding high standards of evidence and principle in his opponent’s arguments, always calling people to task for unclear, illogical, factually weak positions. He brought the best out in people, who on their own were fatally flawed. He even threatened to resign several times in order to make his points. Lenin was a master of Marxism at the global level, European wide level, national, regional and city by city level. One of Lenin's most powerful accomplishments was his ability to translate Marxism to the individual and personal level and then return to broad general points, not just "What is to be done" but what is to be done by you and I right now. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Stalin, in leadership by himself, with his cynical tendency unchecked, then gutted Marxism's emphasis on carefully considered revolutionary action. Stalin's disastrous political line equating the Social Democrats as an equal danger to the fascists was a prejudiced course of action reflecting his cynicism about the Social Democrats rather than a careful examination of them. Stalin did not abandon this ill-conceived perspective until after it was too late to stop Hitler. As Lenin might have put it, the "What is to be done?" was replaced by "Left Wing Communism an Infantile Disorder." Stalin replaced Marxian dialectics with a mechanistic version that emphasized the "inevitability" of socialism in place of Karl Marx's stark choice for revolutionaries in "The Communist Manifesto," "a fight that each time ended, either in the revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes" (CW Marx Engel’s V 6 pp.482). For Marx the possibility of terrible defeat was so real that all prejudice and intellectual short cuts had to be abandoned because each serious choice in a crisis that revolutionaries make on the "ground they have been given" can lead to advance or "the common ruin of the contending classes." Stalin's disastrous line equating Social Democracy as an equal enemy to the workers movement as Fascism was so clearly prejudiced and filled with intellectual short cuts that it can only be explained, at least in part, by the same character flaws that Lenin wanted Stalin removed as Secretary General of the Communist Party for in 1922. All revolutionaries have to accept "the ground they have been given" such as the militarized imperialism and ferocious racism in Germany in 1932, but Marxists have no excuse to abandon careful analysis for cynical prejudice. We have no excuse now nor should we excuse Stalin. Stalinism doesn’t see Marxism as a guide to action more an excuse to batter your opponents with. Using revolutionary language doesn’t make you a revolutionary its in your actions that your judged and Stalin and Stalinists today do not apply genuine Marxism only a bastardised version of it with rigid dogma out dated and used to sure up their own positions in the labour movement and the unions. Stalinism also subscribes to the stagiest theory that we must have a period of growth under capitalism first and deal with a socialist revolution at some undefined point in the future in essence this point never comes as its all about Suring up your own positions and fearing the working class Justas much if not more than the capitalist class. This was the case in the Soviet Union where great purges and mass killings took place to put down workers revolts to quash dissent. This is not socialism and has nothing in common with Marxism we follow today. Its brutal dictatorship looking to up hold its own privileged positions. Thankfully Stalinism is all but dead today in the labour movement mass communist parties around the world are dieing if they haven’t already. In their place we must fight to build new workers party true and democratic with a right to free speech and critical thinking without the fear of reprisal.

Capitalist leaders desperate to calm economic turmoil

this excellent article posted on www.socialistworld.net the website for the CWI, Committee for workers international and is written by international secretary Claire Doyle.

As their system continues to slide into its worst crisis since the 1930s, the frantic efforts of world capitalist leaders to reverse the process are farcical, contradictory and ineffective.

"Is anyone in control? Is this a runaway train?" asked a presenter on a British news programme on Monday evening - the day Wall Street crashed by 6% and markets everywhere plummeted.

In a matter of weeks, more than $5 trillion has been wiped from equity market values worldwide - half of that total in the past week. The creditworthiness of the most powerful economy in the world has been questioned.

Eurozone leaders are stumbling from one summit to another without being able to solve the crisis.

Last Friday (5 August) the credit rating agency, Standard and Poor, down-graded US government bonds from AAA to AA+. This, they said, was due to the debacle between Democrats and Republicans over the debt ceiling for the US - now standing at $14 trillion - the highest in the world.

Then S&P found its sums were wrong (by a mere $ 2 trillion!). But, extremely pessimistic about growth prospects, they still maintained that lenders would have doubts about buying US government bonds.

But, apparently, those who have the most invested in US 'Treasuries' - namely the Chinese Government, with two-thirds of its foreign reserves of $3,187 billion in dollars - have no intention of selling! It may be diversifying more into Europe and elsewhere but, like most other creditors to the US government, they are not pulling out, and the cost for the US of borrowing money has not increased dramatically.

Nevertheless, the official Chinese 'People's Daily' newspaper took the opportunity to suggest that the US government should not "become blind to the great risks that a weak greenback could pose to the world's fragile economic recovery by lifting dollar-denominated commodities prices...It is time for the US to tighten its belt and solve its structural problems, in order to resume its reputation and restore world confidence".

The biggest concern in relation to the US economy is now whether it is facing a 'double dip'. There are fears that the austerity measures needed to tackle high levels of debt in the US and some eurozone countries, could actually stifle their already weak economic recovery.

There are renewed expectations that the Federal Reserve will announce a new round of quantitative easing, or QE3, in response to forecasts of the US having a 50-50 chance of entering recession before the end of the year.

Fears about the future of the world economy have been reflected in the price of gold and oil. Gold, always a favourite in uncertain times, jumped to a new nominal record of $1,720 an ounce by the end of Monday.

The price of oil has considerably declined on concerns that weak global growth could lead to a fall in demand.

As the CWI has explained on many occasions, the very feeble recovery, due to massive injections of public money, has not been accompanied by any sizeable growth in gross domestic product.

Apart from some notable exceptions it did not bring jobs for the tens of millions of unemployed nor stem what seems like a war on the poor - massive cuts in public spending.

Further cutbacks and downturns in the prospects for young people lie behind the outbursts of anger seen this week on Britain's streets. Seriously prepared strikes and general strikes are urgently needed in a series of countries now to stem the attacks on pension rights.

The CWI warned that, without the trade union leaders giving a clear lead in the struggle against cuts - across Europe and in other countries - clashes with police and attacks on property could erupt in the most deprived urban areas.

In Britain now, analogies are being drawn with the 'riots' under Thatcher in the '80s and the uprisings of the dispossessed in the 'banlieus' of Paris two years ago.

Looting and arson tend to harm the very communities in which the most oppressed live. But it is entirely understandable that the pent up anger of young people against the system and against the corrupt and often racist police should break out on the streets.

Attacks on the real looters - the bankers and big business - are more to the point.

A programme of jobs and homes for all has to be accompanied by a struggle for the nationalisation under democratic workers' control and management of the banks and big monopolies can channel all the anger and frustration of youth and workers against the system.

Crisis measures
Two weeks ago, there was a special meeting of Eurozone finance ministers to agree on another bail-out for Greece. Within hours it was clear this would not solve the underlying problems of that country or prevent a default on the national debt. (See article: Eurozone: Last-minute rescue package)

Before the July 21 agreement can even come into force, it has to be ratified by all of the Eurozone governments, mostly through their parliaments, which are not in session during the month of August.

Willem Buiter of Citigroup made the comment that, "getting 17 eurozone parliaments to support major changes is like getting a centipede hurdling"!

Only two weeks after this - last Sunday - under pressure from the Eurozone leaders, especially Merkel and Sarkozy, the European Central Bank was forced to announce new measures to try and prevent the stock markets going into a tail-spin after Friday's news from America! The previous policy of buying Italian and Spanish bonds on the open market was reversed.

This has reduced, at least temporarily, the rates on these countries' borrowings. Other discussions have taken place about expanding the powers to intervene by using the €440bn in the European Financial Stability Fund but they are hampered by the need for unanimity across the zone.

Just these two governments alone need to find an extra €840bn over the coming 18 months - more than the total of bail-outs already found for Greece, Ireland and Portugal.

The ECB measure will ease the situation in relation to the debts of Italy and Spain. But the strings attached will bring them into head on confrontation with their populations.

Tobias Blattner, a former economist at the European Central Bank, said on Monday that the ECB's intervention had done little to help the crisis of confidence gripping the share markets.

"This reflects the fundamentals that growth is in a very bad situation on both sides of the Atlantic and this is why the ECB's interventions will not change anything".

Italy's prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, last week tried to give the impression there was no major problem in Italy. But his country has one of the biggest debts as a percentage of GDP (nearly 120%) and an economy which has failed to grow more than a fraction of 1% for the past two decades.

He has now agreed, with his government, that the budget cuts planned for 2014 (well after the next general election) will be brought forward to 2013 - still after the next election is due! Berlusconi himself has said he will not stand next time round, but he desperately needs a government in power that will not allow three major court cases against him to proceed.

Spain's prime minister, Zapatero, has also declared he will not stand in the next election, sensing the widespread dissatisfaction with his inability to get Spain's economy back into healthy growth.

He has nevertheless agreed to increase austerity measures as a condition of the new loans. The massive level of youth unemployment and a feeling of utter neglect by politicians has been behind the mass movement of the 'indignados' - young people disillusioned with political parties and looking for radical, even revolutionary solutions.

David Jones, an analyst at the firm IG Index, believes that investors will remain unconvinced about putting their money into anything, despite the various attempts by leaders and international authorities to reassure the markets.

"It hasn't changed the feeling that politicians both in Europe and in the US are always a few steps behind where the crisis is," he said. "Markets still think there is a lot of talk from politicians but not much action".

This he sees as a major political reason "why the markets have been so weak over the past week".

Richard Hunter, a broker from Hargreaves Lansdown, said: "The markets are looking for a concrete plan out of Europe and the US in terms of how they are going to deal with their deficits." But because of private ownership and the states' role in defending the national interests of their own capitalists, a clear plan is something that capitalism, by its very nature, can never provide.

Capitalist anarchy, socialist development
Trying to control an anarchic and blind system, none of the measures they take seems to stem the downward spiral into the worst crisis since the 1930s.

The measures they take to try and rescue their system will mean yet more cuts and austerity, yet more suffering and anguish for the vast majority of the world's population.

As it is, according to a medical journal, the Lancet, as a direct result of economic collapse in Greece and Ireland, the suicide rates have soared in the past two years by 16 and 14% respectively.

The accumulating crises - economic and political - of the last few weeks, have only served to underline the chaotic and wasteful way in which capitalism works...or fails to work.

Only 58.1% of Americans of working age now have a real job. Tens of millions of people world-wide - young and old - are on the scrap-heap when they could be producing goods and providing services.

On the basis of public ownership and democratic planning, all the human and physical resources of society could be harnessed for the benefit of the vast majority instead of the increasingly rich minority.

The stranglehold of the banks and capitalist politicians over the lives of millions, in fact, billions, has to be broken. Mass movements including general strikes will show the power that the working class can wield in society.

Linked with the energy and anger of the youth, new mass workers' parties can be rapidly built. Confidence in the idea of a socialist alternative to capitalism can and must be renewed without delay.

In reply to a comrade on the issue of leadership

A good friend/comrade has posted a excellent interesting article on his blog about the role of leadership and his view that they are not needed to advance our cause as workers.

you can read this interesting post here. http://thesocialistway.blogspot.com/2011/07/who-needs-them-leaders.html?spref=tw

I thought i'd offer a reply and some of my own thoughts.

The comrade starts by stating

say apathetic. But virtually all members of the working class, with the exception of some 'socialists' who like myself are freethinkers, accept without question that leaders are necessary and essential; they cannot envisage a society without them.




Whilst i do agree with this to a degree that we all must become our own leaders to ourselves in a sense i think the idea of casting away all leaders could be a tad premature and risks us throwing the baby out with the bathwater somewhat.

I would suggest that our leaders in order to not be dragged in to a self serving situation which the blogpost i am looking at suggests often is the case. I would suggest that no leader or elected representitive should recieve no more than the average skilled workers wage. Being linked to the same earnings as those who you are representing is key i feel to remaining committed to doing exactly that.

I can understand why a lot of people do think there are many union leaders only in it for their own self interest and career prospects and money gains. But i am not totally sure this is always the case. I do feel their inflated salaries are always pointed to rightly when people are angry at their roles. So i would suggest a flat rate of a average skilled workers wage with the rest they dont take being donated back to the labour movement and the cause of workers.

The comrade then goes on

tes a social void in which the propertyless seek their solution either through prayer, or in the endless quest from a modern day Moses or political Messiahs, supposedly endowed with superior ability and foresight, to lead them out of the morass of their poverty and problems into the land of "solved situations". And of course this never happens.



This has been the case more often than not i agree with this but the role of a leader isnt to just lead people in their chosen direction it is also to raise contiousness within the mass's of workers. Spending time explaining socialist ideas is leading as it is popularising ideas that you wish more people to take up. In affect as socialists we are all leaderstrying to win more over to our cause and to change the world for the better.

But i would just point to the Russian revolution in 1917 where through the strong leadership of lenin and Trotsky the workers were able to feel confident enough to take control of the worlds first ever worekrs state. Although not perfect and a true class-less society initially the feeling was there that this could be achieved .

The feeling of revolution was strong at the timea nd if this had spread back then to other countries namely Germany or even England we could be living in a very different society today. I wont go into all the reasons why i feel this didnt happen now but just wanted to highlight that not all leaders are bad and some are genuinely wanting to changes things for the betterment of all not just themselves.

I think it is a common misconception that leaders will always betray the working class and we should not bother with them and instead self organise. Whilst i do agree to a point i do still feel there is a good place for revolutionary leaders who have experience and knowledge to ensure we remain united and focused on the eventual goal which is a class-less society where eventually the need for leaders is not nessesary which i do think the comrade i've quoted is looking towards.

Of course therea are good and bad leaders in our movement some we will warm to some we wont but i think by influencing the leadership of various unions and groups we can start to win support for our ideas of socialism.

So i do hope the comrade doesnt mind me commenting on his blogpost as i say i agree with large parts of it but i differ where i can see the benifit of having a strong leadership with revolutionary ideas and morals.

All part of the debate comradely i hope.