Saturday 2 November 2013

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.

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