During a discussion I was responded to me with:
There is NO such thing as “leaderless” organisation amongst humans - period.
and I don’t know what to make of it. I don’t have enough first-hand experience with anarchist organizations to refute it but I have read and watched enough anarchist media to doubt this claim.
(Edit: probably should have mentioned: This was told to me by another anarchist who I’ve seen in this com. So I don’t think this was due to ignorance.)
My main inspiration for my own beliefs comes quite a lot from the youtuber andrewism. Because the way he describes anarchism speaks to me. It’s hopeful and constructive focusing on the things we can build instead of the things we must defeat, something that very much resonates with a naive pacifist like me.
He has made a video on the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYVWbj8naBM.
And he does a good job of listing all of the different ways of leadership, until ending with the idea that leadership could be used as a way to start enforcing authority, and that constant vigilance is needed to oppose it. He therefor argues to view leadership not as a position, but as a practice that is shared across everyone.
There is also this comment under the video that I think is relevant:
I think that calling it a “guide” instead of a “leader” would properly convey the idea. Why is a guide a guide? Because of their local (or niche) knowledge, e.g. somebody who guides you around a museum. There is no inherent authority caught in the word, as you are simply choosing to listen to them concerning a specific context.
There is also this text: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anonymous-all-cocoons-are-temporary
Which I remember really resonating with me but I can’t remember most of the specifics so I guess I’ll need to re-read it at some point.
You might want to look-into how first-responders handle leadership. Ideally, everyone who eventually shows-up to help handle the fallout of a crisis-situation is properly trained to co-ordinate things, but you can’t know who actually will handle things until someone steps-up. As a result, the first trained-AT-ALL person on-scene gets the role, period, until they defer, delegate, or resign.
This leads to a lot of top-down and peer-pressure in related-fields to always be training. Leadership-training is often one of the cheapest, only-free, or even travel-room-and-board-included options available.
What they’ve found is that those who step-up lock-in on what needs to be done - all levels from the bottom-up have the idealized overall picture, checlists, exception scenarios hammered-into them, and the importance of keeping-track-of-and-share the details even when you don’t have time to write them down or explain them to everyone.
Therefore, a lot of the related Leadership training revolves around how to document what you can, the importance of finding a replacement-for-you candidate who is paying attention and can understand what you would need to pass-on with minimal explanation. Thus, the person who you eventually defer to, who relieves you and takes charge is usually not the highest-authority or most-experienced person on hand.
The higher you get in these authority-chains, and/or the more experience you get, the more the job is literally stepping back and check-boxing all the peripheral tasks. Taking-up slack or identifying those capable of doing so and stearing them towards those roles while avoiding interfering or conflict-with the … err … “situational” leader that stepped-up first and hasn’t bowed-out yet.
Mind-you, none of this has anything to do with the day-to-day of those involved. People have managed large-disaster-fallout situations for 24-hours-plus only for it to come-out later that all they had on their CV was CPR training and an un-related-job with no prior leadership experience - they may not have even realized that they were in-charge until asked-about it days later. People just kept asking them what to do, and when asked what to do by them, responded, “do you mind handling things a while longer?”; They signed whatever was presented to them and not full of errors, maybe not realizing x document wasn’t just a witness statement.
I guess what I’m getting at is, yes, some people have natural leadership talent, and some people you can train in the role five-ways-from-Sunday and they won’t be suitable or want to step-up, and yes, so much in life requires “that guy” to be in-charge of x location or x situation for whatever time-frame, but …
… the inevitability of the need for a leader does not require the same person be in-charge of whatever for years at a time, months, weeks, or even days at a time. Every leadership role has a hand-book of-sorts, a list of known exceptions, exceptions you may not want the wrong-person handling, and essential, bare-minimum tasks…
Here, I think the First-Responder outlook has it right: everyone gets repeatedly trained for leadership and constantly scrutinized for suitability. There are EMT’s, Fire-men, and of-course Police Officers who are not allowed to work alone(far from just trainees any-more, but not leaders … Barney Fife?), and preventing them ending-up de-facto in-charge of something important, at least on-the-clock, is a big part of why.
It is possible to run truly always-leaderless collective. The problem is, it is fundamentally the least anarchic, humane, and free solution there could be.
As problem stated, there is always a case for organizational violence - at very least, the membership rules that require value coercion or expulsion in case of values misalignment, but usually much more - without this violence, it’s not really an organization, but (of course temporarily) aligned group of people - the best social state, that actively resists scaling, translation, and its own survival over time - which is not bad at all, this is true pure anarchic state of freedom, but certainly not an organization. Yes, TAZs in popular reading are built around some internal violence too.
Whenever this violence is required, it comes to whatever is the source of violent decision making. If there is a leader, we could at least be certain that the decision was made by a human being (or, if we end up having aliens or proper lucid AI, which, IMO, should have same rights as we all), accountable, empathetic, thinking freely. In truly leaderless collective, decision making inevitably falls into hands of algorithm, wherever collective members are not perfectly aligned (and they are not, for call for abovementioned violence requires that alignment is violated) - then decision is made blindly, by unaccountable abstract entity that has really no empathy or other humane features.
In other wording, the violent decision ends up pretty much almost always wrong, which brings us to Condrocet paradox where large number of decision makers are worse than singular leader. This is even more true in hard, dynamic situations, like activism or first-response management, as other commenters pointed out, and there are often no “right” decisions.
Thus, even disregarding dynamics of all communities of interest to be discussed here (I’ve seen successful examples of leaderless trade teams, or tech cooperatives tightly bound into capitalist fabric - in other words, systems, where total replacement of humans by machines would not be noticed at best and would be beneficial for the systems really), an organization without a leader is dead or saint relying on pure flow of miracles.
This does not mean that anarchy is impossible, of course - even random rotation of leadership through collective members makes the system almost pure anarchic setup.
Could be a simple disagreement on what is a leader.
If it is a single or very limited number of persons, stable through time, who has/have power or authority over others, then there are leaderless organizations, i’ve seen them.
If it is anyone who is slightly more implicated than others and temporarily “takes the lead”, then yeah, but i wouldnt call that leadership.
I’ll also leave a citation from Bakounin “God and State” (roughly translated from french) about his views on authority and especially authority in anarchist groups : “There is no constant and fixed authority, but a continuous exchange of authorities and submissions, which are mutual, temporary and most importantly voluntary”
Folks that say that statement are not looking to be convinced on leaderless behavior amongst our satient comrades, so I would walk it off.
If they are somehow receptive, and genuine looking for examples, they would have already found them in markets, stalls, fairs, conventions, food banks, and tourist destinations.
What they are seeking authority, especially over you, with ignorance at their helm.
This was told to me by an anarchist who is in this com. They seem knowledgeable about anarchism so I don’t think this is ignorance. Rather a genuine disagreement on what leadership is or its role in anarchism.
They also said this:
When anarchists talk about “leaderless” organisation, they don’t just contradict the real-world experience of the working class - they literally contradict the very historical reality of anarchist organisation throughout the ages… which has never, EVER been “leaderless.”
This contradiction is a very, very serious one - and pretending that it doesn’t exist hurts anarchist narratives.
I’ve found it helps, when discussing leadership, to first establish what it means, since it’s easy to talk past one another if your ideas of leadership don’t match.
For example, some define leadership in terms of accountability or responsibility for outcomes, others by who reports to whom, others simply by appearances (e.g. figureheads), and still others by authority, power, clout/legitimacy, social capital, knowledge/experience, or simply influence.
Generally speaking, although I like considering influence (because it has allowed me to recognize many exceptional leaders I would have otherwise missed) ultimately, as it pertains to any official leadership role, I will always build my definition around responsibility, because that is the bottom-line burden of leadership. No self-interested person should ever want to lead unless there’s a cause or goal great enough to make it worth carrying that burden. That’s why many good leaders seem reluctant to take on a leadership role, then act as servants or stewards when they do.
From that perspective, I agree with your friend. You will never find any group effort, project, or any type of organization without some form of leadership, because they will always need at least one person willing to take responsibility for outcomes.
Yes. Even in a group of peers, leaders inevitably emerge. Unelected, unappointed but still leaders in those situations. As long as they lead by consent and are answerable. There’s nothing wrong with that. An abject absence of leadership in all aspects/scopes is generally unnatural and uncommon.
Elections etc are a whole other can of worms
I disagree with @Septimaeus@infosec.pub & @Eldritch@piefed.world 🧵. Words and their usage have meaning, esp. with a quo.
Anarchism can have initializers, guides, inspirers, instigators, accountants, entasked, burdened, responsible, etc., but having authority over others, “power, clout/legitimacy, social capital, knowledge/experience, simply influence,” servitude, stewardness, and electors are not principals of organizing though anarchist praxis.
I noted how they sidetracked my examples of emergent organization without any leadership involvement.
In a purely intellectual discussion that has merit. But in general layman’s terms any one of those could be seen as leadership, by leaders. In a discussion, it’s a good idea to have an idea of the level of understanding of the participants. And trying to speak to their level. Otherwise you risk talking passed them and confusing them. Which is generally not what you want.
It’s a distinction between natural leadership and those formally empowered as an officer in a hierarchy of power.
You’re in an anarchist community. You are extremely familiar with our vernaculars, and that of “laymen.” Both use “leadership” to mean exactly what “laymen” dictionaries define.
I am not so sure why you keep sidetracking the leaderless organizations that emerge out of common interests and responsibilities that I listed.
We disavow leadership in praxis for necessities and demand. When something needs doing we act on it. Leaders need not exist.
It sounds like we agree.
Leadership as responsibility or accountability, in the manner of a service, contribution, or sacrifice, is definitely a longstanding layperson definition. At least in the West and in the English language.
Leadership as authority is IME only used in might-makes-right paradigms or children’s games. I only see it used that way unironically among RWA types, and occasionally by non-native English speakers whose concept of “leader” is based on a translated word that’s much closer to the English word “ruler.”
I only offered the other examples to demonstrate how broadly people’s ideas about leadership vary. The reason “influence” strikes me as an interesting notion of leadership is that it’s useful for recruiting potential leaders.
The reason it’s useful is that many with leadership potential are reticent to answer the call to lead (often because of the burden of responsibility or fear of failure) yet they are deeply invested in the cause, evidenced by their instinct to influence others and guide them to successful outcomes (“backseat driving,” “leading from the shadows,” etc) which, while helpful, is suboptimal. It is better that they take responsibility for the objective instead of attempting to use others’ agency as proxy.
That’s the only reason I said I like to consider that notion of leadership often. My definition is primarily tied to responsibility.
Which dictionary?
My definition is primarily tied to responsibility.
Then use those words instead🤦♀️. E.g.
Comrade Alice showed exemplary responsibility today.
Bob was the responsible one for taking out the trash.
Charlie accounted XYZ problems today. ’Rad was dependable today.etc. etc…
The problem with citing dictionary is because they are based on current status quo. When I used it as a reference I got “Let’s not let liberals define the words we use” and I agree with that. We need an anarchist dictionary that’s wildly used to solve these problem. Every anarchist has their own path, and they have different words. We should try and consolidate as much as possible to a dictionary.
🤦♀️ reread my🧵.
Both dictionaries use the same meaning for “leadership.”
Septimaeus just wants to change his definition when we already have better vernaculars for his desired “laymen” diction.
Just wants to change his definition
I’m not sure what you mean. My definition has remained constant.
Both dictionaries use the same meaning
The top definition in your link directly above describes leadership as exhibiting the qualities and characteristics of a leader. It’s not an authority-oriented definition at all. In fact it sounds like a virtue-oriented one.
We already have better vernaculars for his desired “laymen” diction.
I said “layperson.” But re: said “vernaculars” versus my “desired diction“ maybe you’re right. Maybe the word leadership is just too damn confusing for the commoner to use responsibly. Perhaps they need smarter people like you to tell them which words are correct and which are forbidden. Let me know how it goes.
