The word "leadership" is pure ideology, it is a concept with zero rigor that urges us to accept that some people are inherently better than others and deserve their elevated position in society.
I'd push back on that, some people are better leaders than others and in a pinch there will always be people who are better able to guide a group through a challenging situation. Of course the people promoted as "leaders" under capitalism are more like petty tyrants than actual leaders. Most great leaders I know IRL are working class people who genuinely care about others and will help out without any expectations for a reward
It seems like "leadership" combines a bunch of different skills like being a good spokesperson, or a good organizer, or a good strategist that don't necessarily have to reside in the same person. You do need all those skills gathered somewhere like an executive committee, though.
"Leader" is a word invented by the bourgeois class to replace "noble" as a justification for their position at the apex of a pyramidal society. It's such a universal concept that in Spanish, they only started using "líder" as a loanword in the past few decades.
Most great leaders I know IRL are working class people who genuinely care about others and will help out
I don't understand what concept you're trying to convey. Is a leader a person who exhibits a display of class? Is a leader someone who cares about someone else? Is a leader someone who helps other people? Or are you using the example to describe an opposite, that a leader is someone who enriches themself at the expense of others?
I have a good idea of what a spokesperson is. And what a parliamentarian is. And what a teacher is. And what a strategist is. I have no fucking clue what a "leader" is.
Honest question, have you ever had a job that involves working with other people? Or been a part of any organization (political or not)?
I'm not saying that to own you or anything. Working with others quickly made me realize that leadership is a real thing and some people are better or worse at it. At the end of the day not everything can be decided perfectly democratically or nothing gets done.
I know clearly that I'm not leadership material. Because of my own deep incompetence with decision-making and organizing others I saw how those skills are actual skills. A good leader doesn't dominate or subjugate others, they're invested with trust and responsibility that can be lost if they fail to live up to their position.
It's not about better or elevated position, it's about assuming greater responsibility. The pressure on a leader is higher than someone working under their leadership, because if they fail everyone blames them.
The problem under the rule of capital is that leaders don't serve their community or the society at large, they serve capital incarnate. And that incompetent or corrupt leaders are selected for as long as they don't interfere with capital's larger will.
Formal jobs in 4 different sectors since age 17, various organizations since several years before that. I get where this is coming from though; I had a brief conspiracy theorist phase that ended because I realized how hard and messy it was to orchestrate things.
Working a variety of different jobs/settings, and doing leftist organizing for over 5 years, was what led to this idea- that leadership is an arbitrary umbrella concept that is better off with its fragments standing alone.
I would also watch presidential debates and speeches and think "the best debate bro doesn't necessarily have the best strategy, and the person with the best strategies is not necessarily the best at implementing them".
Also in college I took a course where we spent the first week doing nothing but coming up with rigorous definitions of the terms we used. Eventually I started to do this for all kinds of terms.
A good leader doesn't dominate or subjugate others, they're invested with trust and responsibility
Many would disagree; they would say that a leader inherently imposes their will on others; they would say that leadership is not about having all the dials at the right level, but about what you do in the face of the limits to the trust and responsibility that are purveyed to them. "A leader is not someone who has things go according to plan, but who responds to things not going according to plan" is a fairly agreeable statement... but it makes the concept less clear, not more. There are all kinds of platitudes about leaders and leadership. "Responsibility" is also a very broad idea and I'm not all that certain what it really means.
Can you make a delineation of what leaders are or aren't, what they do or don't do, and use that to say whether someone is a leader or not? Can you define leadership rigorously, the way one can define chemistry or Scandinavia? In my effort to define leadership I made a long list of qualities and realized they were all independent of each other, and involved separate skills.
Are you sure leadership is A Thing, and not just a word that is peculiar to your language and culture, and which you've been conditioned to think about the world in terms of?
When I was a little kid, a few students in my cohort were selected for a "leadership camp". I never knew what went on there. How did they practice leadership without any followers at the camp? Were some of them secretly invited to be followers? Do I have to listen to them when they get back?
Comrade, do not let the liberal desire for middle managers that boost the bottom line taint the concept.
Those whose passion and unwavering loyalty to the people earn their place, they are not inherently better due to blood or class.
Ho Chi Minh, who led a revolution not just against the Japanese Empire, but the French and American Empires, too.
Lenin, who led the Bolsheviks to victory to establish the great Soviet Union.
Sankara, whose short tenure liberated Burkina Faso.
Leaders are able to inspire and direct the fury of the proletariat to a better future with charisma, knowledge and integrity. It's easy for greedy to be corrupted, it's easy for the cowardly to surrender, it's easy for the unwise to be defeated. It is difficult to sacrifice comfort to fight for a slight chance at liberation.
Against overwhelming odds, leadership is necessary to survive, let alone emerge victorious.
None of those people lived in a vacuum, their success is, like all things, circumstantial and influenced primarily by the work and effort of other people. Yes, Lenin did a lot of good, but we focus on him primarily because he was just coincidentally in the position that granted the most attention. Nothing he did could have been done without the work of hundreds of party members other than himself.
Do not confuse criticism of leadership as a concept with criticism of organizers. Someone who is more willing and more able to organize people together is a very real phenomenon, as with all skills; but “leadership” implies an elevated position, a worthiness above the average person. This is not real, because like all conceptions of worth, we made it up.