If you have one person who is The Big Leader, there’s a huge target placed on them. It becomes clear that there’s only 1 person who needs to be bribed or blackmailed or (less likely) accident-ed. Plus, you have the whole burden of deciding all the things under one person, and this can burn people out, stratify the organization, and make cadres feel less capable of action.
Someone posted an infobox yesterday on the Party of Bulgarian Communists, and while everyone was smiling at the vidya game logo, I was smiling at how they had a collective for top leadership.
Another thing that is important is making sure that there is a near horizon as well as a far one. Trying to build up a movement around “agitating and educating specifically for some time generations in the future when material conditions reach a breaking point” is a losing prospect; this is asking for people to put their whole lives aside for a revolution they won’t have any experience of. If you can find a way to enrich people’s lives in a way that is clearly moving toward a more equal society, that would be part of a winning strategy.
I am all for having a multi-person collective leadership instead of a single celebrity dominated party. I am really tired of major revolutionary leaders becoming co-opted, and I hope in the near future the American communist parties can overcome this flaw.
If you have one person who is The Big Leader, there’s a huge target placed on them. It becomes clear that there’s only 1 person who needs to be bribed or blackmailed or (less likely) accident-ed. Plus, you have the whole burden of deciding all the things under one person, and this can burn people out, stratify the organization, and make cadres feel less capable of action.
Someone posted an infobox yesterday on the Party of Bulgarian Communists, and while everyone was smiling at the vidya game logo, I was smiling at how they had a collective for top leadership.
Another thing that is important is making sure that there is a near horizon as well as a far one. Trying to build up a movement around “agitating and educating specifically for some time generations in the future when material conditions reach a breaking point” is a losing prospect; this is asking for people to put their whole lives aside for a revolution they won’t have any experience of. If you can find a way to enrich people’s lives in a way that is clearly moving toward a more equal society, that would be part of a winning strategy.
I am all for having a multi-person collective leadership instead of a single celebrity dominated party. I am really tired of major revolutionary leaders becoming co-opted, and I hope in the near future the American communist parties can overcome this flaw.