Leaders vs. Followers
I disagree with Ed Chambers’ focus on organizing only “leaders� in Roots for Radicals. Chambers writes, “If you get caught with a follower, there’s an easy way out. Just say, ‘Take me to your leader’�.
In the first place, how is the organizer to know who is a follower and who is a leader? If the organizer’s goal is to find leaders, they are likely to look only in obvious places: at the heads of formal institutions. While this makes sense from an organizing perspective, as those leaders can “deliver� their institutions, the organizer is likely to overlook untapped potential in many people who are “leaders� at heart, but have not been given the opportunity to stand up and show it. These people may have valuable connections to contingents of society that have heretofore gone unorganized. One example would be youth or teenagers.
The larger issue I take with this division between leaders and followers, however, is that I feel it is just continuing the status quo. I would go so far as to label it another “ism� (“personalityism�?) that we need to overcome. Frankly, I don’t see how Chambers can claim to agree with the Crick/Aristotelean definition of “politics� as the activity of dialogue and compromise among different members of society when he excludes the majority of people by labeling them as “followers�. Chambers writes, “Let’s be realistic. You don’t need everybody. A well organized 3 to 5 percent is enough to start serious social change. Not any 3 to 5 percent, but key people and institutions that others follow�.
This makes me think of Myles Horton’s distinction between education and organizing in We Make the Road by Walking (see Jan. 23rd entry). Horton claims that education is superior to organizing because when you’re organizing, you care more about your issue, the success of your campaign, than you do about the personal development of the individuals working with you. While Chambers claims he wants to provide “average citizens with a means of group action through which they can participate actively in the public democratic process�, I don’t believe targeting only leaders will accomplish this. While organizers need to create broad-based organizations to wield power and take back control from the market, if that’s all that happens, such organizations of organizational leaders will simply become the new oligarchy, and the average citizen will still be living under them. They will probably be better off physically and economically, but no better spiritually, no closer to reaching their potential as a human being, and they will not be living in a true civil society.
Maybe it’s misguided to say we need to develop everyone’s “leadership� abilities, because everyone can’t be a leader, by definition. However, I think we need not to label people as “followers� and give up on them, but find ways to develop everyone’s political capabilities and potential.