A Progressive Vision of Leadership & its Objects
Rudolf Rocker, Bruno Latour and Mary Parker Follet - A Thread of Commonalities
This article is an attempt to present an alternative style of argument. In line with contemporary (re-)mixing and combinative practices, this piece suggests a train of thought which is developed by presenting three independent but context-united excerpts.
This approach is faithful to the sentiment possessed by all three thinkers, wherein the speaker or orator does best when he draws things together. Voice is given to the community when community voices are re-presented for a truthful, still higher-ordered demonstration of a collective spirit.
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Rudolf Rocker
Nationalism & Culture
Chapter 8
The modern politician is, in every country with a parliamentary government, determined by the same norm and pursues everywhere the same aims. He is a type which is found in every modern state and is shaped by the peculiarities of his profession. Attached to his party, to whose "will" he gives expression, he is always striving to make its opinion the dominant one and to defend its special interests as general interests. If he rises slightly above the average intellectual level of the usual party leader he knows quite well that the alleged will of his party is merely the will of a small minority which gives direction to the party and determines its practical activity. Always to hold the party firmly in hand and so to guide its adherents that each believes he is guided by his own will is one of the chracteristic manifestations of the modern party system.
The nature of political parties, upon which every parliamentary government rests, is in every country the same. Everywhere the party is distinguished from other human organizations by its endeavor to attain to power. It has the conquest of the state inscribed on its banner. Its whole organizational structure imitates that of the state; and just as the government is constantly guided by reasons of state, the party is guided always by considerations of its special reasons of party. An action, or an idea, is for its adherents good or bad, just or unjust, not because it agrees with the personal judgment and convictions of the individual, but because it is advantageous or disadvantageous to the undertaking of the party, furthers its ends or is a hindrance to them. And here the voluntary discipline which the party imposes upon its adherents proves itself, as a rule more effective than the menace of the law, because servitude on principle is always deeper rooted than that which is imposed on men by external force.
So long as a party has not attained the public influence for which it strives it stands in opposition to the existing government. But an opposition is such a necessary institution for the parliamentary system of government that if it did not exist one would have to invent it, as Napoleon III once cynically remarked. If the party becomes stronger, so that the heads of the state must reckon with its influence, they make to it all sorts of concessions and under some conditions invite its leaders into the government. But the very existence of political parties and their influence in public life contradicts most strikingly the illusion of an alleged "national consciousness"; for it shows only too clearly how hopelessly divided and shattered the artificial structure of the nation is.
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Bruno Latour
Making Things Public
PP. 5-6
It's not unfair to say that political philosophy has often been the victim of a strong object-avoidance tendency. From Hobbes to Rawls, from Rousseau to Habermas, many procedures have been devised to assemble the relevant parties, to authorize them to contract, to check their degree of representivity, to discover the ideal speech conditions, to detect the legitimate closure, to write the good constitution. But when it comes down to what is at issue, namely the object of concern that brings them together, not a word is uttered. In a strange way, political science is mute just at the moment when the objects of concern should be brought in and made to speak up loudly. Contrary to what the powerful etymology of their most cherished word should imply, their res publica does not seem to be loaded with too many things. Procedures to authorize and legitimize are important, but it's only half of what is needed to assemble. The other half lifes in the issues themselves, in the matters that matter, in the res that creates a public around it. They need to be represented, authorized, legitimated and brought to bear inside the relevant assembly.
What we can call an "object-oriented democracy" tries to redress this bias in much of political philosophy, that is, to bring together two different meanings of the word representation that have been kept separate in theory although they have remained always mixed in practice. The first one, so well known in schools of law and political science, designated the ways to gather the legitmate people around some issue. In this case, a representation is said to be faithful if the right procedures have been followed. The second one, well known in science and in technology, presents or rather represents what is the object of concern to the eyes and ears of those hwo have been assembled around it. In this case, a representation is said to be good if the matters at hand have been accurately portrayed. Realism implies that the same degree of attention be given to the two aspects of what it is to represent an issue. The first question draws a sort of place, sometimes a ciricle, which might be called an assembly, a gathering, a meeting, a council; the second question brings into this newly created locus a topic, a concern, an issue, a topos. But the two have to be taken together: Who is to be concerned; What is to be considered?
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Mary Parker Follet
The New State
Neighborhood Organization vs. Party organization
Leaders or Bosses?
The power of leadership is the power of integrating. This is the power which creates community. You can see it when two or three strangers or casual acquaintances are calling upon some one. With some hostesses you all talk across at once another as entirely separate individuals, pleasantly and friendlily, to be sure, but still across unbridged chasms; while other hostesses have the power of making you all feel for the moment related, as if you were one little community for the time being. This is a subtle as well as a valuable gift, It is one that leaders of men must possess. It is thus that the collective will is evolved from out of the chaos of varied personality and complex circumstance. This skilful leader then does not rely on personal force; he controls his group not by dominating but by expressing it. He stimulates what is best in us; he unifies and concentrates what we feel only gropingly and scatteringly, but he never gets away from the current of which we and he are both an integral part. He is a leader who gives form to the inchoate energy in every man. The person who influences me most is not he who does great deeeds but he who makes me feel I can do great deeds. Many people tell me what I ought to do and just how I ought to do it, but few have made me want to do something. Who ever struck fire out of me, aroused me to action which I should not otherwise have taken, he has been my leader. The community leader is he who can liberate the greatest amount of energy in his community.
Then the neighborhood leader must be a practical politician. He must be able to interpret a neighborhood not only to itself but to others. He must know not only the need of every charwoman but how politics can answer her call. He must know the great movements of the present and their meaning, and he must know how the smallest needs and the humblest powers of his neighborhood can be fitted into the progressive movements of our time. His duty is to shape politics continuously. As the satisfaction of one need, or the expression of one latent power, reveals many more, he must be always alert and ever ready to gather up the many threads into one strand of united endeavor. He is the patient watcher, the active spokesman, the sincere and ardent exponent of a community consciousness. His guiding, embracing and dominant thought is to make that community consciousness articulate in government.
The politician is not a group but a crowd leader. The leader of a crowd dominates because a crowd wants to be dominated. Politicians do not try to convince but to dazzle; they do not deal with facts but with formulate and vague generalizations, with the flag and the country. If our politicians and our representatives are not our most competent men, but those who have the greatest power of suggestion and are most adroit in using it, the proposal here is that we shall develop methods which will produce real leaders. We are aiming now in the reorganization of our state constitutions at responsible official leadership instead of the irresponsible party boss system which was necessary once because we had to have leaders of some sort. How far this new movement shall succeed, will depend on how far it has back of it, or can be made to have back of it, the kind of organization which will develop group not crowd leaders.
Through neighborhood organizaiton we hope that real leaders instead of bosses will be evolved. Democracy does not tend to suppress leadership as is often stated; it is the only organization of society which will bring out leadership. As soon as we are given opportunities for the release of the energy there is in us, heroes and leaders will arise among us. These will draw their stimulus, their passion, their life from all, and then in their turn increase in all passion and power and creating force.
