Do we need leaders in the working class?

Bolshevik leaders Vladimir Lenin and Trotsky in Moscow, 1920

Our world is being destroyed by unelected elites who care only for their profits. Our political leaders don’t just break their promises and fiddle their expenses—they are enabling genocide.

No wonder people reject the idea that some people have the right to tell us how to live. We stand with everyone who defies authority at school, at work or in the streets. We share people’s frustrations with appointed leaders.

Activists in radical movements often experiment with ways of organising without leaders. Many of these attempts, such as student encampments for Palestine, are influenced by autonomist ideas.

While autonomism began as a distinct Marxist movement in the 1960s, its influence has expanded. Now, it represents a variety of ideas showing scepticism towards authority and leadership. This suspicion of official leaders is entirely understandable. But leadership doesn’t just exist among the elites and in parliament. It exists within every movement of resistance.

Action can appear to erupt spontaneously, but it happens because someone, or a group, inspired others to act. The Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci wrote, “In the ‘most spontaneous’ movement it is simply the case that the elements of ‘conscious leadership’ that cannot be checked have left no document.”

Every campaign and movement involves intense discussions about tactics—who to involve, its relationship with the media, whether to break the law. One debate that always comes up is how a committed minority encourage more people to get involved.

That militant minority of activists are leaders. Leadership exists at every great historical moment. A leader is someone who shouts “push” against a line of riot police, who picks up the stone to throw at Israeli tanks. But it also exists when arguing for strikes or organising solidarity with a co-worker.

Some of these are experienced, conscious leaders. Others become conscious leaders through their involvement with struggle. Socialists believe that change should come from mass action and that ordinary people have the potential to transform the world. This politics shapes the strategy we argue for in mass movements. We look to empower the rank and file and involve wider numbers.

During a revolutionary crisis, leadership is essential to ensure that revolutionary politics is the strongest pole of attraction—not reformist or counter-revolutionary politics.

Some activists avoid the question of leadership by arguing that we should keep politics out of the movement. But any action to change the world involves politics. As the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky pointed out, everyone is a philosopher because everyone has a view of the world and makes assumptions about society.

Where there are no official parties, Gramsci observed that unofficial parties tend to form within movements as people with a similar outlook pull together.

Some parties can stifle debate and put bureaucracy in the way of action. For example, look at how Keir Starmer has bullied the Labour left into silence. But not all parties are like this—the Socialist Workers Party is very different.

Its role is to bring together the leaders within the working class. It organises all those who are convinced that capitalism must be overthrown, and that the self-activity of the global working class is the way to bring fundamental change.

A revolutionary organisation does not want its members to be passive. It thrives on action, on getting stuck into strikes and building the resistance. To have any success, it must be highly democratic, thrive on action and have debates to learn from experiences. It is united and “centralist” in action.

In the revolutionary party, ideas and action coalesce. Not everybody can do everything, but the party embodies the theory and practice needed in every movement.

In the revolutionary party we are all “leaders”.