Some Thoughts From a Worker on the Problem of Leadership

Worker Correspondent

The inspiration for this article is the class struggle at my workplace. I am a manual laborer in the construction field in a particularly reactionary southern state, a hot and deregulated place where the boss still thinks and acts like an overseer. The grim situation of my workplace is possible today only with the sanitation provided by the liberal administrators—an entire army of petty-bourgeois intellectuals who help lubricate the machine of exploitation so it runs without friction from us workers.

I’m among the minority of workers in my field that have access to a business union here. We find the culprits among “our” leadership, college-educated, soft and white, staffing the union and HR departments. While the union does little to nothing about heat sickness on the job, about the vile comments from the shift leads who push up the tempo to dangerous and potentially fatal levels, the coercive “voluntary” overtime, or the rampant wage theft, they make it a priority to phone bank for Democrats, and will not spare a single expense or effort when it comes to participating in Pride. This is where our dues go, and it’s why most of us have forgotten we even have a “union.”

In the protest movements too, we encounter the same idiots waving the same credentials, running activism in the interests of those with the real power. These activists come down to our neighborhoods usually when we have already taken the initiative. They do not live there, but they come to tell us how to express ourselves appropriately. They are the first line of troops between us and the issue, with the second line being the police. Petty-bourgeois leaders are most often shameless reformists, using pacifism, “harm-reduction”, and anything else they can think of to domesticate our struggles and make sure we do not go beyond what the rulers accept. In some cases, they proclaim to be revolutionaries or anti-imperialists too.

These people are churned out from universities—boot-camps where they are trained to believe there is no objective truth, only contending narratives of “lived experience”. They are taught that the answer to oppression is to embrace its results in the name of self-empowerment. It is all nonsense, yet they enforce it everywhere, even on the picket lines and in the meetings.

This invisible army seeks to control all aspects of proletarian life and to limit all aspects of proletarian expression, and they accomplish this because there is no proletarian leadership. It has become clear to myself and others that there is only genuine proletarian leadership in the form of the Communist Party, a political party distinct from and opposed to the political parties of all other classes. This is at its very basis a problem of leadership—which class controls our destiny as workers, and who guides our revolutionary expression?

Some Mistakenly Think They are Bringing Solutions

I am glad more and more young people are taking up these ideas about the need for a Communist Party and proletarian ideology, Maoism. But many self-proclaimed Maoists in the US are part of the invisible army of petty-bourgeois intellectuals. They come from the universities to “lead” and offer another flavor of the same swill. They haven’t integrated, they do not speak to or for workers with any more authenticity than the other educated servants of the big capitalists. This is clear in their orientation—they have a lot of international solidarity and protests against imperialism and its agents, but they have demonstrated no commitment to our class or its day-to-day struggles, let alone combining these with the struggle for political power.

This is especially clear among the centrists in the US Maoist movement. Like a fountain, they cascade new anti-imperialist organizations and new youth organizations. Like all petty-bourgeois revolutionaries, they are newly-awakened elements who often strike the most preposterous poses and raise the most preposterous slogans to compensate for their lack of class struggle. What they do not produce are workers’ organizations and durable, deep roots among us. They snap a few photos for international websites and ultimately are a comfortable middle ground, dripping in sanctimony, creating “spaces” in which other petty-bourgeois youth can integrate and avoid being led by the working class. They are yet another form of petty-bourgeois leadership but with the potential to change, which is only possible if they accept the uncontested leadership of the proletariat and break with their old ideas and old forms.

Class standpoint is a question of having a clear, consistent, and firm proletarian ideology and not following any other ideology. It is not about which class you are born in or what your personal job is, but orientation and whose class interest you actually serve. The petty-bourgeois leadership cannot serve the workers.

This petty-bourgeois leadership is also seen with the opportunists who make a fake orientation to our class or even send in their agents to disorganize the struggle. These groups, who have consolidated themselves around Right Opportunist Headquarters, pay lip-service to the working class being revolutionary and even its leadership, but they promote splits and defend them. They raise false banners and behave like managers. They pass all blame onto others and kiss ass above. When petty-bourgeois intellectual leaders radicalize and re-brand as revolutionaries, some of them break with the so-called New Left convention of abandoning labor. They invariably bring with them the same narrow worldview, and they can only approach things rigidly because they have not been living in the real world. They have an inflated view of themselves and do not recognize any leadership but their own. This is also an expression of liquidationism.

In fact, the reality of the Right Opportunist Headquarters is structurally identical to my workplace—a few snitches become site leads, and a whole slew of educated flunkies exist above them promoting the same old postmodernism.

What opportunism and liquidationism both have in common is attacking proletarian leadership, opposing it with the management of petty-bourgeois intellectuals. The centrists and rightists alike share this history and these features.

Where To Go?

If you ask which masses do we go to, many activists these days will tell you the street people, the prisoners, the projects. Less common is the recognition that the workplace is the main place that needs organizing. This is because it is easiest for these activists to lead outside of the workplace, where they compete with one another for leadership. In all these places there is a lack of natural proletarian leaders forged in class struggle. The only place you can find these is in the workplace and in the rank and file of the union. All the official posts are filled. The petty-bourgeois intellectual is an endangered species, and its only talent is wielding bureaucracy to staff its own class.

We know the lubricant is drying up on this machine. For particularly backward reasons, Trump is making attacks on the intellectuals, the scientists and those who professionally mitigate class conflict in the interests of his class, the imperialist ruling class. This is because he doesn’t think they are doing a good enough job and would prefer to keep peace with more hands on aggressive means, so he attacks the factories of the petty-bourgeois intellectuals, he attacks their identities and their most sacred “values.” This makes many of them realize that reforming this rotten system is a foolish idea and that it has to be overthrown, and so they take up “left” deviations and false flags, or they take up posts under proletarian leadership. This is what is important.

The first step is recognizing that class leadership is key, that it is something that must be conquered and imposed with class struggle, revolutionary violence, and ultimately with people’s war. This is what the actual Maoists have been teaching and what more workers are ready to learn. Every aspect of life is now controlled by petty-bourgeois intellectuals, managers and administrators in the interests of capital, from the union, to the church, to academics and activism. Proletarian leadership must be fought for, it must be conquered and imposed in all areas where the working class comes into contention with the ruling class, and the critical element is neutralizing the influence of the petty bourgeoisie.

This means first defending labor as the principal trench, and making it the priority in practice. Do not just paint a banner, pose with it and post it on Instagram. Revolution is not a performance for social media. It means rejecting the subculture of the left, its lifestyles and mode of living. It means being among the common people and learning from the masses in order to teach them. It means rejecting creative mania and sticking to the teachings that really have made revolutions. The petty bourgeoisie fights tooth and nail to lead because it is faced with extinction. The masses are always contested. If revolution is to mean anything or go anywhere we must be in hard jobs at the low levels and we must find those brave bastards that rebel and lead others to rebel and we must bring Maoism to them. Once this happens all the flabby intellectuals will finally get out of our way, they will get behind us or be trampled by us.

Image Credit: Photographer “Leeroy”, hosted on Freerange Stock.

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