this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2025
28 points (86.8% liked)
Anarchism
2149 readers
35 users here now
Discuss anarchist praxis and philosophy. Don't take yourselves too seriously.
Other anarchist comms
- !anarchism@slrpnk.net
- !anarchism@lemmy.blahaj.zone
- !anarchism@hexbear.net
- !anarchism@lemmy.ml
- !anarchism101@lemmy.ca
- !flippanarchy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
Join the matrix room for some real-time discussion.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Here's the thing... leadership is never a formal thing. They even acknowledge this in military writings (though never directly) - even old Sun Tzu drew a distinction between someone who is followed due to trust and respect and someone who merely has a rank.
This presents us with a golden opportunity to redefine what this term means - not just for those familiar with radical politics, but for those who aren't, too. If our much stronger and sensible understanding of leadership contrasts starkly with the wishy-washy esotericism the term is ladden with in the hierarchical world - well, let's just say that you can't buy that kind of propaganda.
Even if someone merely has a rank, you still have to listen to them if they've been assigned authority over you within a system that coerces your compliance under a threat of some kind. What phrase would be better to describe this kind of authority?
Yes. The manager. The officer. The bureaucrat. The prefect. All of them are endowed with institutionalised power to coerce you into acting against your own interests, the interests of your community and the interests of your society.
This is what any given hierarchy will call "leadership."
Lol! "Bosship," perhaps?
We don't actually have a term to describe that in the English language as far as I know... and I don't think that's any kind of coincidence, either. After all... institutionalised power cannot be threatened by things we don't even have a word for, can it?